Matthew James BellafaireI've been working on the watch a bit here and there, but it's been rather busy lately even though I'm still at home (paradox of 2020). At the same time there just isn't much to do on the watch at this point, all the core functionality is there and I'm happy with the form factor. All that's left is adding features. So far, I've added 2 more apps to the watch a calculator and a Bluetooth serial receiver.
The calculator app is just a simple 4 function calculator, nothing special about it except it's on a watch. Since this smartwatch has a pretty large screen (compared to other watches) the calculator app is very easy to use. It's also just the convenience factor, since it's on my wrist I find myself using it often. (see video below)
The Bluetooth serial receiver is a simple app that may become useful later. The basic idea is that the watch becomes a standard Bluetooth serial device and allows other devices to connect to it. Once connected the external device can print data directly to the watch's screen. I used to work with a lot of small makers-type robots, so I like the idea of being able to read serial data from the robot while it's in action. (see video below)
On a slightly less related note I got the TTGO T-Watch 2020 a little while ago and I like what it can do. There's only a small community around it that I've been able to find but I'd really like to see the watch become more popular. I made a small port of some of this project's firmware over to the T-Watch, at the moment it only supports reading phone notifications and controlling Spotify music. Open source hardware and software were really the springboard for me when I was getting started with electronics so I'm always looking for ways to give back. The T-Watch port can be downloaded here https://github.com/Bellafaire/T-Watch-2020-Smartwatch-Port and can be uploaded through the Arduino IDE.
And finally, I've created another video log to cover some stuff up to revision 5. The video logs are still parallel to the logs posted here on Hackaday.io so really it just covers the last few logs in 2 minutes.
I think I'll consider this project complete in the coming week, but before that I want to put some polish on a few things here and there. Either way thanks for reading and I'll see you in the next log!
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This looks great! For the BLE receiver app, have you considered adding the ability to send some data too? w/a/s/d based on different quadrants of the screen or something would let you cycle modes on a device, control a simple robot, or similar.
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the bluetooth reciever app isn't BLE it's a bluetooth serial profile that (i believe) uses Bluetooth 2.0. I picked it mostly because there's a standard arduino library that allows an ESP32 to establish a bluetooth serial connection with ~3 function calls on the transmit side. I wanted to send some data originally but the library seems to disable I2C communication so I can't interface with my touch controller (the touch interrupt pin is all i can use to exit the app).
I'm planning on making a similar app with BLE but it's going to be much more involved.
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