71–80 of 137 posts
I would buy it if it had wifi. A (decent to wear) watch with wifi would be awesome. Tons of ideas for apps I would build for myself Ofc, im excluding apple
Oddly, the article didn't mention it - but the watch does have wifi.
There are only a few features I care about in a smartwatch: 1. O2 monitoring. I have sleep apnea and live at high altitude, so this matters to me. 2. Motion sensor. Also mostly for tracking sleep. 3. Vibrator for notifications. 4. A screen backlight. 5. Battery life longer than a week. 6. Waterproof enough to survive a splash in the shower/rain. I consider GPS, cellular, AI, touchscreens, cloud-only sync and control…
The Sensor Watch circuit board [1] inside the case of a Casio F91-W / A158W / A159W satisfies 2, 4, 5, and 6. Accelerometer or thermometer available as daughterboard. Battery life measured in months, if not years. Although the simple LED backlight and the segmented LCD leaves a bit to be desired, and there is no wireless connectivity for notifications. Open source firmware. The Ollee watch circuit board [2] is simila…
By O2 monitoring, they mean "blood oxygen through skin via LEDs" - there's no impact on waterproofing from that (as the Apple Watch demonstrates.)
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This is mean-spirited and daft. This is a product aimed at a very specific hobbyist segment of the smart tinkerer, who will probably get more joy out of it than most buyers get out of their Apple Watch. Is that a smaller market? Yes. That doesn't make it a bad product.
I like a good smart watch and I appreciate open source, but an ESP32 isn't a great pick when low power consumption is important and the device is going to be communicating regularly. I'm surprised LILYGO went that direction in a watch form factor.
an esp32 on an 1100mah battery will last years on deep sleep, and about a day with wifi on and in high power modes. a pixel watch 4 says they last 30 hours , ambiguously. they use a battery less than half the size. in reality with constant use they'll drop dead in 6 hours. the thing is clunky and heavy , anyway -- so if it lasts as long as an off the shelf watch who cares? also, the primary reason : lilygo shoves ESP…
I like a good smart watch and I appreciate open source, but an ESP32 isn't a great pick when low power consumption is important and the device is going to be communicating regularly. I'm surprised LILYGO went that direction in a watch form factor.
An advantage of ESP32-S3 could be that it seems possible to run Linux on it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is mean-spirited and daft. This is a product aimed at a very specific hobbyist segment of the smart tinkerer, who will probably get more joy out of it than most buyers get out of their Apple Watch. Is that a smaller market? Yes. That doesn't make it a bad product.
I think it's a relevant critique for something that goes on your wrist, especially when products like PineTime exist in the same market segment with aesthetics much closer to an apple watch (an aesthetic I'm not fond of either, but hey, it seems to be popular)
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I like a good smart watch and I appreciate open source, but an ESP32 isn't a great pick when low power consumption is important and the device is going to be communicating regularly. I'm surprised LILYGO went that direction in a watch form factor.
an esp32 on an 1100mah battery will last years on deep sleep, and about a day with wifi on and in high power modes. a pixel watch 4 says they last 30 hours , ambiguously. they use a battery less than half the size. in reality with constant use they'll drop dead in 6 hours. the thing is clunky and heavy , anyway -- so if it lasts as long as an off the shelf watch who cares? also, the primary reason : lilygo shoves ESP…
I like a good smart watch and I appreciate open source, but an ESP32 isn't a great pick when low power consumption is important and the device is going to be communicating regularly. I'm surprised LILYGO went that direction in a watch form factor.