We haven’t solved homelessness, poverty, cancer, or war. We don’t have self-piloted flying cars. But for about $90 in parts, one person can design, manufacture, and build their own bespoke smart watch. Humans have made truly remarkable progress in some very specific ways.
Although unfortunately not solved, we've made great strides in regards to child mortality, extreme poverty, war, violence, health, freedom, literacy... If you could choose any point in human history to be born, you'd be best off choosing today.
Homelessness: unsolvable in a society where it is illegal to force someone to take care of themselves (by being sheltered). The west has decided that individual freedom is worth the cost of some people using it to choose to be homeless. I think this legal framework will make it impossible to solve homelessness.
Poverty: It is now known that there is a rising gulf between subjective and objective well being. A majority of millionaires do not think they are rich. I think this psychology will make it impossible to solve poverty.
Cancer: Entropy/cosmic rays scrambling DNA... I think thermodynamics will make it impossible to solve cancer (as in, all cancer) for everyone (very rich with DNA repair therapy in the medium/near future).
War: Actually living now in the most peaceful time in human history as a % of humans in conflict. I think the human desire for power/wealth (again, back to poverty) will make it impossible to solve the zero war scenario. At least nukes scared everyone from the big wars so far :)
While I can appreciate the sentiment, the reason we can do things like this is because of all the research and development that went into things like integrated circuits, manufacturing and CAD. This is more the classic hacker thing, were you use something larger and serious for you own purposes. Not making something primarily for serving ads, or whatnot.
This technology can very well, and was to a large extent made to, be used for something else. I don't think researchers or EEs are stepping over homeless people more than anyone else. When it comes to doing good things with electronics I would be more worried about patents, or just finding the time.
Homeless, poverty, cancer, or war are all people problems, and people are complicated. We do have flying cars but they're not very good at flying or driving.
We've possessed the technology and resources to solve the first two for at least a decade, but it's unclear how doing so would increase share-holder value.
And when we're piloting spacecraft between various colonies in our solar system, we'll still have wars and poverty and suffering, but one person will be able to design, manufacture, and build their own bespoke nuclear reactor for their personal spacecraft.
I was expecting a brick on wrist, but this surprised me! And the circuit looks simple. I love the charging dock and textual of the watch frame! Screen resolution is a bit low though. I'd join if there's an open source community dedicated to work on this stuff, I think there's a lot of room improve the OS and software. I'm glad to have seen this!
The DA14683 is fantastic. I played a bit with an eval. board and it's really good for it's price vs. features (~$3 for 250 pcs. at Mouser). But soon the idea of releasing code for it as Open Source faded away, since you need to sign an SLA (https://support.dialog-semiconductor.com/connectivity/reques...), that limits the way source code based on their in SDK is released (only to your customer, in an only “need to know” basis). I hate when this happens.
I wonder how the creator of this watch managed to publish the source code, including the Dialog SDK; if there is a backdoor I am missing.
As I understand it, the designer used freertos. At that point, he can just give a readme with hand-wavey "get sdk, install freertos, find firmware files here... and here's all my code which I'm free to license as I wish" and no license infringement necessary. Not sure why a backdoor is needed, but then I've never built a project like this.
For open source community projects a better bet than a bespoke case would be aiming for the form factor a a popular watch movement, so that hackers can chose to buy or build a bespoke case.
I would have been impressed with anything functional, but to me this actually looks nicer than the vast majority of commercially produced smart watches. Awesome!
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 type of posts? Or even a follow along type of deal to get feet wet with actually building devices (maybe it includes a list of items to buy first)? Don't get me wrong I love writing software but showing someone something you physically made as opposed to sending a link to a website seems so much more satisfying.
how do you interact with anyone presenting at/participating in CCC? does everyone just meet on day of? i have a hard time reading any of their material and there's never any links on who to ask questions to. OR do they just like it that way
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.
I purchased an Amazfit Stratos around 6 months ago. This thing is better than any other smart watch I have owned (Pebble, Moto360, Apple Watch). Always on screen. Multiple days worth of battery. Best workout tracking I have had on a watch. And it does all the notification and smart watch type things I expect. I am not certain why Apple, Samsung, et al haven't figured these things out yet, but other companies have and it is great. Oh let's not forget this only cost me $150.
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).
Even my 3 year old Zenwatch 2 lasts over 24 hours with an always on screen. Watches like the Amazfit Bip last close to a month with an always on screen.
I've been thinking about making a custom keyboard for a while now but, while I have no problems with the electronic and software side of things, I'm a bit overwhelmed with the 3D modelling required.
I tried learning Blender but it really feels ill-suited for designing physical objects. The author mentions considering openSCAD but I've heard pretty bad things about it so I haven't really given it a chance yet.
The person making the dactyl keyboard had a very interesting talk where he explain how he basically ended up writing his own DSL in clojure on top of openSCAD, maybe I should try that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk3A41U0iO4 (if you enjoyed TFA you'll probably like this video as well, it's a step-by-step explanation of how he designed his dream keyboard).
