PineTime smartwatch - a Linux Phone companion

[Jeeves]

I would love a standard USB charger - connection,
I do not care if it is USB-C or mini-USB but STANDARD and OPEN, please.

Also, that one of the default spheres would be a 24h - instead of 12 - one, with a "PINEtime" I suggest 00.00 % of the GMT day inspired in the "failed" swatch internet time (000.00 GMT+1) circle too.

Seconded on the charger!  I was rather saddened to see a non-standard charger....especially a "proprietary" one.  I also would like a 24h option.

I am concerned by the display.  240px at 1.3" is around 185 dpi, which is significantly less than the 294 dpi of my 2015-era low-end phone.  I sometimes notice pixels on that.  Although I've never owned or used a smartwatch, I imagine the viewing distance is more or less comparable to that of a phone.  Therefore, I am concerned that pixels would be grossly evident in certain situations.  Perhaps a slightly higher dpi screen, at the expense of increased cost?

You may be a little disappointing with what they're selling if those are your expectations.
The watch is driven by a small microcontroller running at 64Mhz, and the display is connected to it over a very slow serial connection. Personally, I think 256x256 is a pretty ambitious resolution for this device. For comparison, the Pebble watch released in 2015 had a 168x144 display at a similar DPI, and that had a more impressive microcontroller powering it, running at 100Mhz with double the ROM size and 8x the RAM.

If you're comparing it to a 2015 smartphone you're going to be disappointed. The better comparison would be a 2004 smartphone. Even anti-aliased text might be a bit of a stretch for the ROM budget.

[pljanson]

I don't know if it will be possible to install (m)any 3rd party apps on the watch, but given the gyro and HRM sensors I am looking forward to a privacy respecting fitness tracker that is not needing a internet connection before you can see you own data in a BT connected app (like fitbit). And maybe a open standard / protocol for storing your data in a privacy respecting way.
It will be a cool addition to the pinephone!

[Jim cooper]

I would like to be included in the development release of the watch.  I am a professional developer and I have done embedded development for a long time.  

Jim Cooper

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-cooper-241b78a/

[Luke]

I would like to be included in the development release of the watch.  I am a professional developer and I have done embedded development for a long time.  

Jim Cooper

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-cooper-241b78a/

please email info@pine64.org

[multi.flexi]

Would not OLED display be better? It can use less power when the majority of the display is black, because it does not have a backlight, has better contrast.

[letarg]

Some people (I too) can carry wartch on hand, is possible like this?
but with screen.


meybe for someone this will be usefull 
(One Time Password, crypto for any usb pendrive if watch will habe more than one usb, etc.

[Kochise]

Closest I can find is big android smart watch : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32918220938.html

[DrYak]

Thinking about two medical/health applications of such cheap device:

- If this device ends-up being able to do NFC, the Glimp glucose monitoring app community is going to go completely banana over it.
Some glucose monitors (like Freestyle Libre by Abott) only talk over NFC. Currently not all phone have access to NFC for their apps and extremely few smartwatch do.
An opensource smartwatch that does NFC for in the couple dozen-bucks range would be a miracle for these communities:
The PineTime smartwatch could be used to both display current graph/readings on the screen, and relay the data over bluetooth to some larger device (usually done with a smartphone or raspberry pi), all this for less than 50$.

Currently, this needs to be done either with expensive NFC-to-Bluetooth relays that don't even have a screen, or by frankensteining a Sony Smartwatch with a special firmware patch (has all the features, including screen... but isn't in production any more and is difficult to fetch on ebay).
An NFC-enabled PineTime would have as much feature as both (screen, plus nfc-to-bluetooth) while costing a faction of either.

Well of course, that's as long as NFC functionality can be crammed into PineTime without going over-board with final price...

- Does somebody know if the currently announced accelerometer (Bosh BMA421) can be used as a hard fall detector ? That another useful health application of the device.
(In case of fall, if the hearth monitor is still reading pulse (i.e.: still attached to hand) but nobody press "cancel" on the screen (i.e.: owner incapacitated or wounded) -> send alert over Bluetooth, asking the phone to send emergency SMS or other request for help)

(Basically, the kind of function offered by Apple Watch, Samsung Active and countless of over-expensive elderly-targeted gadget, but at a much lower price point. Though no onboard 3G and thus *needs* to rely on smartphone over bluetooth connection for the actual alerting).

----

Also, as mentioned by somebody in the comments sections of the wiki: too bad it doesn't use some e-Ink or mirasol technology for even lower-power screen, but well whatever, seem already good enough.

[jiri-richter]

I'm not am embedded developer but a higher-level developer for smartwatches and for Android. I've already expressed big interested in this watch for our app Sleep as Android.

I'd like to mention one thing that's been bugging us when integrating several smartwatches - the FIFO queue of the accelerometer is not always available to the developer and it saves a lot of battery for use cases like sleep tracking or app-level fall detection.
I see in the datasheet that the chosen accelerometer has a 1kb fifo queue - so whoever will be creating the APIs, pretty please, make it available at the application level.

Sent from my Nokia 6.1 using Tapatalk

[fire219]

Moved thread to the PineTime subforum, since we have that now.

I have a question. I asked in other topic but I can ask one more time ; p
Will there be separate version without wifi and bluetooth hardware for
Electromagnetic Frequency Sensitive people?

Probably not.