Tech event: analogue watches with modern electronics
Elegant mechanical watches have been around since the 19th century. Today, smart watches characterise wrists and react to movement or communicate with the outside world. The combination of a mechanical watch with modern electronics remains a particular technical challenge.
Help! – but elegant please
Emergency call buttons for the wrist have been around since the 1980s. However, many senior citizens do not want to wear a conspicuous emergency call button. Pascal Stübi therefore developed an elegant mechanical watch that triggers an emergency call via the mobile phone network when the emergency call button, concealed as a crown, is pressed. The watch won the red dot design award shortly after its launch in 2013. At the time, it was not a given that the electronics of a mobile phone would fit into a watch – the first iPhone had only been launched a few years earlier.

Where is Mecca?
Another project launched by Pascal Stübi is the Mecca Collection watches from Aramedes: they show the direction of Mecca and when the sun rises and sets at any point on the globe. The watch is aimed at Islamic customers who like to wear a classic mechanical watch on their wrist, live traditional values but are inspired by modern technology.

Technical challenges
There is very little space in a wristwatch and energy is only available to a limited extent. The electronics must therefore be very compact, even if they have to perform functions such as GPS localisation, compass, Bluetooth or mobile communication and at the same time drive mechanical hands to indicate direction and time. And low power here really means that the electronics must consume very little power, otherwise the battery life will quickly come to an end.

Trends
While the most complex electronics can now be accommodated in tiny chips, the stepper motors required for the display still need quite a lot of space and energy. The latest trend is therefore silicon motors as micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS).
MEMS utilises technology from chip manufacturing to produce tiny motors and a wide variety of sensors. This will bring mechanics and electronics even closer together in the future.

Sprecher
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Pascal Stübi
Co-founder of several watch brands, including the emergency watch Limmex and the Mecca watch Aramedes -
David Gschwend
Department Head High Performance Systems at SCS
Program
Supercomputing Systems AG, Technopark Zurich, Tuesday, February 25, 2025- 17:00 Uhr
- Greeting Christof Sidler, Chairman of the Executive Board at SCS
- 17:10 Uhr
- Combining mechanical watches with intelligent electronics Pascal Stübi shares his experience from several watch start-ups that have integrated modern electronics into classic mechanical watches. And, of course, the direction in which things are heading today.
- 17:30 Uhr
- Low Power, Low Profile Embedded Electronics David Gschwend shows what it takes to make electronics so small and consume so little energy that they can be used in watches.
- 17:45 Uhr
- Q&A Ask our speakers!
- 18:00 Uhr
- Aperitif Exchange with other participants