Porting Python to a $3 smartwatch [video] | Hacker News Reader

Porting Python to a $3 smartwatch [video]

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223 pointszdw40 comments

Hello --- I made this! Thank you for the kind words.

I have, BTW, just received a $6.50 watch with touchscreen, microphone and speaker, much better build quality, BT 3, 4.2 and 5, plus the traditional fake heart rate sensor and a bigger battery with an actual label on it. It's powered by a YC1133 which contains an ARM Cortex M0 with 56kB RAM and 4MB flash. This would be an awesome device for hacking if there was any information about it whatsoever.

Weirdly, it runs a more complex version of what's clearly the same software stack as the LT716!

Is anyone working on an OpenWhoop? The algorithms/scoring/etc seem ripe for a collaborative open project. A $100+ version of this thats broadly hackable would be cool

I've been looking for one as the Whoop's data sync with Apple Health is bad.

There is an app on iOS called "athlytic" that is basically this.

https://www.athlyticapp.com/

Why not a lillygo T-Watch? It's a bit more expensive, but it's a solid one with good specs and an esp32 https://github.com/Xinyuan-LilyGO/TTGO_TWatch_Library

oh neat. It's a different sort of fun - but I just got one of these to play with it with the kidlet.

My friend wrote Micropython so I’ve passed this along to him! Very cool.

The amount of effort put into all the porting and reverse-engineering is impressive. Especially, getting the toolchain working. That's usually where most of the hair-pulling comes in.

For those wanting to hack their own tracker, for slightly more money ($5), you can get one with a Nordic nrf52832 which has lots more documentation and support, including Micropython:

- https://forum.micropython.org/viewtopic.php?t=6498

- https://github.com/fanoush/ds-d6

After watching this video on my own I got the urge to watch more similar videos. Does anyone know of any that are like this one, not really a tutorial, but also not just a dev log either. It feels closer to something like wood working videos where you just watch someone do something cool.

I know of a few channels already like Ben Eater[1], Bisqwit[2], Pezzza's Work[3], Sebastian Lague[4] and sphaerophoria[5]. At least those are the ones I'm seeing when scrolling through my subscriptions really quick.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@BenEater

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@Bisqwit

[3] https://www.youtube.com/@PezzzasWork

[4] https://www.youtube.com/@SebastianLague

[5] https://www.youtube.com/@sphaerophoria

Bit of self promotion, but I do a lot of these types of tinkery projects (slightly less technical, but adjacent) on my channel "abe's projects"[1]

[1] https://youtube.com/@abetoday

Mr. Carlson's Lab is great for electronics - mostly analog electronics like radio transceivers, oscilloscopes, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU9SoQxJewrWb_3GxeteQPA

Ben Heck has done quite a few that might fit

https://www.youtube.com/@BenHeckHacks

Would this ever get gadgetbridge support? Theoretically at least?

I really love programming my banglejs. Chrome plus webusb plus JavaScript is really fun. But the GPS is really hard to use. I wrote a toy application that posted data to a webapp for tracking my runs. But the GPS is so unreliable it isn't worth it. I know GPS synchronization isn't an easy problem. But I would love to find another smart watch with GPS that is a much fun to hack as banglejs.

I would love to buy a square shaped cheap Chinese smart watch and develop custom apps on it. Has anyone tried something similar before? Where can I start?

Thanks!

Check out WaspOs, https://wasp-os.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html

Thank you The Chinese watches supported by WaspOS are not available in India. Considering purchasing the PineTime but shipping costs more than the device itself :(

https://rbaron.net/blog/2021/07/06/Reverse-engineering-the-M... is the reverse engineering desc. he followed

Chinamen should amp their game. You can charge 30€ more on a shitty watch if it was "open-source". I have LilyGo T-Watch for 40€, and if it was waterproof, it would certainly to be only watch I ever need. https://github.com/timonoko/t-watch-2020-micropython-hacks

This reminds me of an XKCD[1] where the character marveled about an obscure piece of single-purpose hardware running Java.

[1] https://xkcd.com/801/

I think this is less marvellous nowadays with ARM0 chips being super common, and micropython already being ported to many devices containing them.

Edit: I hadn't watched the video yet. This thing is not an ARM chip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor

This is also what I thought of

Shame the smartwatch ecosystem doesn't have more stuff like this. Was hoping Bangle.js would take off, but it seems like most people would rather settle for Apple watches.

Wouldn't it be simpler to use just the chassis and display and made pcb with the mcu of your choice?

can't find the LT716 smartwatch on aliexpress. Is it discontinued?

Search for 'm4 wristband' and you should find them (there's also an affiliate link in the Youtube description). Bear in mind that there are several very nearly identical ones, based on different architectures, so it's possible you won't get the same one as mine.

Let me save you an hour:

Micropython, not real python, on an aliexpress LT716 smartwatch with an el-cheap-o 24MHz TC32 SoC (512KB flash + 16KB of RAM, BLE hardware).

MicroPython is mostly compatible with Python 3, not much missing. There are even a few things MP has and Python has not, like the Viper code emitter. So the fact it's MicroPython does not make it less interesting.

I am a huge fan of Micropython. Sure, there are things that it can’t do because of the limits of highly constrained systems. But it is a great toolkit for limited systems, and greatly lowers the barrier to embedded experimentation.

I think the comment you replied to was just unfortunately worded. I also think that the title should contain "Micropython" to honor the efforts of the project to provide a lean and non-bloated implementation.

Porting the bloat of CPython to this watch would be astonishing indeed.

Honestly, your comment is very misleading & unfair. The video seems very in-depth and educational.

Sure, it is micro-python not python. But your copying the typical implicit "just clickbait waste of time" rhetoric, which is really not applicable here.

Haven't watched the dhole video yet, but it seems very genuine & interesting. What a downer your type of comment is. I wouldn't even have commented on it, but i didn't want your comment to be the only one here.

Python is a language, MicroPython and CPython are both implementations of the language. MicroPython is more limited but in a few ways, it is better.

Which part of my factual and emotion-free comment do you find misleading? Which of my two sentences is wrong?

« Save an hour » means there isn’t a lot more interesting to see about that video than your two sentences.

What part of “Let me save you an hour” is factual and emotion-free?

It provided useful information (micropython, hardware details) but was disparaging rather than emotion-free (save you an hour, not real, el-cheap-o).

You seem to not realize the emotional connotation of the post, so thought I'd clarify which aspects I felt were not helpful.

This is literally just the description under the video, no idea how it should have saved me an hour, more like 10 seconds.

For context

> MicroPython is a lean and efficient implementation of the Python 3 programming language that includes a small subset of the Python standard library and is optimised to run on microcontrollers and in constrained environments.

https://micropython.org/

what is battery life like on such inexpensive device ?

If you run the CPU in a loop at 100% load, it lasts around 40m or so, per the video.

Using it interrupted and allowing to sleep it would last much longer - with the default firmware the screen is only on when the user taps the device button.

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