retronics infotainment
µWatch: return of the scientific calculator watch
David L. Jones (Australia)
The last few years have seen a
retro watch revival, with ‘geek’
watches of all sorts — Nixie tube
watches, LED watches, PONG
game watches and so on. This
month’s Retronics page takes
an unusual slant by present-
ing µWatch, which beats all of
the above hands down for DIY
nerdiness.
The last scientific calculator
watch was the Casio CFX-400
way back in 1985! It is so sought
after today that even broken
ones can fetch many hundreds
of dollars. And a pristine one
in working condition? — if you
have to ask the price, you can’t
afford it. So not only has a sci-
entific calculator watch not been
available for 20 years (leaving
engineers bereft), you’ve never
been able to get the satisfaction
of building your own, until now.
By way of this short article, the
µWatch project is a great occa-
sion to rekindle memories of cal-
culator watch use at University or
College in the 1970s and 1980s.
Raise your hands please!
µWatch is a modern incarnation
of the calculator watch, now built
using contemporary components
like SMDs and a PIC microcon-
troller. It supports both Algebraic
and RPN calculation modes.
Why RPN? Why not! RPN is not
only efficient to code and use,
but it still has a big user base of
HP calculator enthusiasts. RPN
stands for Reverse Polish Nota-
tion. It was invented by Hewlett
Retronics is a monthly column covering vintage electronics including legendary Elektor designs. Contributions, suggestions and requests are
welcomed; please send an email to editor@elektor.com
1/2009 - elektor
Packard for use in some of their
very first calculators, and they
still sell RPN capable calculators
today. I thought that no compre-
hensive calculator watch would
be complete without RPN func-
tionality, so it’s available as a
user selectable option. The RPN
mode is based on the classic HP
4-level stack with X/Y/Z/T reg-
isters, with T register copy func-
tionality, as follows:
RPN Stack
T Register
Z Register
Y Register
X Register
In RPN mode, values get
‘entered’ onto the stack by
pressing the ENTER key. Oper-
ators and functions will auto-
matically perform the ENTER
function if it has not already
been done.
All operators and functions
work on either the X register
or the X and Y registers. So to
add 1 + 2 you would key in 1
ENTER 2 +.
If a value gets into the T reg-
ister it ‘sticks’ and stays there
until manually cleared. This is
a useful function for repeating
calculations.
The menu options are iden-
tical for either RPN or Alge-
braic mode, but they do dif-
fer in the way they operate.
As RPN works based on pre-
entered values on a stack, so
functions such as x^y are per-
formed on pre-entered val-
ues. This is known as ‘postfix
notation’. In Algebraic mode
on the other hand, x is entered
first, followed by the x^y com-
mand, and then the routine
must wait for the y value to be
entered. This is known as ‘infix
notation’.
Somewhat confusingly, in Alge-
braic mode, some operations
such as SIN and LOG use post-
fix notation, just like RPN. So
you enter 10 SIN, not SIN 10.
This is a common method used
on commercial algebraic cal-
culators such as Casio’s. This is
why many people like RPN, it’s
consistently postfix notation, so
there is never any confusion.
If you compare the source code
for the RPN and Algebraic
modules, you’ll notice that RPN
is much simpler and easier to
understand. With the RPN stack
system, you can perform pow-
erfully complex calculations
using very simple commands.
There is no operator prece-
dence or parentheses to con-
tend with. However, RPN does
require that you think about
how you do your calculation
before you enter it, as it does
not calculate the same way you
see it written on paper.
Algebraic on the other hand
requires the use of nested
parentheses and operator
precedence, and this can get
very complicated from a pro-
gramming perspective. But the
end result is that your calcula-
tions are performed more like
you see them on paper.
The algebraic mode supports
six levels of parentheses like
most basic scientific calcula-
tors. Full operator precedence
is maintained with each level
of parentheses.
In the Algebraic ‘stack’ there
is a basic working set of reg-
isters containing X, Y and Z
Registers. The Z register is used
when operator precedence is
called for. E.g. 1+2*3 would
result in the 1 being shifted
into the Z register. If a paren-
thesis is opened then the entire
contents of those working reg-
isters and operators are shifted
up one level into the parenthe-
ses working registers. Likewise,
when a parenthesis is closed
the registers and operators
are dropped back down one
level. So in effect it is one big
7-level-deep-by-5-value-wide
stack. Compare that with the
simple 4-level-by-1-wide RPN
stack. Yet the RPN stack, if used
correctly, can be more power-
ful than the Algebraic stack.
Full details on construction and
programming of µWatch may
be found at the author’s web-
site [1]. The project was devel-
oped entirely with the Micro-
chip C30 C compiler within the
MPLAB environment.
(080816-I)
Internet Link
[1] www.calcwatch.com
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