I've ordered one of these. Were supposed to ship on may 30. Got no message from them but the site now says 27 of July. Wrote to them to ask what's up but haven't recieved a response, they did however post an update about that they've started shipping (it still says july 27 for me though).
It's probably a great clock and some people seem to have gotten it. But at this stage I'm unsure if I'm going to get it and haven't heard from them
I had the same ship date as you, and got mine yesterday. Lot of fun to play with. My case was a bit nasty, seemed the injection mold was just a touch off, but I printed my own case so not a big deal.
FWIW, I was also in this last batch and mine arrived a week or two back. It was exactly as described (I grabbed the aluminum case as well and it's awesome). Was shipped by Mouser for me (Canada).
It may be misplaced faith, but nothing about the process seemed fly-by-night or in any way indicative that you _wouldn't_ get the product, or it wouldn't be as described.
Chip shortage is an issue, but they're definitely coming out, can tell by the chatter on discord. If you want to ask them about it, come on it and tag @sqfmi .
I get that you're trying to help. But when crowdsupply has a specific page that says "contact the product creator" then I kind of expect to get a response using it. Having to tag a specific person on a discord server is in my opinion asking too much from a customer.
But everybody else here seems to have gotten theirs, even the person with the same delivery date as me. So I have a bit more faith in it arriving sooner rather than later
Of note, PineTime is water proof. Which at least for myself is a big deal.
The breakdown chart on the first link above comparing with other watches is interesting. Watchy seems like it can do a lot more. But I do wonder about battery life.
The Pinetime uses a LCD. A big draw for me for the Watchy was the e-ink screen. Specifically because, y'know, battery life.
I got mine a week or two back so I haven't actually had time to run the battery right down (spent too much time plugged into my computer programming and debugging), but the software I've put together so far the battery life seems great.
Over 24 hours, the voltage value I've been displaying (rounded to the nearest tenth of a volt) went from 4.2V to 4.1V. So even under the most unfavourable rounding that's 0.1V over 24h, or still about 95% battery charge. That would be almost 20 days doing some basic processing, screen updating, etc every minute.
I'd agree about the waterproofing, however. Wearing it for a few days and knowing not only that it's not waterproof but exactly how _un_waterproof it is, it's made me a lot more conscientious about handwashing and day-to-day activities.
>Over 24 hours, the voltage value I've been displaying (rounded to the nearest tenth of a volt) went from 4.2V to 4.1V. So even under the most unfavourable rounding that's 0.1V over 24h, or still about 95% battery charge. That would be almost 20 days doing some basic processing, screen updating, etc every minute.
How're you calculating that? Voltage of (what I assume is) a lithium ion cell is a pretty poor way to measure state of charge - the discharge curve maintains voltage pretty well until 80% capacity before falling off precipitously.
You certainly aren't going to get any work out of the cell below 3V or so without risking permanent damage.
Just googled "lithium polymer discharge curve" and averaged between a few results. Generally saw an inverted S shape where the first few tenths of a volt should be shed pretty quickly before stabilizing for a while, then dropping precipitously as it neared dead (~3V).
I don't know who is wearing a bare PCB on their wrist. Especially since the battery (lipo pack) is stuck on the back, so you've got a bare lipo battery sitting against your skin all day.
I wonder what the battery life. ESP32 tend to be very power hungry with WiFi, not sure about pure BLE operation. This is why simple long-lasting (eg Withings, misfit) watches use nrf52 chips.
I suppose you could put it into light sleep mode (0.8mA) or deep sleep mode (<0.15mA) most of the time, and only switch on the Wi-Fi/BLE occasionally to sync data or when the user wants to interact with it. You could also use the hibernation mode (0.005mA) at night, and set up an RTC timer to wake it up in the morning.
I do like the idea of a fully open source watch though, I used to do quite a bit of Android Wear development in its early days [0] [1] [2] but got frustrated with Google breaking my apps every 6 months with new APIs, breaking my Android Studio projects with every new version of Android Studio, and removing them from the Play Store because of new rules. I much prefer hardware and software that just continues to work if you do exactly nothing, which is kind of how all my other appliances work. It's not like my air fryer or rice cooker just stop working if I don't update their software.
