Whenever someone shows a labor-of-love working demo of a wearable, SOC, OS, shell, circuit, power and all, I'm reminded that there are so many ways to make to make this happen nowadays, there's no shortage of ways to reproduce these ideas at moderate scale and budget, and yet for some reason there are no fashion watches or flip-phones today.
Sensorwatch [1] is the closest I could think of.
I would _really_ love to see a fashion watch brand do BLE sync on a device and display something low attention demand on the 7-segment or matrix display. Casio and their likes managed to cram impressive functionality into featurewatches (is that a term?) in the 80s, and those things were gorgeous looking, and demanding very little unwarranted attention.
we_have_to_go_back.gif
edit: new RTOS watch is incredible, this rant is orthogonal.
Sensorwatch looks nice. However I just recently learned that the Casio F-91W (also worn by US president Obama) has become known as the “Terrorist Watch" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Usage_in_terrorism). And allegedly wearing it would put you under scrutiny of US immigration / homeland security agencies. Replacing the board would not exactly help in that situation I guess :) Then again you could probably travel the rest of the world with it without problems.
> According to secret documents [...] released by The Guardian, "the Casio F-91W digital watch was declared to be 'the sign of al-Qaeda' and a contributing factor to continued detention of prisoners by the analysts stationed at Guantanamo Bay
Where does homeland security find these security analysts? UFO conspiracy conventions? Guilde of unemployed fortune tellers?
"The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004) is a non-fiction work by Jon Ronson concerning the U.S. Army's exploration of New Age concepts and the potential military applications of the paranormal. The title refers to attempts to kill goats by staring at them and stopping their hearts"
Or to answer your sarcastic question with a horrifying answer: yes, essentially.
Probably the CIA. Remember when they kidnapped and then tortured a bunch of people for bogus reasons (he has the same name/watch as a terrorist, waterboarding it is!)? And the people involved not only didn't go to jail, but got promotions (is the head of the CIA still the one that had a major part in the torture program and destroyed evidence about it?).
You make it sound like a negative, it's cool on my book to wear a watch that would make you theoretically a target for a stupid agent. Especially since there's no obligation for you to wear it for traveling to US.
You realise you are literally terrorized by US propaganda and that there is exactly zero chance you will get hit by a drone because you wear an F91 (even if you're from afghanistan, have a big beard and pray in the mosque everyday)
There seems to be at least some fashion watches that have smart features, but I think they are limited by the fact that watch people really like analogness.
Flip phones very much still exist and are made all the time, although the version I would consider (A Bluetooth headset with the features of a flip phone, using a smartphone as a backend, so you can leave it in your backpack and not be tempted to check it) doesn't seem to be a big thing.
Hi, creator here did not know it was shared on hacker news until someone sent me an email.
Battery life is one day with screen always on and about two without. I designed it so that it should have a week battery life with screen not always on, but I have some hw bug so there are some current leak causing only two days life. So I use it every day.
I have not debugged it much, suspect hw as I tried a few sw things without success. But could be sw fix. Anyway I'll make a new revision, this current one is a bit limiting due to the MCU and one minor hw bug that needs manual rework of the pcbs.
I'd probably buy one just because of how polished it is while still being DIY and open source. I don't really have the resources to make one myself at the moment. Would love to tinker with one of these, especially the software side. Great project!
My BangleJS has GPS but it is really tricky to get it synchronized with the satellites. I go for a run and then check the data and it's missing half of it because it couldn't pull the updates.
AsteroidOS is cool but none of the watches really work well.
I have a recent Samsung watch and the battery life is poor enough that I'm always forgetting to charge it.
Sorry for the buts. This is a really cool project, I just am surprised there isn't a perfect smart watch that's open source. Or even a closed source watch that is hackable.
Creator here, no GPS because I always have my phone on my, hence no GPS. I designed it for myself. Also this was my first pcb, so did not want to complicate it more than necessary :)
Thanks for the response. I don't mean to diminish what you've made, it looks really, really cool.
Thank you for being so detailed in what you have built. It's terrific you are so open.
I'm not in a position where I can understand whether adding GPS is feasible. I'm saddened that the BangleJS can't reliably pull GPS signals so I'm assuming it is not just adding the hardware.
I just really want a watch with several days battery life and a GPS so I can go for a run without my phone. The BangleJS has amazing battery life, but the GPS is not optimal. It's a software problem as far as I can tell, so maybe easier to resolve.
Thanks again for posting and for responding to my comments.
wow! first PCB of the watch or first PCB you designed for anything? Either way very impressive. I've been curious to get into PCB design but not sure what id make with that skill yet. Ordering custom boards seems to be quite accessible these days. How did you learn to do all this?
I've used those but the instructions aren't clear to me and I'm not always sure that it is synchronized. Hopefully it is just a software issue but it is evident that getting GPS data is not just a matter of connecting to a satellite, there is some preparation the device has to do before it is in a position to get the connection, and that can easily fail.
AGPS data just enables the Watch to get a position in a few seconds. It can get the information (almanac) from the satellites but this takes several minutes of constant direct view to clear sky. Which of the agps apps did you try? https://banglejs.com/apps/?q=agps
So far I only have used the Browser based "Assisted GPS Updater (AGPS)" one and so far have no issues.
This is great to hear. So, does that one indicate you need to sync the AGPS data from the app on the phone, and then send that down to the watch? I'm thinking it might be that I relied on the watch doing it without interacting with the phone. There are some issues in the BangleJS forums about freezing when the app is connected to the watch, so I was often not connecting the phone to the watch to avoid those freezes.
Does anyone have a rough idea how much something like this would run in quantity=1? I was surprised there wasn't a BOM, which I thought was standard for open source hardware like that
I would expect the display (at $5 +s/h) would dominate the cost, but the processor and ram could, too, if it's like building a PC
Prices from octopart and some quick guessing, shipping not included. PCB would be the first to come down in price with even a small quantity, $25 is probably an underestimation with qty=1. Passives and friends can also go up quickly depending on design. There is also an SMT antenna present that could cost a few bucks.
JLCPCB should still have special offers for 4-layer PCBs up to 50mm tall and wide. It might be that you can get five boards made for less than 10€/$. I’ll check later.
Edit: yes, $2 for five pieces of 6-layer, 1.2mm thickness PCBs with ENIG surface finish. Unbelievable, isn’t it? 4-layer, 0.8mm, are possible for a few dollars more if thickness matters a lot (the finish will only be lead-free HASL, though).
While I'd generally agree, the README even says that the casing and dock are both in the middle of being redesigned.
No point paying out for CNC metal when you can churn out a $1 print every day or two and make changes each step of the way. Maybe when the design is stable it'd be worth it but definitely not right now.
It is completely custom code for a DIY project. Adding more features is usually a priority over making the UI smoother - especially if you are literally the only one using it.
Well, the UI is apparently based on this project https://lvgl.io/ which seems like its intended for this sort of purpose, so I think the question of sluggishness is valid.
I would _really_ love to see a fashion watch brand do BLE sync on a device and display something low attention demand on the 7-segment or matrix display. Casio and their likes managed to cram impressive functionality into featurewatches (is that a term?) in the 80s, and those things were gorgeous looking, and demanding very little unwarranted attention.
we_have_to_go_back.gif
edit: new RTOS watch is incredible, this rant is orthogonal.
[1] https://www.sensorwatch.net