What's up with my Kmart watches?

[excreationist]

The image search for "42871231 watch" also mentioned Armitron....


Its pattern in the 6x6 grid is consistent with the regular pattern for "5".

This Armitron watch that was near the start of the image results seems to have a 5 element display in the top right.... its 4 element pattern with 1 empty at the end is consistent with the pattern for "3" from my earlier watches!!!


This Armitron watch has the same pattern near the top right as my oldest Kmart watches. It also is consistent (all 5 bars for the digit "8")



This Armitron watch from Walmart seems to have a completely different pattern - it is 8x3 (24 elements) - here is another (Armitron Sport Men's 40/8330BLK Brown Accented) from Amazon... it also has a similar 8x3 grid though the rest of the watch is very different.... I ordered it and will try to crack its patterns as well....



Another match: Amazon "O.T.S Men's Sports Digital Watch Outdoor Waterproof with LED Backlight (Black)"


The 6x6 grid pattern is consistent with "3"

From "Corona Watches" - it seems to basically be the same design as the one on Amazon - it has the normal pattern for "0". This has also been rebranded as "Bostanten".



From Walmur (site not working) the 6x6 pattern is for "2" but the time is showing "5"



It seems the organisation behind these hidden features is bigger than I thought.....

I'm not sure why the first time I got heaps of relevant images when I searched for "42871231 watch" - usually I hardly get any results....

 

[excreationist]

The black and orange watch said 42266860 on the back... (and also says anko Made in China)

a search only gave one result - itself:



Though the green and gray looks the same on the front, the back only says:
Stainless steel case back
Battery CR2025
China

Another Armitron watch with a different random looking pattern - available at Walmart:

In the second watch (blue, etc) the last seconds digit is an 8 but the pattern isn't fully filled so it seems like the pattern is different to the first two... (5 element and 6x6)

Sometimes my successes can give me hubris but it isn't the case here.... there's no guarantee to where this will lead....

On Amazon I found a picture of the back of an Armitron watch:



Then I searched for MD11237T and found a user manual:


Note that the right-most second digit is a 2 and the pattern in the top right is consistent with this (two bars then a gap then two bars)

Here is a close up of that watch and the "3" pattern is also consistent (four bars then a blank)


According to the manual it seems like Citizen is connected to this too....

 

[excreationist]

The manual in the previous post talked about Q&Q.... it is a subsidiary of Citizen watches....

There are a couple of videos on YouTube about that watch.

This 6:52 minute video doesn't mention the top-right pattern... (though it is there on the watch)

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIY50xZwze8[/YOUTUBE]

He says on the tag it says "Q&Q Japan brand".....

This is confirmed by:
https://qq-watch.jp/eng/about/index.html

"a quality, reliable Japanese watch brand..... reliable timepieces using Japanese craftsmanship"

So it seems this digit pattern goes beyond just China....

 

[Gun Nut]

It's for show... something flashy. On mechanical watches, one would call that a "complication".... a feature that does not serve to tell time, but do something else, or nothing.
It seems like a simple little thing to implement.. light up these bars when those bars are lit.

 

[excreationist]

It's for show... something flashy. On mechanical watches, one would call that a "complication".... a feature that does not serve to tell time, but do something else, or nothing.
It seems like a simple little thing to implement.. light up these bars when those bars are lit.

I would have expected a logical pattern that a child could understand... like this: (like Casio)

Instead, from the bars of anko/Kmart to the balls of Armitron and Q&Q/Citizen there is this consistent pattern:

I think the first animation is a lot more enjoyable to watch.... if they wanted to make it random then it should be random - instead there is a hidden pattern to it (see the corresponding colors...)

I'm not sure if these patterns have been mentioned anywhere on the internet, let alone there being an explanation of their patterns.

So I've decoded the 5 segment and 6x6 patterns. I've also ordered Armitron watches with the following patterns: 8x3, 8x5, and a circular grid (see post #22).

Almost everyone I talk to on the internet has no interest in the patterns but I like to know everything. But in real life I can make it more relevant by showing them the patterns on the watch I'm currently wearing.

