OpenSource Standalone Smartwatch


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Klumpen

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Well, is there anything like it?
I've only found this but it has to be paired with a phone which defeats the purpose for me.

I haven't got a smartphone but a wristwatch with basic phone capabilities, headset-jack, a long battery life and maybe even Rockbox would be quite useful for me.

It would be great to have something like it produced by ED and Nikolaus btw. ;)
 
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You should be more careful with what you post here! Other people might read it. You should at least add a warning like "not safe for sleep"!
I believe we would have what you want right now, if Knight Rider's KITT would have been driven by RMS instead of Hassel the Hoff.

Now tell me, how do I get THAT image out of my head before I go to sleep for a night full of nightmares about a hairy man jumping through deserts in a talking car?! ;)
 
I'd be very interested in an open, smartish watch, if such a thing were made.
Priorities would be:
  • Low power consumption - should run for months between charging.
  • Focus on the original point of watches. Time. (see examples below)
  • Be able to sync data with other devices, not just act as a terminal for them.
  • Be able to run scripts in a well-known language.
Then, you could transcribe the local bus timetable onto your watch, write a short script to process it, and then get it to tell you when you have to leave work in order to catch a bus that will get you home before <time>.
If you have a calendar stored in suitable format on another computer, you could sync it with that computer over bluetooth when within range, and then the watch could remind you about appointments, even when your phone is out of range/battery/whatever.
It could handle recurring events too, again with user scripting - <event> happens on the 3rd and 4th Saturdays of each month.
It could notice that your last dentist appointment was more than 5 months ago, and remind you to make another one.

To me, that sort of thing seems a sensible extension of conventional timekeeping clocks.
Things I don't want my watch to do, mainly due to power consumption issues:
  • Display full-colour high-res graphics. Seriously, who wants to view videos and photos on a screen that size?
  • Monitor biometric data, or my position. If I wanted a tracking bracelet, I'd chuck a brick through a jewellers' window.
  • Take photos. A lens small enough to fit in a watch is doomed to mediocrity, and the viewfinder wouldn't really be at a good angle.
  • Be a mobile phone. The modules for phoniness are large and power hungry.
And some nice-to-haves:
  • Audio playback. A wrist-mounted media player is quite a good idea, and both the decoding hardware and the flash memory are cheap/small enough now.
  • Lots of buttons. A touchscreen is pretty horrible to use when made that small. especially capacitive ones.
  • Broadcast radio reception.
Sadly, I don't think such a device is likely to become available soon...
 
If the Pebble is free and open-source, why not use that as a base to develop only the necessary features? It is definitely the best smart-watch I have seen. I like Binky's concept, although I might like to include the biometric sensors depending on accuracy. If the data can actually be kept private, I am interested in it.

Points I would like to add:

  • I want a pure black background, but I also want the option for illumination. This begs for O.L.E.D.
  • Modern battery technology is amazing, and improving rapidly. I think it would be good to set standards high for functionality and wait for battery technology to catch up, if necessary.
  • The display must be convenient to organise so users can build U.I. themes. Think Gnu Screen for window data like lunar rotation or a sinusoidal graph for local tides.
  • Long battery life is great, but convenient charging is more important. U.S.B. Type-C could charge a small battery in minutes so wireless charging may be a good option.
  • Synchronizing with phone or P.C. via Bluetooth would be ideal. The power requirements are low but it must obviously be optional so the watch can be used autonomously.
  • For scripting, what about Bash with option for Python? Allowing users to add their own software is important, even if the battery life drops to 24 hours.
  • Would the default method of configuration be SSH? Is it possible to SSH over Bluetooth or would a cable be necessary?
  • I would like to see this built on a tiny distribution of linux, such as Alpine, but a modular unikernel would be fine if secure and accessible for developers.
  • I can think of a lot of great ways to market and distribute this concept so if anyone is interested, let me know.
  • One of the reasons I like Pebble, although I don't own one, is that its programs/apps/whatever are built in C. Rendering desktop or mobile apps on a watch display is probably not a good concept, but I would like to see a standard language built on a standard stack. If unikernel is necessary, it should be modular and convenient for developers.
  • The Pebble's physical form is decent but, having tried them on in stores multiple times, I prefer Casio's G-Shock series. I've had one of these for about 10 years and it's pretty close to perfect for me. I just wish I could tweak the software behaviour a bit. Solar, durable, water-proof, etc, probably impossible would be difficult for a smartwatch at the moment but the U.X. is a point of interest.
 
