A new tool improves tide predictions on the Casio G-SHOCK GBX-100 without changing its firmware. In Saint-Malo, France, the watch's original data produced average high- and low-tide timing errors of 29 minutes, with a worst case of two hours and five minutes.
Creator Matthieu Girard found that the watch can calculate tides using 60 harmonic constituents, but the official app supplied only a small four-constituent set for Saint-Malo. He calculated a fuller set from official measurements and transferred it via Bluetooth. Average error against 2025 observations fell to five minutes.
The watch could already handle 60 pieces of tide data, but its app only handed over four. Fixing the watch meant giving it better homework, not new hardware.
To reduce the temptation to pick up his smartphone, Kevin Noki built a large handset styled after a 1980s mobile phone. It is not a standalone cellular phone: it connects to an existing smartphone via Bluetooth to handle calls.
After an initial Bluetooth setup produced poor audio, Noki switched to a dedicated hands-free module. He shaped a foam mockup before 3D-printing the final enclosure, allowing the real phone to stay out of his hands during calls.
To stop reaching for one phone, he built a second phone. And the new phone still depends on the original one.
TamaFi V2 is a pocket virtual pet that treats nearby Wi-Fi and Bluetooth activity as its environment. When it goes hunting, the radio activity it finds changes hunger and mood, while it can also choose behaviors such as discovering open networks or taking a rest.
Nearby radio activity is classified as calm, busy, open, noisy, or hostile. Detecting deauthentication or disassociation activity can lower comfort and happiness and trigger a glitch-like facial reaction. The current firmware is read-only and does not store SSIDs or MAC addresses. It was created by CiferTech.
Instead of feeding a virtual pet with a button, this one treats the Wi-Fi around you as its food supply and habitat. Take it somewhere with hostile radio traffic and even the pet gets upset.
Adafruit's John Park built One Key, a wireless mechanical keyboard containing exactly one key. It connects as a Bluetooth HID device and can act as a mute button, presentation clicker, macro launcher or other configurable control.
Despite having only one physical key, it can send characters, combinations such as Ctrl-Z, strings and media commands. A WebSerial interface also configures LED colors and sleep behavior. The input hardware has been reduced to almost nothing, while the configuration for deciding what that one button means has become impressively rich.
The keyboard has been reduced to one key, but the settings for deciding what that one key does keep multiplying.
The watch could already handle 60 pieces of tide data, but its app only handed over four. Fixing the watch meant giving it better homework, not new hardware.