InfiniTime 1.0
pine64.org
pine64.org
Also Aaron's ATCWatch[2] which runs Arduino compatbile firmware on the aforementioned devices and more; His Daflasher app has made it possible to flash firmware to to NRF52832 devices without any HW tinkering.
I would love an E-Ink watch to tinker with at this price point too, But there's a thread every other week on HN discussing why rolling out devices with E-Ink by small companies is extraordinarily difficult.
where?
By the way, EFF confirm that the patent system is broken: https://www.eff.org/fa/issues/patents.
Watchy costs about $60 [0]. There is also a dude who put together a guide with how to make one yourself and even lists the components [1]. An e-ink display for his watch costs about $10 at aliexpress. (The components are pretty similar, screen likely the same one.)
If it is possible for some dude on the internet to build their own smartwatch and a crowd funding campaign to do it on a slightly bigger scale, why are not more manufacturers doing it? That is really what I am wondering about. The whole "screen supply" argument seems like it is a non-issue. Is it really patents?
Maybe an e-ink screen is just too boring compared to an Apple Watch's OLED screen?
The other question is why are transflective LCD's so rare? Googling for it, literally only Amazfit seems to still make them.
[0]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy
[1]: https://github.com/pauls-3d-things/espWatchOS
[2]: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32846836344.html?spm=a2g0s.90...
> I am sure there is a huge market for it, so where are they? I can only think of one reason: patents.
That's the equivalent of saying, "I wish it had transparent OLED display and yet there are no affordable devices like this". A good analogy would be like looking at the sports car market, and saying Ferraris aren't affordable because of patents. There's numerous reasons why display companies like E Ink and others are unable to make such panels "affordable" because their costs are higher than said price. The dominant reason that I'm aware of is volume. If you're not producing at least a million displays a month, then you can't justify building up a bespoke production line so instead you'll have to repurpose a modified LCD production line for your product and so you'll have lower yields. At larger sizes, you'll even have to kerf by hand. Don't even start thinking about laminating touchscreens, as you'll then start dropping your yields further. It is simple to prove this. Look at E Ink display pricing between say 2002 and today. Their sweetspot is the Amazon sized display and that price has declined dramatically because they achieved volume for only that display. Everything else has stayed around the same price or some have even gone up in price since there's no volume around it. People aren't interested in paying 6 grand for a 32 inch black and white panel and nobody is willing to pony up an order for a million of those even if they could get the price down to 1 grand. No volume, no affordable price. That's the simple truth of the display industry. Patents barely have any effect as far as I can tell. Everybody in the industry has them.
3 days ago- 'Challenges Building an Open-Source E Ink Laptop'[1]
> "According to conversations I’ve had, the minimum order quantity(MOQ) required for purchase at one time is between 10,000 to 50,000"
In the comments of the same discussion[1],
> "During the initial prototyping(MNT Reform) this was one of the options we considered, but back then it would have been prohibitively expensive and we decided to focus on an IPS display and to get to ship a viable product as quickly as possible -- with a tiny team."
Yes, that's quite reasonable. Approaching E Ink would be the equivalent of approaching Intel's tier 1 supply chain and asking what's their MOQ. You wouldn't expect them to sell you 1 unit would you? Like all display manufacturers, they also have distributors that supply the various tiers. At the lowest value tier is the individual customers (ie: developers) who cost the most to support and provide the least profit. So expect pricing to match that value level. It is the same for Samsung. Same for LG.
What I perceive is some kind of entitlement syndrome (that's the feeling I get when reading that blog, it was also the same blog that alleged E Ink was abusing patents based on an HN post and when I challenged it, they finally relented and marked it as "unproven" ) where product ideation people (that blog author for example) think that display companies somehow owe them support. They get hundreds of these kinds of messages all the time from universities, research organizations, educational organizations, product startups all demanding responses and attention but mostly unwilling to pay for it. The reality of the display market is that unless you're coming to a display company with a MOQ or a strong value proposition, you can be certain they'll either ignore you or ask you to talk to one of their lowest tier distributors.
Hopefully I can get a few more years out of my oneplus and then maybe the mobile linux distros and hardware will have matured enough that they are a viable alternative to android.
Truly an impressive project!
I would LOVE for someone to hack the Whoop. It's not accurate/good enough, nor insightful enough, for me to want to keep paying $30 a month. but a one time cost and an open community to patch it to match individual use cases would be completely worth even a couple hundred upfront.
Yeah I totally would have bought one of these just to try it out if it was still available!
my experience is it's slow to pickup changes & consistently 5-10 bps lower than other bands / pulse ox.
But my biggest gripes are the auto-sleep detection is horrible for me, and my sport isn't really conducive to the whole value add of measuring 'strain' in the way they do. Doesn't really catch short but very high intensity bouts of work.
So like if I can't get good sleep recommendations or measure my strain/recovery I don't want to pay $30 a month just to see a heart rate pulse on my phone when working out. It hasn't improved my training in a meaningful way.
I currently have an Amazfit Bip paired to Gadgetbridge, but I'd definitely like to see something less proprietary on my wrist. Crossing my fingers to see a transflective display version one day for an even longer battery lifetime.
I'm not sure it'll ever be popular.
Is there any work done to improve the battery life? Ideally, a month (or so) on a charge would be best.
But yeah I would pay a LOT more for an open Amazfit Bip with a great community. To note, the Bip does have an alternative firmware, but its somewhat niche and unknown.
Newer Amazfit devices have a server-side "obsolescence switch" - each time they're repaired they need "activated" via a remote server that uses a proprietary app and account with the server.
There's various ways to do this, like using a Python script to interact with their API, but it's a true anti-feature.
Ideally we'd see an open source version of this kind of device (with the transflective display), or some progress on removing the "pairing lock" from the firmware - I don't think the devices have signed firmwares, so it should be possible to either patch out the check, or replace the validation key with a known key, and generate it locally.
Gadgetbridge is widely under-appreciated open source for these devices, and it's good to see others appreciating its use in liberating these kinds of devices (at least on the phone-side).