Everything nRF52840

[NeverDie]

@Nca78 Good point! I guess one could take the shell and components and insert a custom pcb that uses nRF52840... But that would be extra work. A pity they didn't go that route in the first place.

It does look perhaps a bit big:

[alowhum]

From what I heard Pine was thinking about upgrading the watch to the NRF52840?

[NeverDie]

@alowhum said in Everything nRF52840:

From what I heard Pine was thinking about upgrading the watch to the NRF52840?

Maybe so. Their website does say: "Note: Final revision may use higher powered hardware including the nRF52840 and/or 16 MB of storage rather than 8 MB."

On the other hand, what's currently on sale in their store is an nRF52832: https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetime-dev-kit

[scalz]

@NeverDie said in Everything nRF52840:

@monte Is PineTime the best of the currently available nRF52 watch options? If so, since it's offered at $24.99, I think I may want to order one.

There is also the BangleJs/NodeWatch (52832) which is bulkier, more expensive too but with more features, than pinetime. Personally when bulky, I prefer a round shape..still it's quite big, and certainly needs care on UI (round shape vs square display).
This is a very nice project for BLE based smartwatch I think, they have done lot of work on software.

[monte]

@Nca78 said in Everything nRF52840:

Gone already ...

Strange. Yesterday this guy was mentioned in twitter by a Pine64 with regards to his firmware for PineTime. That's how i found that repo. Maybe he realized there was some problems with license?

I'm afraid the LCD refresh will be annoyingly slow

Yes full screen refresh seems to be more like a slideshow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x6B-L5KOtU
You probably would want to only partially refresh the display.
Now that's sold as a dev unit with unglued back cover so maybe they will initially upgrade to 52840, I don't think it will be that hard, if they haven't produce large batch of this revision. But for sure display with this resolution needs faster SPI.

@NeverDie said in Everything nRF52840:

Is PineTime the best of the currently available nRF52 watch options?

For this price It well may be. Anyway, for tinkering with nrf I guess it may be the best option.

@scalz didn't see this one before. Strange choice of square display in round body. There are plenty round displays available on a market.
I personally like more the approach Pine64 is taking - the lowest possible price and orientation on the opensource community to polish the product. With all the hype they are getting with PinePhone and PienBook Pro I believe they can make it all work.

[scalz]

@monte said in Everything nRF52840:

maybe they will initially upgrade to 52840, I don't think it will be that hard, if they haven't produce large batch of this revision.

well, imho switching to nrf52840 won't be a direct upgrade for them. 52840 has more pins, usb etc so not same pcb for sure, then software support (waiting after community for dev too ??). it will certainly be a new watch I think (if they are the designers of the pcb, no idea).
Still, it is cheap for playing with nrf52832 so that's a good point.

regarding the banglejs watch, yes it's too bad they chose a square display (this wastes some space).
I don't have one of these yet, but considering to play with banglejs ecosystem at some point (for watch I would prefer, but that's my preference, to use BLE for more interactions with phone etc).
In that case I will buy one at least (once it's back in stock) for supporting creator and his team.

I have my opinion on hype and long term reality. Both pinetime and banglejs/nodewatch are opensource. You could for example use banglejs framework on any nrf52832 device/watch, with some coding of course (regarding pins mapping, sensors and peripherals), but that didn't look that hard when I looked at the code.

I would prefer a better looking and more compact smartwatch, but for tinkering and playing they both seem fun.

[monte]

@scalz said in Everything nRF52840:

then software support

Is there any particular changes in software that need to be done to migrate from 52832 to 52840? Or do you mean support for additional peripherals?

[NeverDie]

It turns out that the very first solar powered watch, made by Seiko in 1969, had a side read display:

Though it gives up valuable display real estate, maybe that style would be easier to DIY in a form that wouldn't be too large to wear without embarrassment. I kinda like it myself: in theory I could check the time without having to turn my wrist.

[mfalkvidd]

@NeverDie here is an alternative that uses TEG for power https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/smartwatch-powered-by-you-matrix-powerwatch-2

[NeverDie]

This guy had an interesting idea that could probably be improved upon:

To make the watch thinner he spread the parts over different links in the wristband.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:718989

[NeverDie]

@mfalkvidd Dave Jones reviewed that very watch and was fairly negative about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4OeOQtiW0w

Even so, it looks as though they raised over two million dollars!

[mfalkvidd]

@NeverDie I watched a vlog (unfortunately in Swedish) about it about a week ago. The owner had used it for two months without charging it and was very enthusiastic about it. He said he used it for getting notifications, so he must be using the bluetooth feature.

Dave does have a point though that swapping the battery every 2-3 years isn't that cumbersome.

On the other hand, the charging capabilities of the Toyota Prius might have been considered a gimmick when it was introduced in 1997, and today we have electric cars with fairly long range. Technology gets better, and must start somewhere.

[NeverDie]

@mfalkvidd I'm impressed that they've pre-sold over ten thousand of them.

Changing a watch battery isn't particularly easy, especially on a waterproof watch, because AFAIK doing so generally ruins the waterproofing seals. Dave Jones may have underestimated the hassle factor.