 

[Jokodo]

It's for show... something flashy. On mechanical watches, one would call that a "complication".... a feature that does not serve to tell time, but do something else, or nothing.
It seems like a simple little thing to implement.. light up these bars when those bars are lit.

I would have expected a logical pattern that a child could understand... like this: (like Casio)

Instead, from the bars of anko/Kmart to the balls of Armitron and Q&Q/Citizen there is this consistent pattern:

I think the first animation is a lot more enjoyable to watch.... if they wanted to make it random then it should be random - instead there is a hidden pattern to it (see the corresponding colors...)

I'm not sure if these patterns have been mentioned anywhere on the internet, let alone there being an explanation of their patterns.

So I've decoded the 5 segment and 6x6 patterns. I've also ordered Armitron watches with the following patterns: 8x3, 8x5, and a circular grid (see post #22).

Almost everyone I talk to on the internet has no interest in the patterns but I like to know everything. But in real life I can make it more relevant by showing them the patterns on the watch I'm currently wearing.

Sounds like a bug that should never have seen the light of day but when it went live, it became a sort of trademark - or at least the developer responsible talked management into believing so, and giving them a rise instead of reprimanding them for their misfortune.

I like that developer already.

 

[Gun Nut]

I am not at all surprised that you have a strong attraction to pattern finding. It's natural, to an extent. The extent you go to decode patterns is quite.. extensive, though. No offense intended, at all. Pattern finding is human at its core... but also the core to obsessive, potentially harmful behavior.

Anyway, the pattern is indeed a pattern, but has no meaning or utility. It is the simplest and cheapest way to "do something flashy". The seconds are the only thing that changes often enough to have any interest to the glancing eye, and simply mapping a segment of one diode to a segment of another diode costs $0.00001 to manufacture. It's nearly free "flashiness". No need to program or add or change the chip.. its just a nanometer of extra solder and a couple of diodes.

 

[excreationist]

.....Anyway, the pattern is indeed a pattern, but has no meaning or utility. It is the simplest and cheapest way to "do something flashy". The seconds are the only thing that changes often enough to have any interest to the glancing eye, and simply mapping a segment of one diode to a segment of another diode costs $0.00001 to manufacture. It's nearly free "flashiness". No need to program or add or change the chip.. its just a nanometer of extra solder and a couple of diodes.

Why is it that Casio, perhaps the leading digital watch manufacturer, always has simple patterns like this:

If the leading digital watch manufacturer thinks that is a good idea then why do a group of them including Liebig, Skmei, OTS, Armitron, Affute, Kmart, Walmur, etc, consistently use this exact pattern:

It is the simplest and cheapest way to "do something flashy"

No Casio's style is "the simplest and cheapest way to do something flashy".

 

[excreationist]

This shows that the 6x6 grid and 5 segment ball watch patterns have been around since at least 2012....



Other companies involved with the 6x6 pattern include Palada, Pure, CakCity, Kinrui....

Here is a reddit post about it from 8 years ago where they also decoded the 6x6 grid pattern with colors corresponding to shapes...

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthis...he_top_right_of_this_watch_above_the_seconds/

 

[excreationist]

I received two Armitron watches from Amazon.... they had the same packaging and instructions.... the screens are almost identical but one has a 8x5 grid pattern and the other has 8x3.... that would involve manufacturing a different LCD screen and a different chip/programming to handle the different grids...

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q87yonmNLtA[/YOUTUBE]

Here is the picture from the instructions. For some reason no pattern display is shown....

 

[excreationist]

Here are the 8x3 and 8x5 patterns decoded....

I've ordered the circle grid watch.... its grid is 12 pixels wide and 12 pixels high.... so there are about 100 pixels (some are cut off). It might not be as easy to solve as the others because according to photos only about half of the pixels are filled for the 8 and they are all filled for the 1...

For the 8x3 grid, 8x5 grid and circle grid I can only find watches made by Armitron.... I wonder if they will eventually involve other companies like the 6x6 grid and 5 segment displays.

