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I made a smart watch from scratch

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Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#31

Post by parthdesai »

zius wrote: post #26
parthdesai wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's not a proper smartwatch, i find withings' (Nokia) hybrid smartwatch[0] to be really aesthetically pleasing. [0]: https://www.withings.com/ca/en/steel-hr

I am wearing one right now and it’s amazing - Especially it’s battery life (easily 1 month+). I get loads of compliments about this watch. The feature set is just enough for my needs, even though I considered getting an Apple Watch. The app is also more than decent.

Yup, same. I love that i have to charge it once every 3 weeks, tracks my bike rides while i commute to work, runs and workouts.

People usually don't believe that it's a smart watch and more surprised when i say that it's Nokia. I usually get the reaction "They are still relevant"

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#32

Post by foldor »

I'm still disappointed that new smart watch development has seemingly stalled in progress as of late. I was hoping that by this time we'd have watches that had 24 hour battery life, and an always on display that didn't need a flick of the wrist to activate. I hoped that wouldn't be asking for much, but I guess it's harder than I assumed.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#33

Post by chli »

SnowingXIV wrote: post #28

This is really cool and as a software guy the electrical engineering component is a huge black box to me. Circuit boards all connected up and getting a physical device to handle lithium ion batteries to properly charge and not blow up is beautiful. He does a great job with pictures, videos, and giving detail at both a high level and semi-in-depth explanations really made it shine. Is there anyone that does similar ty…

While it's definitely satisfying to interact with the physical world it also means that sometime you're debugging your software issues (which might be hardware ones), using output signals connected to an oscilloscope or a logic analyser (once you have exhausted the blinking LEDS options...) !

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#34

Post by coldtea »

segmondy wrote: post #24
asaddhamani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now they're very gimmicky, Apple watch has a much better app ecosystem

So according to your logic, lack of apps == gimmicky?

Yes, since you can tell the time with a regular, non smart, watch, too -- and some will also do notifications and other stuff.

In fact, even with the apps it's sorta gimmicky. Unless you use it for health purposes (e.g. heart monitoring), a smartwatch is not of the "my life change" category. At best the "I could do the same shit with my mobile phone, now I also have another device for them that I can do them in a worse screen/input method".

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#35

Post by oflannabhra »

epaga wrote: post #22
asaddhamani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now they're very gimmicky, Apple watch has a much better app ecosystem

I own an Apple Watch and have yet to find any apps I'd use for it - I currently use it entirely for telling the time and for notifications (and for the record am quite happy with it!). Any watch apps you can recommend?

Watch app's I frequently use:

- AutoSleep: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1164801111 or Sleep++ - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleep/id1038440371

- HeartWatch: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/heartwatch.-heart-activity/i... I much prefer this complication to Apple's. It displays the most recently recorded heart rate measurement

- Dark Sky: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dark-sky-hyperlocal-weather/... I also prefer this weather complication and watch app

- Overcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/overcast/id888422857 Great watch app for controlling podcast playback, and includes the option to go phone-free (with AirPods).

- WorkOutDoors: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/workoutdoors/id1241909999 If you go hiking outdoors, even infrequently, this app is great. It allows you to store trail maps on your watch, and optionally record workout of your hiking (with GPS data, etc).

- Baby Monitor - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/best-baby-monitor/id43279139... Drop an iPhone or iPad near your sleeping baby, check in on them from your watch (with notifications and optionally video). Not sure if you have kids, but this app is a bit of a marvel, especially when out and about or traveling.

- Fantastical - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fantastical-2-for-iphone/id7... I prefer this app to the built in Calendar.app, both for iPhone and Apple Watch. The complication is great, especially in the larger sizes.

Of Apple's built-in apps, I frequently use: Messages, Now Playing, Walkie Talkie, Workouts, Maps, Activity, Wallet, Phone, and Music.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#36

Post by tambourine_man »

My first reaction when I read the title was to complete the sentence in my mind: “…and it sucks”.

But I'm very glad I was wrong in my scepticism. This is freaking amazing on so many levels.

