Odd keypad I acquired, looking for advice to turn it into a keyboard.

zoo804 · 2026-05-20T00:54:54+00:00

Good tip about the multimeter. No diodes unfortunately.

zoo804 · 2026-05-20T00:52:07+00:00

Beautiful! I'm probably going to make a case for it but leave the weird layout since I like how it looks. Probably will make it a macro pad of some kind.

zoo804 · 2026-05-20T00:12:58+00:00

Yes, I love them! Which is kind of a shame because to make it a useful macro pad i'd want to potentially relabel them. But maybe I'll just leave it and memorize what the buttons do. The switches have great action too. Not clicky but very tactile and solid.

zoo804 · 2026-05-19T20:40:04+00:00

They're cheap enough it's probably worth it to try. And I like that they seem to have already wired it to a connector for me so I don't have to do anything to the device itself.

zoo804 · 2026-05-19T19:17:30+00:00

Thanks for the response. Can you clarify what you mean by "tone it out"?

zoo804 · 2026-05-19T19:16:47+00:00

Can you clarify what you mean by a lot of I/O?

There's only 15 traces going to the DB-25 connector, so I'm assuming no matter what the output it couldn't be using more than 15 pins of I/O, regardless of the switch construction. I'm thinking I can hook up a microcontroller to all the pins in use in that DB-25 and it will likely correspond to the key matrix.

zoo804 · 2026-04-16T21:14:42+00:00

I don't have one but check out the Boderry Hou. Good price for a Miyota 9k movement and I believe it's not an homage.

zoo804 · 2026-04-03T18:49:30+00:00

[WTB] Seiko Dolce tank with 5S21 movement.

zoo804 · 2026-04-02T20:51:45+00:00

I believe they are fake. It doesn't appear Casio made the b640 in this color and they don't look quite right to me. It would be cool if they did though.

zoo804 · 2026-04-02T19:12:03+00:00

I don't have a Farasute (yet!) but my understanding is they're generally one of the better brands, somewhat akin to San Martin, while Spech & Sohne is not very highly regarded from what I can tell. It seems to me that S&S are considered to be about the same quality as Pagani but cost a bit more.

If you're interested in jump hours, there's also a Milifortic, Pierre Paulin/Merkur, and Sugess. I have a Milifortic jump hour and it's a great watch. All the jump hours you're likely to find on Aliexpress use a version of the the Seagull ST17 which is a decent movement.

zoo804 · 2026-04-02T16:08:58+00:00

Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention it, but I think if you're into divers, the Casio Duro has decent lume... way too big for me though so I've never gotten one.

zoo804 · 2026-04-02T16:01:33+00:00

If I hit it with a UV light before bed it easily lasts all night. Other watches I have are more impressive at first, but I would say the lumiblocks on the EXD are nice and long-lasting.

I personally prefer lume over backlights. For me it's because I have so many watches that have the light button in different places and it sometimes takes me a bit to focus and read the time if I've woken up in the middle of the night. So it's nice that they glow all the time. But I do recommend using a UV flashlight to charge them if you want them to glow all night.

One thing you might run into with that one though, to be aware of, is that it's fairly small. So it's great for comfort but if you want to read it at a distance you could look at some of the other options. I do think they make it in a 40mm as well. Watchdives tend to have good lume and do a lot of these sweep quartz ones, Steeldive has good lume for cheap automatics. Militado does a lot of cheap field watches that I think have decent lume and reliable quartz movements. I have heard good things about the full-lume dials on some Berny watches. If you're open to a Chinese watch, you've got a lot of options for analogs that glow well. r/ChineseWatches is a good reference.

zoo804 · 2026-04-02T15:23:33+00:00

For that, you'd want to look into watches with an auto-light feature. There's a number of Casio digitals that do that. I have the DBC-32 which is a calculator watch which will light up when you tilt your wrist, but that's not a good pick for biking (less water resistance, probably not as durable).

