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Metawatch is a
programmable wristwatch with a 96x96 pixel display
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The display itself is actually interesting... It's basically a
mirror with LCD film on top of it so the pixels are either a reflecting
mirror or diffuse white. I think this makes it easy to see in most
lighting. There are some dim lighting situations that don't work
so well, but in those cases a little white LED at the top of the display
(activated by a button) that lets you make out much of the screen.
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Besides the graphical display, the thing I like about
this watch is that it can go ~5 days on a charge, even with Bluetooth on
all the time. I'm hoping it can last a week with Bluetooth turned
off most of the time. I've got enough work keeping my phone
charged and just don't want to deal with charging my watch all the time.
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There is an "analog" version too, but I haven't figured
out why anybody would want it. I thought it might have longer
battery life, but it turns out the battery life is actually less.
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I ordered my directly from
Ti.com for a rather high price of $199. It actually said "out
of stock" when I placed the order, but hear via email to
info@metawatch.org that they get
new ones ever week. Sure enough, it was delivered in just a couple
days. |
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Programming:
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There are two kinds of programming you can do,
"firmware development" and "remote application development".
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Remote Application Development
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The idea here is to interact with the standard
firmware by sending screen updates over bluetooth. |
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At present, there only seems to be an Android OS
example from Metawatch.org. So, I've written a little test
program in MS Visual Studio C++ (MFC) to work towards something that
we can run on a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. Maybe one day we'll
have something for Windows Phone 8. |
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Windows MFC Test Program: Metawatch1 - Set
the time on your watch via Bluetooth
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This little test program prepares and sends a
packet to set the watch time. This shows how to set up a
packet with CRC, open a serial port, and send the data.
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With either a Bluetooth USB dongle (PC) or
built in Bluetooth (laptop), the SPP interface appears to the
code as a regular serial port. So, the code talks to
it that way. Windows may ask for a pairing code, if so
just enter "0000". |
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Screenshot:
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I think once I install the WM6.5 SDK, I can get
this working on my phone in short order. |
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More testing:
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Here's a hand drawn calendar on the idle
display:
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Firmware Development
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This is what I'd really like to do, but it presents
a large number of challenges. First, it requires a very
expensive IDE. Well, OK, that's the main problem.
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There is a free 30-day trial for the IDE, maybe
I'll try that when I think I have an idea of what to do...
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Reading on the Metawatch forum there may be an open
source, free path, but that may take some time. |
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Forum
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The user forum is just getting going. The forum
software seems to have a bunch of issues. Hopefully, these will
get resolved soon:
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If you keep getting logged out when you want to
reply to a post, you're not alone!
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As a fix, go to your browser address bar and
where it says "http://metawatch.org..." add www to make
"http://www.metawatch.org..." |
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You currently can't edit posts or post attachments.
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In IE8, the pages look all corrupted and it's hard
to read the text. |
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