Also I absolutely hated Java and would much rather develop in C++, (Micro)Python, or even C, all of which are possible with the ESP32.
Yeah but you still have to package up your app inside a piece of Java shit, have 70+ gradle files that break at every new release, sign your package, zipalign (what the actual fuck, the OS should do that) your package, ...
I mentioned C/C++/Python because the actual app would be much simpler and less bloated, not because of writing inner functions in those languages.
“ The battery life SQFMI estimates depends on your use case — it says if you’re just keeping time you should get five to seven days, but if you’re fetching data frequently you may only see two to three. Its open-source nature, however, means that you could always fit a larger battery into it, or try and make some software optimizations if there are features you’re willing to cut.”
I've gotten 2 days of constant use, and it's hardly dropped voltage at all, will likely last 6. The eink screen uses no electricity between screen updates, and the stock firmware turns all peripherals off when not in use.
I've been entertaining myself basically learning some embedded programming on the watchy.
I've got mine only waking up once a minute using the external RTC as a trigger. In between I put it in hibernation (~2.5uA to the processor). So every minute it's waking up for about a second to do some updates, redraw the screen, and shut itself back down. (It takes quite a while to refresh the screen.)
I haven't had it unplugged more than 24 hours at a time (keep plugging it back in to do some more programming and debugging), but so far the biggest drop I've seen was the battery voltage (rounded to the nearest tenth of a volt) going 4.2 -> 4.1. Even assuming worst case rounding here, that's something like 100% -> 95% battery capacity, so I'm looking at more like 20 days just doing basic time keeping so far.
Quite disappointing. They're comparing with Pebble OG, but I owned both a Pebble OG and a Pebble 2. The battery life of the former went away with the OS update to the OS version on v2, but the 2 lasted easily for a week, and it looked better IMO. The HR is like RNG, and the case eventually deteriorated (and I sadly failed to replace it with), and of course the support did not last long.
I now use a Fossil HR Collider. It lasts for 2 weeks probably thanks to e-ink. The HR also isn't useful, but it looks good for a round watch (except for the stage light) which you can make look like a normal smartwatch, and it can control e.g. Spotify and weather. I don't need much more on a smartwatch. The only thing I miss is the ability to put Bluetooth off.
Fossil HR Collider is 4x the cost at least and is a commodity fashion accessory, this is a hacker toy. One should adjust their expectations accordingly ... I agree they should maybe compare to a defcon badge.
The list price was $200 at launch but they’ve run sales quite a bit. I got one for $120 (and returned it 2 weeks later because the buttons were hard to trigger and the UI wasn’t intuitive for me).
All I want is a tiny display, which does nothing but copies bitmap from the phone once a minute. So there is a bluetooth receiver and nothing else, assuming the display module works serially. And ok, it is little annoying, if the clock shows wrong, so you need a timer, which blanks the display every 61 seconds. This should work years without charging, like Sanyo from 1985.
I hereby modify my design and drop the bluetooth module. The communication need not be two-way. I suggest ultrasonics, assuming the phone's speaker is able. Now all energy is consumed in the phone. There will be only the E-paper-module and microphone and some filtering in the watch. Also the refreshing rate can now be faster. If the clock shows only the current date, the battery will last decades. The blanking timer is initiated by the presence of the said sonic carrier, or rather by the lack of it.
I really wish this had a few more sensors, particularly a barometer, heart rate sensor, and touch screen, these would make it much more useful.
I realize it's FOSS hardware but I'm more of a software person and would probably take me too long to figure out how to hack all those things in and get it manufactured ...
Heh, I actually prefer the smartwatches without touchscreen. Physical buttons keep the screen clean. You just need enough of them. I believe the sweet spot is 4. Pebble did it right.
Strongly disagree there - I put up with my pebbles’ poor UI and controls until I got my first Apple Watch. It’s 10x more useful, and way more user friendly.
> It’s 10x more useful, and way more user friendly.
It just isn't in my use case. For me, the only use of a watch is on the go. When I'm not on the go, I already have a computer w/me which is more powerful than any smartwatch. Therefore, if I am on the move, I want to blindly use my watch, just like I type this message blind on a keyboard. Physical buttons aid with that. If I am catching a bus, I want to be able to control Spotify. If I am running, I want to be able to control Spotify. Touchscreens are far more cumbersome in that regard.