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You keep talking about this "Pebble" I have no clue about.
Can you use the Pebble as a watch, telephone and music player without any second device?
If yes I'd be interested, needs a headphone jack for phonecalls though and ideally a microSD slot for music.

Basically, I'd just like something like my dumbphone just smaller and wrist mounted - with rockbox or something like that would be especcially nice.
 
One of the links above described a third-party linux build so it must be unlocked, but it could still be proprietary as in non-free, or even closed-source. I don't know why they would do that but it is technically possible. Might be good to cite a source on that one since they really do seem to be pushing the open-source aspects, even some of their documentation is published through Markdown on GitHub for versioning.

Incidentally, "Pebble smartwatches are made to work with mobile phones" is the only reason I don't own one already. I think it's pretty inefficient and not useful to provide core functionality. Obviously it's great that it's possible and there are a lot of cool applications (in theory) but I want less of a peripheral and more of a stand-alone tool. I can't point to specific problems with Pebble's design so I may give them a try in the future but I do wonder what sort of processor and battery would be necessary to run Alpine for a week.
 
Penguin-Guru said:
http://bfy.tw/muy
Click to expand...
Conversation killer.

So - after wading through this whole advertising nonsense with lots of pictures and few information - it's not standalone, doesn't have own phone capabilities and I wonder why it's even mentioned here.
I honestly don't see the point of those pairing watches. If you have to own and take a clunky smartphone with you anyway, you can just reach in your pocket and don't need to load another battery and have another thing on you.
 
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While the Pebble isn't actually standalone, the introduction of the Pebble Core intrigues me. It seems like it could be used along with the Pebble watch to totally ditch your phone, and it gives you the ability to make calls or stream music. Simply write an app for the Pebble to search contacts and dial, and the core can handle the actual call. Since you should be able to clip the thing anywhere, you wouldn't be forced to have your headphone cable run down to your wrist. You could use it as a Bluetooth PAN tethering device for your Pandora or laptop too.

My wife backed it so she can leave her phone at home when biking, but still have phone/music/gps available when needed. I didn't back it, because I would prefer to have things like FM tuner, expandable storage, and longer battery life. However it is an interesting idea, and probably something that does support the features I'd like could be hacked together with a CHIP Pro... Hmm... I may need to order one of those...
 
FM tuners these days are almost worthless to me these days, at least in terms of music programming - the only decent music stations are on DAB these days. Although almost all of my radio listening apart from the alarm clock in the morning is done with downloads from the iPlayer with a weeks worth of programmes only taking a gig or so on my SD cards.
 
Somebody awhile back was making a mechanical standalone smartwatch. Not sure what happened to it. It's power was derived by a tiny Dynamo linked to what I could see two capacitors. It was both an analog watch in skeleton fashion with a monochrome transparent screen under the face.

You pressed a button on the side and the screen would show you information. Calendar information, texts, appointments, and I think weather too.

However this is all speculation since I never saw the final product.

However the concept really did intrigue me. If you had a slow enough barrel spring hooked to a dynamo in such a system I could see it working. Especially with a very minimum OS and tiny lcd screen.
 
levi said:
FM tuners these days are almost worthless to me these days, at least in terms of music programming - the only decent music stations are on DAB these days. Although almost all of my radio listening apart from the alarm clock in the morning is done with downloads from the iPlayer with a weeks worth of programmes only taking a gig or so on my SD cards.
Click to expand...

I thought the same until I got a phone with an FM tuner. I've ended up using it regularly to listen to local sports. I used to work in a bar and got to watch games for free.

Now I can't seem to justify paying for a yearly subscription to the online streams when I can listen or watch for free over broadcast TV and radio.
 
edgex004 said:
While the Pebble isn't actually standalone, the introduction of the Pebble Core intrigues me. It seems like it could be used along with the Pebble watch to totally ditch your phone, and it gives you the ability to make calls or stream music. Simply write an app for the Pebble to search contacts and dial, and the core can handle the actual call. Since you should be able to clip the thing anywhere, you wouldn't be forced to have your headphone cable run down to your wrist.
Click to expand...
I'd love an all in one gadget for the stuff that doesn't need a big screen, but at least this core thingy goes into the right direction. I'm still waiting until those two components are made into a single unit though.
Cables aren't a big deal anyway since there's Bluetooth, I guess (never used it but would in this case).
 
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