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
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.