Apple Watch, yes very powerful computer, beautiful screen, and very expensive (more so if you want the medical features). You have to give it juice every night, and it requires either a 4G connection or you're having to pay for another plan or it uses Bluetooth w/your smartphone. These devices don't have enough storage for my liking. I mean, I am sure I could add and use a microSD with 256 GB or more to it, if it had that option. Instead we gotta rely on very little storage, Bluetooth with smartphone, or another SIM + data plan. All in all a completely different purpose and price class.
Fair, I'm a big fan of the Pebble, but I mostly put up with the UI due to the always on screen and battery life. Its not really great from a UX perspective in general.
Agreed, as an object for geeks sensor quantity is critical. Barometers in waterproof devices are tricky, and a heart rate sensor is still an exotic manufacturing challenge, not an off the shelf product. And I don't personally need a touchscreen, I think app development for the form factor is far easier without the temptation of impossible touch targets and cryptic gestures. But the critical sensor to me is GPS, without that it and the PineTime are useless to me.
The only sensor on this is the Bosch BMA423 3-axis accelerometer. Unfortunately, that has no gyro or magnetometer, which makes it a bit of an odd choice. It's supply constrained, and has an EOL date of Sept 2021 to boot. The other sensor is a DS3231MZ low-power highly-integrated real-time clock. It's also out of stock, and has a 42 week manufacturer lead time.
I've got some experience developing embedded hardware, but the watch form factor is really hard to hack after the fact. It's not particularly friendly to expansion busses and add-on cards...
How accurately do you care about geolocating yourself?
If you only care about <50m accuracy for the watch to be able to provide you location-based behaviors, I've had very good results doing Wi-Fi scans with ESP32 devices (in particular, a FeatherS2) and feeding the results into the Google and Mozilla geolocation APIs. More than enough to pull up the local weather or public transit info for the bus stop in front of you. It could send data requests through your phone when you don't have Wi-Fi.
Obviously it won't have the accuracy and update rate that a GPS would, but on the upside, it does work indoors.
I only care about outdoor high-accuracy positioning.
I love my Garmin, but the aggressive price segmentation (even though I bought the device at the top of the list) is vexing and I would love to help build an open-source alternative.
On the note of pushing data through a phone, I suppose I could stick a uBlox, ESP32, and tiny battery in a case on my belt, and push GPS data to the watch that way, but that's basically the same as the watch minus the display.
It seems the easiest and coolest way to make a watertight case would be to plug the usb-port with hot-glue and then pot the assembled board in resin (epoxy/polyurethane). Either pigmented or clear.
> The "Respects Your Freedom" certification program encourages the creation and sale of hardware that will do as much as possible to respect your freedom and your privacy, and will ensure that you have control over your device.
No, not necessarily, but it would mean that you would be able to (either by yourself, or by hiring someone to do it) alter the code and/or hardware in order to allow you to do that.
Hard pass as Amazfit Bip owner, can this last at least 5 weeks with perfect outdoor sunlight visibility? After my original Bip broke, just bought used only for like 20 dollars, couldn't be happier. Tried the AMOLED watches, but could not get over battery life lasting 5 days instead 5 weeks and display requiring highest brightness to be visible outdoors compared to zero backlight on Bip.
I was also amazed with 30€ Amazfit Bip, mostly because you can make your own watchface. I did not know that. Being old and near-sighted, I needed bigger numbers and also analog watch. https://github.com/timonoko/Amazfit
Honestly, the state of the art here seems to be somewhere between some kind of advanced AMOLED (for shorter battery life but more brightness/color) and transreflective memory-in-pixel LCD (for longer battery life).
I'm genuinely unsure e-ink offers any real benefits at this point.
> With only time keeping, Watchy should have a battery life of 5-7 days, while with fetching data over WiFi, it should last between 2-3 days. These numbers can be extended through futher optimizations (e.g. sleep during off hours, waking up only on motion/tilt, etc.).
It's probably a great clock and some people seem to have gotten it. But at this stage I'm unsure if I'm going to get it and haven't heard from them