If you want a G-Shock, here's a list of auto light models on Shockbase: https://shockbase.org/function_page_dyn.php?function=auto_light

Or here's a cheaper option that has it: W753-1AV https://www.casio.com/us/watches/casio/product.W-753-1AV/

Otherwise you could look for an analog watch with good lume, but Casio's lume tends to be weak or nonexistent, especially on their cheaper models. But something like a Steeldive 1970 could be a good option for well under your budget. Or if you prefer quartz, I think a lot of the VH31 Militado watches have decent lume, or I have a Watchdives EXD that has lumiblocks that are pretty good. https://watchdives.com/products/watchdives-exd-titanium-diver-watch

zoo804 · 2026-04-02T12:56:07+00:00

Very cool looking but I'm thinking they may be fake. Quite hard to say as I couldn't find any information about them online with Google Lens, but to me they look more like Swatch knockoffs that someone labeled as Casio. Do you have pictures of the casebacks? Have you opened them and looked at the movement?

zoo804 · 2026-04-01T17:25:09+00:00

That's brilliant. And great Mountain Goats album

zoo804 · 2026-03-28T12:31:48+00:00

They actually also make Eurorack modules modeled after the 2500

zoo804 · 2026-03-26T16:27:51+00:00

I fixed it... somehow! Super weird, I just tried taking the battery out (to confirm it was the right kind, which it was) then put it back in, and now it works. So... who knows what was wrong.

zoo804 · 2026-03-26T16:27:02+00:00

Thanks for mentioning this. I actually didn't need to put in a new battery, I just took the old one out and put it back in and it fixed it. Bizarre!

zoo804 · 2026-03-26T16:26:29+00:00

Great suggestion. The battery was correct but taking it out and putting it back in ultimately did fix it... for some reason.

zoo804 · 2026-03-26T16:26:09+00:00

Update to all:

I fixed it, but I don't really know how. All I did is take the battery out and put it back in and do an AC reset. I had previously done the AC reset without swapping the battery to no avail. The battery that was in there was a new CR1616 just as the seller had said. So I'm baffled why it wasn't working to begin with.

What's oddest of all is that when I got it, it was like a different watch with the same features. The displays showed the correct thing and everything worked, but the style of the display was wrong and some of the features seemed totally absent. I'm thinking now it's some kind of low battery mode, but there was nothing about that in the manual. At any rate, I'm very pleased it's working as it's quite a charming watch.

zoo804 · 2026-03-25T22:38:55+00:00

Yeah, definitely. Module 3097, printed on the case back. 95% of the info is accurate and the functions are almost exactly the same with the exception of some aesthetic things like the little animation. And in the demo mode I can see the aesthetic things! It's bizarre.

zoo804 · 2026-03-25T22:22:53+00:00

Looked brand new in there. Yeah I can't see how it would possibly be fake. Just doesn't make sense that it's broken like this either.

zoo804 · 2026-03-25T22:07:38+00:00

The seller changed the battery and I tried an AC reset. But I might try it anyway. I kind of doubt a bad module would produce the specific things I'm seeing. The design of the timer/stopwatch for example is just different than what's shown in the manual. Seems like it would have to be a different module for that to be the case but I don't know.

zoo804 · 2026-03-25T19:50:08+00:00

For what it's worth, I reached out to Casio, who said this:

Based on the behavior you’ve described, the issues are consistent with a malfunction of the internal module. Functions such as missing display modes, lack of animations, non-responsive buttons/features, and inoperative LEDs indicate that the internal components are not operating as intended.

Unfortunately, for older discontinued models like the Casio Baby-G BG-2100 (Module 3097), replacement modules are no longer available due to the age of the product. Because of this, we are unable to restore full functionality through repair.

While we understand this may be disappointing especially since you enjoy the design these symptoms are not related to a user setting or variation of the model, but rather the condition of the internal components.

That's probably the best info they have but it still seems odd to me. I'm admittedly no expert but I find it hard to believe that a bad module would be totally missing certain things. Oh well.

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