Citizen Eco drive help!

joshgambit said:

How does the eco drive work? Is it kinetics or solar or something?

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Solar power with rechargeable battery.
I had a Kinetic before and thought it was good. But it's a sick joke compared to an Eco Drive.
The only advantage of the Kinetic was that it had a way to tell you how much it was charged. But the thing is you really needed to know, so you could shake it about to charge it.

rajagra said:

Ridiculously long lasting if they don't fail. At that rate they'd still have 50% capacity after 60 years.

I'm a bit surprised though. My old one (left) is specced to keep time for 5 years on a full charge. My new one only manages 7 months. Different power saving modes must be the reason.

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The one on the right has a lot more complications, which will shorten the battery life quite a bit I would imagine. I can't remember what the Skyhawk is rated at, but I wear it nearly every day, so it probably doesn't matter. The built in receiver probably drains it a little more than all the others.

The older one has 2 power saving modes: the second hand stops as soon as it is in the dark for a minute or so, and all the hands stop if it is left in a drawer. When exposed to light all the hands play catch up. Apparently there are multiple motors so various hands and the date can move independently, which makes it OK to stop the hands.
The newer one has no power saving modes (also the calendar is not perpetual, which may be connected.)

rajagra said:

The older one has 2 power saving modes: the second hand stops as soon as it is in the dark for a minute or so, and all the hands stop if it is left in a drawer. When exposed to light all the hands play catch up. Apparently there are multiple motors so various hands and the date can move independently, which makes it OK to stop the hands.
The newer one has no power saving modes (also the calendar is not perpetual, which may be connected.)

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Well is it at least a 100 year calendar? I thought the one on my Skyhawk was perpetual. I know I can't change it, that's why I had to send it in for a program fix. They even paid for shipping both ways.

OldSaw said:

Well is it at least a 100 year calendar?

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Much worse. I have to set the date every time a month has fewer than 31 days. Oh look, it's 1st December now. I better go sort it out.

I wasn't expecting that. I would have thought that in 2012 such a thing would be relegated to the history books. It must mean the mechanism is cheaper. Surely they wouldn't make them that way if it was just a firmware thing? The older one handles dates fine, even in leap years.

Solar.

Wearing it outside or under a light is enough for say an hour a day basically.....forever. Don't stick it in a drawer for months.

With mine, working a desk job at night, I made it a point to take mine off and stick it under my desk lamp (more comfortable typing with my desk setup) so it got a solid 8 hours of light, every night.....

Not that it needed it, but i was going to take it off anyways.

I have a Citzen Skyhawk as well. I just came back from a 7 month deployment and mine happened to spend the entire time on a dark shelf in my den. Of course, when I went to put it on, it was dead. I let it sit in the sun for about 4 days with no luck getting it running again until I happened to be fooling around with it and twisted the crown. Boom, right back to life. I believe it has some sort of power saving mode that it'll go into when it has an extremely low charge.