This project has come about because of a bluetooth heart rate monitor that I purchased. I bought it to connect to my phone while I was jogging so I could target my workout better. But, alas, the monitor runs on Bluetooth V4.0 BLE and my phone only runs V2.1. So, Instead of buying a new phone that does support it, I started looking for a smart watch that would connect to it instead as I figured it would be more practical for me to carry. I looked far and wide (in my local area ;) ) for one that would host a device. But, could only find ones that would operate in slave mode. Hence, this project has been born
and it was good. But, on the next day, the man found that the heart rate monitor would not connect to his phone... and then, everything was bad.
G'day everyone. Just a quick update on the preliminary findings of my initial research. I've tracked down a suitable screen on ebay (Link) for the watch. But it has to come from China, which could take too long (I'm open to suggestions to an alternative in the 1-2 inch size as well).
I'm looking at using this bluetooth module because it supports the Bluetooth V4.0 Low Energy specification, which will reduce battery usage considerably. It also has the BlueRadios stack preloaded on it. That way I don't have to buy a dev kit to program it myself, it just accepts commands via the AT command set ( more information here, pdf warning).
I'll be using the 3V Trinket Pro to run everything, that way I don't need a boost converter to power it and it will require less power to operate.
Since this is in the form of a watch, I have thought about including a Real Time Clock module to keep time. But, I haven't done any research on this front as of yet.
The picture I've uploaded is just a quick drawing I did in Inkscape to get a better idea of what it would look like when completed. So, please don't judge the shoty rendering ;). I will probably have the band taper so it isn't as wide at the bottom. But, I didn't show that here, mainly due to my lack of industrial design skills when it comes to using Inkscape.
Anyway, it was great to get some of this out of my head and into the world. Don't forget to hit the comments section to share your opinions, offer some support or even to tell me where to go.