What are Solar and Kinetic Watches? Watch and Learn #23

hi this is mark from Long Island watch calm and welcome to another episode of watch and learn today I'm going to be tackling alternative quartz technologies as I like to dub them here's a Seiko solar and a Seiko kinetic dive watch now both of these watches are quartz driven watches they run on a quartz crystal and if you'll go back in the collection learn archives I believe it's number 4 or so I discuss the differences between an automatic watch you know self-winding and a quartz driven battery watch I will go over that really fast in the beginning of this in the video just kind of give a brief overview but you may want to look at that video just to kind of refresh yourself if you don't remember I so basically you know a quartz watch is driven by a battery of battery drives a quartz oscillator the oscillator vibrates a specific frequency and then you have to reach a certain number of vibrations the watch knows to index one second and then all the other hands follow suit because they are all geared together these technologies are you know the watch is driven the same by a quartz oscillator but how we power the quartz oscillator is different and how with our the hands is different the solar we're using some kind of a solar cell and in the kinetic we're using our body's energy to transform our kinetic energy into electrical energy that gets stored in the form of kind of chemical energy got in the battery so it's all pretty cool I the watch is that the watch that I'm not going to talk about is Grand Seiko because even though it has a quartz oscillator in it it is truly a mechanically driven watch I'm contemplating doing a video on that because I actually happen to have a grand say coasting around the office so I might do it just a you know a quick video on that one in the future but I don't want to muddy the water here because here I'm going to talk about your solar your Seiko solar's your sis Necco Drive it's all the same topic and also your psychokinetic like that kinetic dive watch I showed you really quick my own wrist check I am still wearing my orange monster and then for the solar video I'm going to wear my Seiko prospects world time solar watch so let's get into solar and kinetic watches so before we get into kinetic so our let's just do a quick review of what a quartz in automatic is just so we know where we're headed so I'm going to bring up my first my two favorite samples in explaining the stuff and I think these have been in other videos this is a swatch quartz watch which is totally see-through and is powered by a 1/2 volt battery which you can see down here and see the black dot over it that's for changing it quickly you don't open old case actually you can't just watch actually no longer functions so the way it works is this battery power is a quartz crystal or apply some voltage to a quartz crystal a little like a little quartz tuning fork when that quartz tuning fork reaches a certain number of vibrations thirty two thousand seven and sixty eight I believe per second a little bit spills over and it tells the watch to advance one second at that point the battery then powers a stepper motor the seconds hand well there's no seconds in this watch but in theory a second hand moves and then through that train the minute and our hands move because they're all geared together and then on a on a conventional automatic the battery is replaced by this spring down here this coiled up spring it winds with an auto winder this is all covered in one of the earlier watching learns I believe number four and then there's the escapement which is that wheel rotating back and forth to the top and you can see it again through this side that wheel oscillating and what that does is that helps the spring unleash its energy in a very consistent pattern of around eight times a second and that is what gives you measured timing so the more accurate that this can be made this balance going back and forth the more accurate the watch will be obviously because of the heavy mechanics involved automatics are inherently more inaccurate than their quartz counterparts so that's automatic quartz so how does let's say a quartz Solar differ not much actually I think it sounds a lot worse than is whether it's a Seiko solar or an eco a citizen eco or Eko Drive they all operate on the same principle the battery is now non user replaceable it still be replaced by a watchmaker but it's now a rechargeable battery and what we do is we collect the energy and we charge it so here is a Seiko solar chronograph it's a really nice watch got it's cool silver dial if you're keeping score this is a SSC 569 and it's powered by this a co V 175 movement and that is a solar chronograph movement so how does this watch work well depending on the configuration of the watch this watch has three sub dials i these three sub dials you can see they're black in color they're actually photovoltaic cells and they collect light whether it be artificial light like in my studio here whether it be sunlight outside whether it be office light they take that light convert it into electrical energy much like the solar panels on the roof of your house if you have them and then it charges a little battery and that battery is what keeps the watch running on a full charge the watch will run for about four to six months so it builds up a really decent amount of charge and it has a low power warning where is the second hand what you see right here on the sublet on the left will start to take every two seconds and that's your indication that hey this watch is dying it needs to get it needs to get to some light so how long does it take for the watch it is v 175 caliper to get up to a full charge well Seiko puts a little um a little table in the instruction manual I'll show that to you now they could make it easier to read but in a nutshell if you look at the top line in general office environment if you expose it for about two hours that will keep it going for an entire day but let's just go all the way down to the bottom because that's where the money is sunlight if it's decent weather out if you just put it out for two minutes that will give you a day you put it out for a half hour you're looking at steady operation which that means it's going to run for a couple days it won't give you any kind of low-power warning and then you can see