THP Semifinalist: OSHWatch

No, it’s not a finely crafted wrist accessory from Cupertino, but [Jared]’s OSHWatch, but you’re actually able to build this watch thanks to an open design and reasonable, hand-solderable layout.

Built around a case found on DealExtreme that looks suspiciously similar to enclosures meant to hold an iPod Nano, [Jared]’s smartwatch includes a 128×128 RGB OLED display, magnetometer, accelerometer, Bluetooth 4.0 transceiver, and a lithium-ion charger and regulator circuit. Everything is controlled with a PIC24, which should mean this watch has enough processing power to handle anything a watch should handle.

As for the UI and what this watch actually does [Jared] is repurposing a few Android graphics for this watch. Right now, the watch can display the time (natch), upcoming appointments on his schedule, accelerometer and magnetometer data, and debug data from the CPU. It’s very, very well put together, and repurposing an existing watch enclosure is a really slick idea. Videos below.


SpaceWrencherThe project featured in this post is a quarterfinalist in The Hackaday Prize.

21 thoughts on “THP Semifinalist: OSHWatch

          1. Nope. The https link doesn’t work but they fixed the image in the article. That was the original issue. The cert issue was secondary in that it was why the image was broken, but wasn’t really the problem that they were trying to solve. That was why I responded to Ben that it was working.

  1. So nice! My appreciation for diy electronic stuff goes up 10x when the mechanical side of things have been considered… here, it’s the fitting of the lipo between the buttons, and the enclosure in general!

    1. Thanks! Admittedly the case was a bit of a fluke, I ordered it because it looked nice, and found it almost perfectly fit my design! (with a bit of modification)
      I did put a lot of work into the PCB design though. I had originally planned for the OLED to wrap around the buttons so that the battery would be sandwiched between the display and the PCB, but I got the pin order wrong on the connector

    1. Waterproofing is achieved by taking the watch off when going for a swim ;)

      In all seriousness though, I couldn’t figure out a way to make it waterproof without 1) machining my own case, and 2) still being able to disassemble it for maintenance. Plus the USB port doesn’t make it easy either.

      Take the Pebble smartwatch for example: it’s waterproof, but it’s damn near impossible to take it apart without permanently damaging it!

  2. RE Image: Using Chrome and image is now working for me.

    RE the Hack: Something about this one is especially inspiring to me. I couldn’t tell you what it is precisely. But it just makes me want to go home early and really work on my turn by turn navigation OLED motorcycle display project I have been putting off because of other commitments.

    I would suggest putting a bead of silicone around the display to fill in the case and give it a more polished look maybe. Otherwise, looks sharp and is inspiring. Can’t ask for more than that.

    1. I find this inspiring as well. [Jared] designed it from the ground up, including his own preemptive OS. Which suggests this is something done for the sheer enjoyment of hacking, rather than to have a finished project quickly. That resonates with me.

      1. Thanks, you’re right on the mark! I didn’t build this to put it on kickstarter or make money or anything like that, I did it just because I love building things and love learning how to do it. And I definitely learned a lot! (Especially debugging hardware and the inner workings of RTOS’s)

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