It's been a bit more than two months since the mail came to my door with the MI/O Watch, a piece of hardware made by M.Bindhammer, who, fortunately, trusted one on me to make this review, and I thank him for that.

Based on the well-known ATmega328p, it is designed to be more than a simple Arduino based watch, its principal feature are the breakout/expansion ports for some of the I/O pins of the microcontroller.

 The package:

The MI/O Watch came inside a pretty, well fitted paper box. On the front side you can see a nice picture of the watch, and its name. Backside are some details about its fabrication.

Once you open the box, you'll find a well packed MI/O Watch and a belt. The quality of the belt is one of the things what I'm most surprised about. Textile but very resistant and very comfortable. I just loved it. 

I found the box itself flimsy and lacks a caption of what you will find and you will not on the inside, or an illustration about the most important feature of the watch. Obviously, we won’t find a battery, but a line with the type needed could be useful.

The Watch

In appearance, MI/O look similar to much of the Arduino based boards and remind me of those first digital watches from the 70's; also, as Bindhammer points out, he based the design on a pair of vintage Casio watches with IR ports aside. 

I need to say that, for people who are not used to seeing PCB everywhere, the watch attracts all the attention. Even i was told that it's the perfect piece for a sophisticated nerd like me. 


The Board