it just five hours gives you a full charge so five hours in the Sun it's fully charged up so if you're living in a bomb shelter with no lights you got to keep your head up above ground you know every six months or so just for five hours now just to keep the watch fully charged so that actually is very efficient so you can see they also state the accuracy at around fifteen seconds a month which for a quartz watch is excellent it's excellent excellent timing there is built-in protection against overcharging the watch so you don't have to worry about you know exposure that bright light for prolonged periods and what it might do a little watch so different dial configurations obviously this has a three sub dial sometimes the dial is one complete color but it's always going to be it something that's going to be semi-transparent opaque whatever so that light can shine through power the cells and charge the battery so what does it look like on the back well let's take a look so here it is with the back removed and you will see it really just looks like a quartz operated watch we would never know that this is not a replaceable battery unless we read it and we see these V 175 we know it's the caliber of psychos so a movement and there's a little note on the battery rechargeable battery only theoretically you could swap that battery out for a one and a half volt cell a regular button cell that fits and the watch will work just fine but obviously it won't take a charge these are rechargeable batteries so the life of the watch itself is really limited to what the life of the battery is and obviously as with any rechargeable battery after a number of cycles of charging and discharging it will lose life but of course if it needs servicing it is supposed to go back to a Seiko service center not to get that battery replaced although I do think a watchmaker could get that part and replace it themselves so that was solar let's now discuss kinetic so this is a Seiko kinetic diver SKA 371 I believe yep there it is this is a beautiful 200-meter dive watch with a kinetic movement and you will notice right off the bat the seconds hand is ticking in two second increments that means it's low on charge kinetics you cannot hand whined I'm spinning the crown you can't hear those are my gloves that you hear nothing's happening this is a screw down crown as you would say the button at the two is used for power reserve checking but it's dead it's really it's keeping time even though it's moving every two seconds and I should have said that with the solar also even though the seconds hand is moving every two seconds it is still keeping courts accurate time but it is telling you hey I need to be warned or I'm going to stop and like the Soler's these build up a kinetic charge of about 4 to 6 months and you wind these by wearing them just like this automatic here this automatic happens to be hand wine double but just like a standard Seiko diver and skx double 7 or double 9 that you can cannot wind by hand this cannot be wound by hand it must be worn and then after you walk I think it's like they estimate like if you walk 800 meters or so the watch will run for like a day or two and then obviously after a couple of days of full activity you'll be up to full charge unlike the solar this does have a bike I said it does have a fuel meter you can press the button and you'll see the seconds hand move and it will show you from 0 to 30 that's your fuel gauge how much of a charge you've built up so how does this works so just like an automatic it does have a rotor 5 m62 is the reference number of the movement then you'll see there that all familiar circle and that is another rechargeable battery I believe they used to use capacitors and now they you know I do think that battery technology advanced has advanced enough that they can use rechargeable batteries so it's a little 1/2 volt rechargeable battery and there's your coil for powering motors and powering your quartz crystal so now the difference is when this spins can you hear that it's actually winding basically spinning a generator that generator is generating power and that power will go to charge the cell and then the cell runs the watch so we have to spin it enough so that we can stop that 2 second interval so what I'm going to do is when you give it some give it we'll shake and we'll see if we can get this to stop doing its two-second dance so after about a minute of shaking it in my hand that little rotor was spinning it was basically turning a generator which is charging the battery and now when it gets to 12 I'll press the button and we'll see from zero to 30 how much of a charge I've built up and there it goes so I built up the minimal amount of charge so it'll run for like a day or so and it'll stop so this will need obviously be worn the entire day and day on day-in day-out you'll build up slowly to six months of charge I should bring up my own personal prospects so ler as I mentioned before that the solar watch I showed you did not have a fuel gauge but some of them do and you can see the little red arrow is pointing at F and it actually under the hour hand goes all the way down to e I wear this watch you should always once a week I've never seen it deviate from F so I hope it's working I know it's working it's very efficient and obviously whenever I use it I'm in sunlight so it does take on a full charge every time so this has been marked from long island watch calm shown you some alternative quartz technologies the so the Seiko solar or a citizen Eco Drive all the same thing and nice Seiko kinetic both of these are what they call green energy sources you know we keeping batteries out of landfills you keep reusing the same battery and just from the users aspect it's nice because like an automatic runs for you know 40 hours these will run for six months and if 40 hours is enough for you and you need a longer time span you know maybe this is your cup of tea and obviously has the quartz accuracy to boot if you liked this video please like it if you have not subscribed to our channel please do so at this time if you have any questions or comments please put them down below and I'll be sure to address them as soon as I can thanks for watching bye bye

Channel: Long Island Watch

Views: 350,564

Keywords:

Id: Pl9H8PdXg7A

Length: 13min 1sec (781 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2017