This DIY enthusiast turned his old Wear OS smartwatch into a gear knob with a display

If there’s one thing car lovers and DIY enthusiasts agree upon, it’s that there’s no better feeling than to actually get under the hood (no pun intended), make tweaks, and figure things out. And when you bring those two things together, you get something like this, an utterly wild and impressive project that merges cars with DIY chops, a love of 3D printing, and repurposing old gear.

Built by a DIY enthusiast, Desmontei, the project merges the display and motherboard of a TicWatch Pro 3 with a 3D-printed gear knob to create something absolutely wild (via Tom’s Hardware).

It’s a fully functioning gear display that sits right on your gear lever. He vibe-coded a Wear OS watch app to run the algorithm and perform all calculations, and so the watch displays gear information based on accelerometer and gyroscope readings. This way, the watch can report its angle and display the gear number accordingly.

Desmontei does point out in the discussions that it would often show incorrect gear data when driving on hills. However, he was able to fine-tune the algorithm to fix the issue.

The tinkerer already has a bunch of ideas for a second version of the device. Based on suggestions from people replying to his Reddit post, he plans to use a stronger printing material, such as SLS, for the next version. He is also considering adding a second sensor to the car to obtain reference data and use it to calculate the correct angle, even while driving on an incline.

Before you think the exact same thing we all thought — who even looks at their gear lever while driving — the device also doubles up as a media controller. You can use swipe gestures to change or pause tracks in Spotify.

Ultimately, this might just be a cool gimmick for a car, but it does showcase what can be done with an old smartwatch and 3D printing. Vibe coding makes it easier to build apps for anything you want to do, and with 3D printing, you can put your old smartwatch to use in unique (and maybe a little weird) places.