PineTime $25 FOSS smart watch

trainailleur

It seems our friends at @PINE64 are working on yet another FOSS-friendly device in yet another form factor, this one to go on your wrist.

Dimensions:

37.5mm (wide?)
40mm (tall?)
11mm thick
20mm straps (appears to use standard springbars)
38g (watch head only, it seems)

Construction:

Plastic and zinc alloy
Water resistance of 1m (IP67) on final watch, not prototypes - (Watch people: note that water resistance ratings for electronic and traditional watches are defined differently and are not directly equivalent.)

Hardware:

1.3" IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 240x240, 65K colors (about 260 dpi if my math is right)
NORDIC Semiconductor nRF52832 SoC (final product may use nRF52840)
64MHz ARM Cortex-M4F CPU
512KB Flash, 64KB DRAM on SoC
Additional 8MB Flash (final product may use 16MB Flash)
Bluetooth 5 (including Low Energy)
Accelerometer
Heart rate sensor
Vibrator motor for notifications
170-180mAh lithium polymer battery, hoping to provide ten day battery life, minimum of one week
USB A charger

Potential open source real time operating systems:

FreeRTOS (Wikipedia)
Mbed (Wikipedia)
Mynetw (? I'm not finding any info about this one)
NuttX (Wikipedia)
Zephyr Project (under the Linux Foundation umbrella) (Wikipedia)

Pricing and availability:

Expected price with charger of $23
Straps to be offered from $2 and up
Possible to manufacture as early as January, 2020, but availability will wait until OSes are ready for it and PinePhone OSes are ready to work with it.
Availability lifespan 5+ years
Dev kits shipped to developers in October, 2019
Dev kits may be opened up for general order, though as of Pine64's November update, that hasn't been decided yet

General:

Brainchild of Pine64's Lukasz Erecinski (Thank you, Lukasz!)
A side project of Pine64, with no particular deadlines, and lower priority than PinePhone, PineBooks, etc. Its development will not interfere with those other projects
Core functionality hoped to be Pebble-like
Intended as a companion for Linux smartphones for notifications, etc., not a smartphone replacement (as evinced by the hardware specs, the latter wouldn't be realistic)

Relevant links:

Pine64 forum thread
Pine64 wiki page
Pine64 wiki comparison of PineTime OSes
Pine64 October, 2019 update
Pine64 November, 2019 update

Prototype on wrist:
Prototype showing a test screen

It's a real watch already, less than a month after the development kits shipped! Here seen running TinyGo:
Prototype running TinyGo displaying the time

Prototype USB charger:

parks.jr

I am really looking forward to this!

trainailleur

OP updated with a lot more info @PINE64 posted to their Wiki, forum, and October blog update. I'm sure there are a ton more details on IRC and/or Telegram/Matrix, but I've unfortunately not had the time lately to follow the chats. If you see anything notable I've missed, please let me know, and I will add it.

As both a watch fan and a smart watch fan, I find the PineTime very exciting, and I look forward to seeing what developers of the various RTOSes can do with this hardware. The hardware may not look very powerful, but I'm sure there are many on this forum old enough to remember when the PineTime would have seemed like a supercomputer. With luck, the PineTime can prove out this space for more future FOSS-powered options.

PINE64

Thanks for posting this If someone is potentially interested in working on the UT companion app for the watch let me know. There is no rush - the watch doesn't have an OS and won't have one for some time.

bhdouglass

@PINE64 There is a group interested in building a companion app for AsteroidOS, so I see a lot of overlap. The matrix group is here: #UBports_AsteroidOS:matrix.org
@stefwe is doing most of the work there and I helped with the Pebble companion app (RockWork), so let us know if we can do some collaboration! I'm very excited for the PineTime and PinePhone!

flohack

One of the big challenges is that Apps in UT have no full control over bluetooth connections and therefore I am not sure how far this can succeed with the current SDK. But maybe others know more.

trainailleur

OP updated. Not a ton of new info, but it sure is nice to see that it's already a working watch a month after the dev kits shipped!

trainailleur

Too little time right now to add the details to the OP (will update sometime later), but I highly recommend that anyone who has yet to see it read @PINE64 's December Update. Though currently sold out, dev kits have already been for sale to the general public and while currently out of stock, TL Lim said on Telegram today that they'll likely be back in stock in a week or so.

Moem

I'm wondering, does anyone here use this watch? I'd love to know whether it will work with either Xenial's or Focal's BT stack.

doniks

@Moem said in PineTime $25 FOSS smart watch:

I'm wondering, does anyone here use this watch? I'd love to know whether it will worh with either Xenial's or Focal's BT stack.

used ... I have one on the shelf collecting dust and waiting for me to have time to play with it again, but note that the ~~phone~~ watch doesn't run UB, or any Ubuntu, or any Linux. It runs one of a selection of operating systems of your choice: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineTime#Default_OS and then it cooperates with "companion applications".

At the time when I last touched it long long time ago, I couldn't quite get to using it regularly, so it ended up on the shelf, but I am definitely looking forward to trying it again

Moem

@doniks said in PineTime $25 FOSS smart watch:

I have one on the shelf collecting dust and waiting for me to have time to play with it again, but note that the phone doesn't run UB, or any Ubuntu, or any Linux.

Phone? I think you meant to say watch... right?

I'm aware that the PineTime does not run Linux. Watches normally run very specialized, tiny watch OSses, and a watch that could run UT... I don't see that happening. But that's not what I'm after.
I want a watch that can be used with a phone that runs UT, not a watch that runs UT.

doniks

@Moem

Phone? I think you meant to say watch... right?

err, eh, yes. sorry. fixed

I'm aware that the PineTime does not run Linux

ah. ok. then I guess I'm not really understanding the xenial/focal question. seems all I'm contributing here is confusion :see-no-evil_monkey: I shut up

Moem

@doniks said in PineTime $25 FOSS smart watch:

I guess I'm not really understanding the xenial/focal question

No worries, I can explain:
I use a Pebble smartwatch. My phones are running UT. With a phone that's running Xenial, I can connect the phone and the smartwatch, and all is well.
But on Focal, there is a different bluetooth stack and the Pebble doesn't stay connected so I can't use it.

So what I meant to ask is: does a PineTime connect with a UT phone? If yes, does that depend on whether the UT version is Xenial or Focal?

flohack

@Moem I am afraid no one so far did develop any middleware or App for UT to let the PineTime connect to it. Its totally feasable, but would need at least 1 or 2 devs getting their hands dirty.

Moem

@Flohack said in PineTime $25 FOSS smart watch:

I am afraid no one so far did develop any middleware or App for UT to let the PineTime connect to it.

True, but you never know what may happen. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

Vistaus

@Flohack said in PineTime $25 FOSS smart watch:

@Moem I am afraid no one so far did develop any middleware or App for UT to let the PineTime connect to it. Its totally feasable, but would need at least 1 or 2 devs getting their hands dirty.

That's not true: there's uWatch on GitLab. I can't get it to work with the PineTime, tho, but the dev has made it work with the PineTime, so clearly work is being carried out.