Also, there's a watch that was made by the authors of "The art of electronics" that the authors say consumes just 1 microamp, and that was more than a decade ago.

So, bluetooth aside, a TEG should generate more than enough to run a watch like that. I don't doubt that at least some amount of bluetooth or ANT or some other kind of radio communications could be supported. Maybe not a lot, but at least something.

It's easy to forget that the original consumer LED watches would light up only when you pressed a button, and yet they sold anyway. If you did it that way, then it should be easy, and it would leave more of a budget for the radio communications.

[Nca78]

@NeverDie I think you are missing the point about the battery. Dave Jones was right as the energy produced by the watch over several years was similar to the one from a coin cell. And before those years pass we all know what happens to electronic devices: they get replaced. So the problem of battery change they pretended to fix was not a real "problem" as the product life is shorter than the battery life. It had very limited functionality and only manual synchronization with the smartphone, and a very basic app.

It's probably a similar thing with the new version, solar panel increases the available power but it's still in the uA range and functionalities are very limited, the "full color" lcd has no backlight, GPS use must be limited to a few mins per day, same for heart rate monitoring etc. So in the end a watch with similar functions and a li-ion battery would be smaller, half the price and only need a charge every 6 months. 2h of charge twice a year is far from a constraint... In addition the battery powered watch would allow you to run constant heart rate monitoring, have long GPS sessions like 2 hours of running etc etc if you accept to charge more often.

It's not as bad as before but it still feels like they made the watch because they needed a product to use the technology, and cut down the functionalities until power consumption was low enough to fit the technology. While it should be the opposite, technology should have been improved until it was able to power a smartwatch with "normal" functionalities.

I'm pretty sure many users of the new version will end up removing the watch from their wrist to expose it to the sun, and that it will last way longer than the charging time of a typical smartwatch :D

[NeverDie]

@Nca78 Thanks! You said it better than Dave Jones did. :) You've convinced me. :smile:

[xmonika]

I have read this thread, have bought a few E73-2G4M08S1C modules for experimenting, downloaded platformio and tried to flash it. I recognized I am not able to do it with my STM32 link V2 programmer in platformio. Could somebody summarize what are the current options to flash NRF52840? Is there a way how to use STM32 link V2 or we just need to IDE from Arduino to Platformio and invest into new programmer (DK/BMP)?

[NeverDie]

@xmonika I like the nRF52840 SDK. It includes an official j-link and can also be used to burn software to any attached nRF52840 by simply dropping the hex file onto the j-link virtual drive. Of all the options, I find it the easiest, but that's me. Other people use and seem to like the st-link or or black magic probe or dodgy copies of the j-link or clones of black magic probe. Different people seem to like/prefer different things. I read that Particle now has a programming tool as well for its Xenon device, which is basically their version of the nRF52840, and I think I may have read that it works with non-Particle nRF52840's as well.

There's also BLIP, which is new and sounds kinda interesting: https://www.crowdsupply.com/electronut-labs/blip

[Mishka]

@scalz said in Everything nRF52840:

@NeverDie I think you need to hold it, but it looks there is "coded" holes/slots for helping and correct positioning.

You may want to use TC clip for long-time debugging or odd boards like this:

[Mishka]

@alowhum said in Everything nRF52840:

To what extent Bluetooth has useful smart home profiles
To what extent Arduino devices could present themselves as smart home devices using those profiles.

Well, the BLE has a lot in common with REST. You have to have one or more central devices (clients) which will query peripherals with sensors and actuators (servers). Communication is P2P, but broadcasting is also supported to some extent (various beacons are well known examples).

If thinking about it like a RESTful sevice, there is a number of API which were standardized. They call it profile, like in, for example, the Heart Rate Profile. The standard just assures that any heart rate monitoring device will talk the same protocol as any other one - that's it. I don't think there is many standard profiles for smart home devices (if any). At the same time, there is the Project Connected Home IP.

Of course, there is nothing which may prevent somebody to implement his own interface. If it will be successful enough, it will be later possible to contact the SIG group and promote it to a standard.

Please also note, that for serious boradcasting there is the Mesh. In a nutshell it works similarly to Ethernet switches. Interesting side effect is that it's possible to build a Mesh network physically wide thus delivering packets over long distances. Of course, if you want to go global, the IPv6 will be the right choice to go. It will require a standalone BLE enable router though - it will connect the devices to the Internet.

To what extent older Bluetooth chips can work with newer device profiles (it would seem a software upgrade should be enough?)

As long as they support Bluetooth Low Energy - i.e. version 4.2 or above.

[Mishka]

@Nca78 said in Everything nRF52840:

A very interesting project, too bad they are using NRF52832 and not NRF52840, the max SPI speed on ...32 is too low (8MHz) and I'm afraid the LCD refresh will be annoyingly slow

It might be also interesting to employ the Sharp LS012B7DD06 which is a round 240x240 6-bit color memory display consuming 11 µW in static mode. It will be far away of the PineTime's $25, but with the CryptoCell, NFC and other stuff it might worth it.

Shall we create a repo? ;-)