wristwatches that invite development
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Not exactly a smart watch, but related to them. I've bought some round displays some time ago. This B&W: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000048389598.html
and this color ones: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1904222704.html
Would recommend black and white ones, me and olikraus made them work with u8g2 library. It has pretty low power consumption with backlight off.
The color ones are bigger, have higher resolution and color(!). They have only parallel interface, but that's even good, because this way they doesn't have a bottleneck in form of SPI. They work with MCUFRIEND_kbv library after some edits.
So my first thought when I made those displays work was to make opensource smart watch...and then I read about Pine Time :) -
After looking into it further, there may be no way to beat a reflective LCD for telling time, given the number of updates required:
So, I propose that an ideal smart watch would have reflective LCD for the frequently changing time component (minutes and seconds) and a Sharp memory display for everything else.So, probably the easiest thing would be to keep your regular watch and then have smart-watch functionality on your opposite wrist (or wherever is convenient) that does everything but constantly display the time. That simplifies everything.
If there were some kind of micro sized digital watch LCD module that you could simply "drop in" to fill the role of constant time display, then you could combine the two into one, and maybe that would be the ideal arrangement. Here I'm thinking about something like the tiny digital time display in combo digital/analog watches, but without the analog part.
Rdot looks interesting, and they claim to be much more energy efficient than epaper (see above), but I don't see where to buy any of their stuff except for their $200 demo kit that they sell from Sweden.
Many years ago I used to have electrochromic night lights and backpacks lit by electrochromic tape, but this looks to be different than that. The very thin film nature of it would lend itself well to a wristwatch, though, since there's opractically no depth to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhC3NsWenRwI just don't know where to buy digits made out of it. Anyone know of a source? Apparently they can be printed even by inkjet.
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After looking into it further, there may be no way to beat a reflective LCD for telling time, given the number of updates required:
So, I propose that an ideal smart watch would have reflective LCD for the frequently changing time component (minutes and seconds) and a Sharp memory display for everything else.So, probably the easiest thing would be to keep your regular watch and then have smart-watch functionality on your opposite wrist (or wherever is convenient) that does everything but constantly display the time. That simplifies everything.
If there were some kind of micro sized digital watch LCD module that you could simply "drop in" to fill the role of constant time display, then you could combine the two into one, and maybe that would be the ideal arrangement. Here I'm thinking about something like the tiny digital time display in combo digital/analog watches, but without the analog part.
Rdot looks interesting, and they claim to be much more energy efficient than epaper (see above), but I don't see where to buy any of their stuff except for their $200 demo kit that they sell from Sweden.
Many years ago I used to have electrochromic night lights and backpacks lit by electrochromic tape, but this looks to be different than that. The very thin film nature of it would lend itself well to a wristwatch, though, since there's opractically no depth to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhC3NsWenRwI just don't know where to buy digits made out of it. Anyone know of a source? Apparently they can be printed even by inkjet.
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@NeverDie the b&w screen I told about consumes 30uA without backlight. What are exact requirements for this type of watches?
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A possibility would be to get a waterproof shell, such as:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32983519082.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.144f3c00YcDlHq&mp=1
and then craft your own DIY PCB with battery and display to fit inside it. If you put your buttons in the same place as the corresponding apple watch that the case is meant for, then presumably it would work. And it would be waterproof! -
@NeverDie the b&w screen I told about consumes 30uA without backlight. What are exact requirements for this type of watches?
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A possibility would be to get a waterproof shell, such as:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32983519082.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.144f3c00YcDlHq&mp=1
and then craft your own DIY PCB with battery and display to fit inside it. If you put your buttons in the same place as the corresponding apple watch that the case is meant for, then presumably it would work. And it would be waterproof!@NeverDie said in wristwatches that invite development:
craft your own DIY PCB with battery and display to fit inside it. If you put your buttons in the same place as the corresponding apple watch that the case is meant for, then presumably it would work. And it would be waterproof!
So like this or this? Even has full open source Arduino firmware. Really an impressive project!
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@NeverDie said in wristwatches that invite development:
craft your own DIY PCB with battery and display to fit inside it. If you put your buttons in the same place as the corresponding apple watch that the case is meant for, then presumably it would work. And it would be waterproof!
So like this or this? Even has full open source Arduino firmware. Really an impressive project!
@Jon-Raymond said in wristwatches that invite development:
So like this or this? Even has full open source Arduino firmware. Really an impressive project!
BINGO! Yes, exactly like that. He did such a good job I'd say the hardware development is effectively done. Now just leverage his Sandeep compatible arduino code by adding the Sandeep compatible Mysensors Arduino core software to it, and we're all good to go!
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@Jon-Raymond said in wristwatches that invite development:
So like this or this? Even has full open source Arduino firmware. Really an impressive project!
BINGO! Yes, exactly like that. He did such a good job I'd say the hardware development is effectively done. Now just leverage his Sandeep compatible arduino code by adding the Sandeep compatible Mysensors Arduino core software to it, and we're all good to go!
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If you can fit your code modifications into an nRF52832 then you can buy an off the shelf watch. All the hard work is done. It's even on sale currently :)
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@Mishka sensor to sensor communication is pretty complicated thing by itself, you would need to implement pretty big piece of controller software in your watch. And even then it terms of UI I don't think it will be very useful if you already have any controlling app in your phone.
The idea to track presence of a watch to detect if user is at home is a nice use case though. -
@monte said in wristwatches that invite development:
@NeverDie but why do you need Mysensors in a wrist watch? :)
It's called an ARM processor because it only processes when it's on your arm. I thought everybody knew that already. That's why they capitalize ARM: for added emphasis, to keep people from forgetting. ;-)
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Another option of you want to want to go the ESP32 route.
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@monte said in wristwatches that invite development:
@NeverDie but why do you need Mysensors in a wrist watch? :)
It's called an ARM processor because it only processes when it's on your arm. I thought everybody knew that already. That's why they capitalize ARM: for added emphasis, to keep people from forgetting. ;-)
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If you can fit your code modifications into an nRF52832 then you can buy an off the shelf watch. All the hard work is done. It's even on sale currently :)
@Jon-Raymond said in wristwatches that invite development:
It's even on sale currently
Is that for sure the watch with the new nRF52840 design inside it, or is that some other Cortex M4 watch with only the case that gets used by the upgraded design?
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If it were me, I'd prefer a lower power display than the TFT, but since he's probably recycling the display from the original watch in order to keep a perfect fit, I can't really fault him for sticking with the original screen.
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@Jon-Raymond said in wristwatches that invite development:
It's even on sale currently
Is that for sure the watch with the new nRF52840 design inside it, or is that some other Cortex M4 watch with only the case that gets used by the upgraded design?
@NeverDie said in wristwatches that invite development:
Is that for sure the watch with the new nRF52840 design inside it, or is that some other Cortex M4 watch with only the case that gets used by the upgraded design?
The watch linked from Banggood has a nRF52832 in it which is re-programmable. If you want a nRF52840 then you would need to assemble a custom board in that case. The most recent project log claims a 2 week battery life with the stock reprogrammed nRF52832 and TFT screen. If true, I honestly I don't know if you can ask for much more. My Pebble Time had a 7-8 day battery life and that was mind blowing compared to the Apple watches available at the time.
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Look at this one: http://joesul.li/van/watch/
