How do you set this watch?

September 18, 2007 8:33 PM

Help my friend set her new digital watch! The packaging has no instructions, and the buttons are not labeled.

It's an American Outdoor Sport digital watch with a rectangular face. It has three small buttons on the sides: one on the left, and two on the right. She's tried different combinations of pressing these buttons, but none of them worked (and the google does nothing), so we're hoping someone here has the same kind of watch and knows how to set it.

posted by Many bubbles to grab bag (9 comments total)

Oh--and all the buttons are the same, as well.
posted by Many bubbles at 8:40 PM on September 18, 2007

Hmmm... I had a watch with three buttons in the described configuration and where the fourth button would be was a suspicious spot that turned out to be a fourth button in fact. To press it required a paper-clip or pen. You might want to look for that.
posted by TeatimeGrommit at 8:54 PM on September 18, 2007

Total guess: Hold down the one on the left. See if the face flashes. One button on the right will be hours, one will be minutes.

Does holding down any of them lead to the numbers flashing?

Ooh, look for a paper clip button. Good idea.
posted by ALongDecember at 8:55 PM on September 18, 2007

What happens when you press each of the buttons? It seems likely that pressing one button will cycle through various modes, the last one being the "time/date set" mode. Is that what happens?
posted by tepidmonkey at 10:57 PM on September 18, 2007

I don't have this watch, but most digital watches work in similar ways. Each button has two affordances: press, or press and hold. For each button, normal pressing should either do nothing, or toggle between different displays (time/alarm/etc).

By trial and error, you need to press and hold one of the buttons until the face blinks. That means the interface is in "set" mode. Once you're in set mode, then there are two options: increment the element that's blinking (hours, minutes, etc), or move the focus to the next element. These two actions are probably handled by two different buttons. The button you initially held probably does the focus shifting while another button probably does the incrementing.

"Set" mode is like a tunnel. Once you're in, just keep moving focus from element to element until you run out of things to change, at which point you exit the tunnel and return to normal watch mode.
posted by Jeff Howard at 12:00 AM on September 19, 2007

Take the battery out, and put it back in at midnight.
That's how I set my alarm clock.
posted by Crusty at 2:55 AM on September 19, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

The only thing I can think to add is that some watches require you to hold two buttons to bring up the set interface. Try holding the left button and the corresponding right button. So if the left button is at the bottom, hold the bottom right one as well.
posted by advicepig at 9:47 AM on September 19, 2007

Hmmm... I had a watch with three buttons in the described configuration and where the fourth button would be was a suspicious spot that turned out to be a fourth button in fact. To press it required a paper-clip or pen. You might want to look for that.

According to her, all three are of that sort. Yeah.

What happens when you press each of the buttons? It seems likely that pressing one button will cycle through various modes, the last one being the "time/date set" mode. Is that what happens?

Let's see... pushing the left one switches it (seemingly randomly) between alarm-set mode, normal mode (just showing the time), and stopwatch mode (which also flashes the days of the week in the upper left corner). Pushing and holding it instead of just pushing it seems to make no difference, and it switches when the button is pushed, not when it's released.

In normal mode: The upper right button makes it display the date. The lower right makes it display the time the alarm is set for.

In alarm-set mode: The upper right button changes the hour on the alarm, and the lower right one switches it between changing the hour and changing the minutes. (So, if the upper right button is pressed after this, it will change the minutes instead of the hours.)

In stopwatch mode: The upper right button starts and stops the stopwatch, and the lower right one resets the timer.

(I'll see about holding the two right buttons when she gets back, but I'm not sure about holding/pushing two buttons at once, since they're the paper clip type.)

...Going back through this, I don't really see a way to turn the alarm off, either.
posted by Many bubbles at 5:14 PM on September 19, 2007

(If we can't find the right button combo, she's just going to do the battery thing. For all I know there's a fourth button under the battery lid, anyway.)
posted by Many bubbles at 5:17 PM on September 19, 2007