Otherwise I suppose I'll have to betray rms and try this freeware Fusion 360 thing.
This is so awesome. It is a good learning and inspiring for others. I will add this project to DIY section of the Learn-awesome repository https://github.com/learn-awesome/learn-awesome. Please add such valuable resources here.
Very nice job! I love reading about hardware projects like this but stumble across the write-ups much less frequently/reliably compared to interesting software projects. Are there good groups/lists/sites to hear about more electronic/hardware hacking like this?
[+] [-] dan1234|7 years ago|reply
[0]https://old.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/bivyok/i_made_a_smartw...
[1]https://old.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/bivyok/i_made_a_smartw...
[+] [-] adriansky|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iscrewyou|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] titty-fucker|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tambourine_man|7 years ago|reply
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 :)
[+] [-] adriansky|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] undefined1|7 years ago|reply
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Max-Roser-three-facts...
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|7 years ago|reply
Poverty: It is now known that there is a rising gulf between subjective and objective well being. A majority of millionaires do not think they are rich. I think this psychology will make it impossible to solve poverty.
Cancer: Entropy/cosmic rays scrambling DNA... I think thermodynamics will make it impossible to solve cancer (as in, all cancer) for everyone (very rich with DNA repair therapy in the medium/near future).
War: Actually living now in the most peaceful time in human history as a % of humans in conflict. I think the human desire for power/wealth (again, back to poverty) will make it impossible to solve the zero war scenario. At least nukes scared everyone from the big wars so far :)
[+] [-] josefresco|7 years ago|reply
Oh and I don't know, about $250K worth of professional experience and skills but yeah.. we have.
[+] [-] njepa|7 years ago|reply
This technology can very well, and was to a large extent made to, be used for something else. I don't think researchers or EEs are stepping over homeless people more than anyone else. When it comes to doing good things with electronics I would be more worried about patents, or just finding the time.
[+] [-] jonatron|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve918|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkrisc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ConfusedDog|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swalladge|7 years ago|reply
Agreed, I can't believe how thin and professional it is! This has to be the most mind blowing thing I've seen for a long time. :O
[+] [-] scoutt|7 years ago|reply
I wonder how the creator of this watch managed to publish the source code, including the Dialog SDK; if there is a backdoor I am missing.
[+] [-] undecisive|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opencl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sidnicious|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scoutt|7 years ago|reply
https://github.com/S-March/smarchWatch_PUBLIC/commit/12b4ad3...
[+] [-] gabriel34|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xdeadbeefbabe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordan_clark|7 years ago|reply
Also, the OS is FreeRTOS (Open sourced by AWS/Amazon in '17) if anyone is interested
[+] [-] naraic0o|7 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] 24gttghh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] closetohome|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelmior|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SnowingXIV|7 years ago|reply
Is there anyone that does similar type of posts? Or even a follow along type of deal to get feet wet with actually building devices (maybe it includes a list of items to buy first)? Don't get me wrong I love writing software but showing someone something you physically made as opposed to sending a link to a website seems so much more satisfying.
[+] [-] tboerstad|7 years ago|reply
Love the little gifs to explain how it's done, especially the stenciling of the PCB.
I'm curious, how/why did you choose the DA14683 chip?
[+] [-] magashna|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moreentropy|7 years ago|reply
https://gitlab.hamburg.ccc.de/card10/logix
[+] [-] kkarakk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okso|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taoufix|7 years ago|reply
But man! I was so wrong, and I'm totally impressed.
[+] [-] Poiesis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|7 years ago|reply
The first photo looks a lot like Android Wear, so first I assumed this would be using a prepackaged OS, but it isn't!
The source code is in on Github alongside schematics, PCB files and everything else: https://github.com/S-March/smarchWatch_PUBLIC/tree/master/So...
[+] [-] diimdeep|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foldor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjuel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dspillett|7 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] opencl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Maarten88|7 years ago|reply
https://explore.garmin.com/fenix/
[+] [-] simias|7 years ago|reply
I've been thinking about making a custom keyboard for a while now but, while I have no problems with the electronic and software side of things, I'm a bit overwhelmed with the 3D modelling required.
I tried learning Blender but it really feels ill-suited for designing physical objects. The author mentions considering openSCAD but I've heard pretty bad things about it so I haven't really given it a chance yet.
The person making the dactyl keyboard had a very interesting talk where he explain how he basically ended up writing his own DSL in clojure on top of openSCAD, maybe I should try that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk3A41U0iO4 (if you enjoyed TFA you'll probably like this video as well, it's a step-by-step explanation of how he designed his dream keyboard).
Otherwise I suppose I'll have to betray rms and try this freeware Fusion 360 thing.
[+] [-] cssbubble|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vkaku|7 years ago|reply
If people started selling the pre-soldered board as a smart-watch starter kit on Aliexpress , pretty sure someone would buy it.
This is the sort of thing that would make DIY popular, I can see why.
[+] [-] qhwudbebd|7 years ago|reply