Edit: It’s been a while since I’ve been so excited about a project. Now I can’t work just thinking of taking a month off to play with this thing :)

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#37

Post by moftz »

naraic0o wrote: post #14
jordan_clark wrote: post #12

I googled and added it up (just out of curiosity) using the BOM, and total cost was ~$88USD (not counting shipping) Also, the OS is FreeRTOS (Open sourced by AWS/Amazon in '17) if anyone is interested

I'm pretty sure FreeRTOS has been open source since its inception in 2003, see posts going back to 2004 at [0]. Amazon forked it, merged their fork with the original project and took over it in 2017. You can read about it here [1]. [0] https://sourceforge.net/p/freertos/news/ [1] https://freertos.org/FAQ_Amazon.html EDIT: actually, I don't think they fully merged their fork as there's a variant called a:freeRTOS

FreeRTOS was previously GPLv2 with a couple of added clauses (anything linked with FreeRTOS is now GPL too and you can't publish performance metrics without approval). I'd imagine there were a lot of companies not wanting to GPL everything they made with FreeRTOS (i.e. Amazon) so with a new MIT license, anyone can do whatever they want.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#38

Post by TeMPOraL »

foldor wrote: post #32

I'm still disappointed that new smart watch development has seemingly stalled in progress as of late. I was hoping that by this time we'd have watches that had 24 hour battery life, and an always on display that didn't need a flick of the wrist to activate. I hoped that wouldn't be asking for much, but I guess it's harder than I assumed.

That thing unfortunately seems to have died with Pebble.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#39

Post by dspillett »

foldor wrote: post #32

I'm still disappointed that new smart watch development has seemingly stalled in progress as of late. I was hoping that by this time we'd have watches that had 24 hour battery life, and an always on display that didn't need a flick of the wrist to activate. I hoped that wouldn't be asking for much, but I guess it's harder than I assumed.

My watch can do 16+ hours with standard GPS (well, after a trail run that took 8 hours pretty much on the dot there was less than half the battery gone based on its readings, I'm extrapolating from there) and there are settings that in theory will extend that a fair bit. The official claim is 20 hours as I use it, 50 with GPS in its least accurate but most power saving configuration (fine for walking, perhaps not for tracking faster locomotion). The 20 on standard settings might be expecting too much, but on reduced accuracy your 24 hours is easily doable. It can go a couple of weeks as a normal watch with ~8 hours of GPS tracked runs, maybe four weeks if I didn't use GPS at all.

Its display is always on too, though the backlight isn't so if you need night-time tracking it won't meet your requirements but otherwise it will.

It isn't top-of-the-range either, or even a brand spanking new model at all (early 2016 release IIRC).

Things have stagnated a bit I'm sure, but mainly because we are hitting to plateaus: one caused by the limits of battery tech & what size/weight we are willing to carry, the other caused by there not being many features left to add, at least not that most users will be willing to pay extra for (or lose battery life in order to support).

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#40

Post by bluehatbrit »

zius wrote: post #26
parthdesai wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's not a proper smartwatch, i find withings' (Nokia) hybrid smartwatch[0] to be really aesthetically pleasing. [0]: https://www.withings.com/ca/en/steel-hr

I am wearing one right now and it’s amazing - Especially it’s battery life (easily 1 month+). I get loads of compliments about this watch. The feature set is just enough for my needs, even though I considered getting an Apple Watch. The app is also more than decent.

I had one of the original Withings watches (before Nokia bought them out) and it lasted about a year until it stopped reliably keeping time. It got to the point where I was doing hard resets and changing the battery every few weeks and I gave up in the end. I was really disappointed, it looks beautiful and worked so well for a year and then became totally useless. I spent a good £200 on it as well if I recall correctly.

Withings were empathetic but took a long time to respond to my tickets and eventually I just gave up. I've still got it because I can't bring myself to get rid of it. I loved that it looked like an analogue watch, got lots of compliments on it and everyone was surprised when they found out it counted steps (etc) as well.

Are the recent ones better? I'd consider getting the new one that looks like the old Withings Activite if it holds up to the claims on the box.

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