 

[Gun Nut]

.....Anyway, the pattern is indeed a pattern, but has no meaning or utility. It is the simplest and cheapest way to "do something flashy". The seconds are the only thing that changes often enough to have any interest to the glancing eye, and simply mapping a segment of one diode to a segment of another diode costs $0.00001 to manufacture. It's nearly free "flashiness". No need to program or add or change the chip.. its just a nanometer of extra solder and a couple of diodes.

Why is it that Casio, perhaps the leading digital watch manufacturer, always has simple patterns like this:

If the leading digital watch manufacturer thinks that is a good idea then why do a group of them including Liebig, Skmei, OTS, Armitron, Affute, Kmart, Walmur, etc, consistently use this exact pattern:

It is the simplest and cheapest way to "do something flashy"

No Casio's style is "the simplest and cheapest way to do something flashy".

Because the two cheapest chips commonly manufactured have the very cheap nice logical complication and a very very very cheap confusing complication.
That's it. Your imagination is far more interesting than this reality.

 

[excreationist]

Because the two cheapest chips commonly manufactured have the very cheap nice logical complication and a very very very cheap confusing complication.
That's it. Your imagination is far more interesting than this reality.

Sometimes the 6x6 pattern watches have a 2 letter day and sometimes they have a 3 letter day. They would involve separate chips or a combined chip that can be set to 2 or 3 letter days....

 

[excreationist]

Here is a look at the patterns from the circle grid watches:

You can view them here:
https://watchpattern.com/circlegrid.php

Here is the video:


The previous patterns were always about the 7 segment LCD.... but the circle grid is based on the value of the numbers - and it goes from 0 to 59 but only changes every 2 seconds so there are 30 patterns overall.

I've made a website all about these patterns:

https://watchpattern.com/

 

[excreationist]

I thought that I had found all of Armitron's patterns but in addition to 8x3 and 8x5 there is also the 8x4 grid from 2014....

 

[Jokodo]

I thought that I had found all of Armitron's patterns but in addition to 8x3 and 8x5 there is also the 8x4 grid from 2014....

People call me obsessed for 1% of what you're doing here.

 

[excreationist]

I thought that I had found all of Armitron's patterns but in addition to 8x3 and 8x5 there is also the 8x4 grid from 2014....

People call me obsessed for 1% of what you're doing here.

So I also decoded the 8x4 grid....

I figured out a way of finding the patterns between the 7 LCD segments and the grid.... usually the "8" involves the grid being full.... then the 0, 6, and 9 each have one part missing.... the 5 and 3 have 2 parts missing (similar to the 6 and 9), etc.

It's odd that Armitron uses the 7 LCD elements for all of these patterns (5 segment bars/ball, 6x6, 8x3, 8x4, 8x5) then the 12x12 circle grid is completely different...

 

[ZiprHead]

This is the watch I wear. It doesn't drive me crazy.



Arnold wore the same watch in Kindergarten Cop.

 

[excreationist]

This is about Armitron 40/8252 vs 40/8254

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vAem8gsDgg[/YOUTUBE]

They are pretty much identical including the "Pacer" mode (that says "PA" at the top, etc)

Besides the rotating dial on the 40/8254 the only significant differences are that one has 5 segment ball patterns and the other has the 6x6 grid patterns.... I guess someone thought it was a good idea for the 8252 model to have the ball while the 8254 model would have a 6x6 grid....

I originally was going to just concentrate on the "pacer" mode.... I was going to overlay the following graphics over the video - the left side shows the 2 digits and the right side shows the corresponding patterns

6x6:


Ball:


But when I was editing the video in Blender I kept on having lots of technical problems with "image sequences" including it crashing a lot. I think that those problems happened for a reason - leading me to not use those graphics in the final video.

 

[excreationist]

Here are all of the 0-9 digit patterns together.... (5 segment bars/ball, 6x6, 8x3, 8x4, and 8x5 grids)


Perhaps it is a little busy...

From watchpattern.com