It used to be that building your own watch was either a big project or it meant that you didn’t really care about how something looked on your wrist. But now with modern parts and construction techniques, a good-looking smart watch isn’t out of reach of the home shop. But if you don’t want to totally do it yourself, you can turn to a kit and that’s what Stephen Cass did. Writing in IEEE Spectrum, he took a kit called a Watchy and put it through its paces for you.
With its gray-tinted screen, Squarofumi’s Watchy inevitably conjures echoes of the Pebble smartwatch, which made a huge splash in 2012 when it raised over US $10 million on Kickstarter. Pebble ultimately had its lunch eaten by Apple and others, but Watchy is different in a few key respects: It is not trying to be a mass-market device. It is unashamedly for those willing to tangle with code. It’s also inexpensive — just $50 versus the Pebble’s $150, let alone the Apple Watch’s $400 price tag.
See https://hackaday.com/2021/03/06/the-ieee-builds-a-smart-watch/
#technology #hardware #watchy #opensource #smartwatch
If this interests you, you should also be aware of the PineTime smartwatch dev kit: https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/
PineTime is almost the perfect smartwatch for me. It certainly is the one that comes closes to what I want: open hardware, supports open-source systems and knowing Pine64, they will most likely be selling spare parts too, which would be amazing.
The one thing I’m not a fan of is the form factor. Once development is further ahead, I hope they will have a model with a thinner screen, about the width of the strap, along the lines of this.
I plan on getting a PineTime too but it’s not quite what I really want hardware wise.
My ideal smartwatch would basically be a pebble with open hardware and software. I really prefer a non-backlit sunlight readable display and physical buttons.
I have the PineTime and it’s great, although at first open source software support was almost zero it has developed nicely in the past year. For ease of use the USB connector alone can make things so much easier though.
edit: To clarify: The PineTime does not have an USB connector. You have to use the SWD interface What I mean is that Watchy has an USB connector and that can make things easier.
Interesting thanks I will go look in more detail. I was aware of their phone and had only vaguely registered about the mention of a watch.
Looks like the Pine Watch is still in development and no shipping date or retail cost yet. So probably to be watched still until they announce something more definite.
The PineTime is available as dev.kit. https://pine64.com/product/pinetime-dev-kit/?v=0446c16e2e66
Means the open source support is not a polished end-user product. Be prepared to at least install the InfiniTime image yourself. This in it’s own is slightly more complex than copying an image somewhere and ready. I would say that in this moment the PineTime makes most sense if you are interested in exploring embedded technology.
Support with tools to develop is available now, but if you don’t want that then I would currently look elsewhere. That said, the PineTime is great to explore embedded programming and has a lively community.