2022 Cyberdeck Contest: IP00-Minus, A Daring Wearable

Watch on the wrist, with all the sensors facing the camera. There's a lot of them, and a lot of wires of all kinds tying everything together.

[Rob]’s IP00-Minus watch stands out on the Cyberdeck Contest project list page; it’s clear he decided to go a different path than most other hackers, and we can certainly see the advantages. For example, if there’s no case, there’s no need to redesign it each time you want to add a module — and [Rob] has added many, many modules to this watch.

Picking between regular LCD, memory LCD, and OLED displays can be a tricky decision to make when planning out your gadget, so he just added all three. The CircuitPython firmware initially attempted to resist the trio, but was eventually defeated through patching. Jokes aside, we can almost feel the joy that [Rob] must have felt after having put this watch on for the first time, and this project has some serious creative potential for a hacker.

Watch on the wrist, showing the wrist straps and how the watch sits on the arm.[Rob] has been focusing on day-to-day usability first and foremost, with pleasantly clicky encoders, impeccable performance of its watch duty, unparalleled expandability, and comfortable wrist fit — it provides a feeling no commercial wearable could bring.

Out of the myriad of sensors, the air quality sensor has been the most useful so far, letting him know when to open a window or leave a particularly crowded place. The ESP32-S3 powered watch has been quite a playground for [Rob]’s software experiments, and given the sheer variety of hardware attached, we’re sure it will bring unexpected synergy-driven ideas. Plus, it’s no doubt a great conversation starter in nerd and non-nerd circles alike.

Good things happen when you give hackers a wrist-worn watch full of sensors, whether it’s a particularly impressive event badge, a modified firmware for an open source smartwatch, or a custom piece that pushes the envelope of DIY hardware.

10 thoughts on “2022 Cyberdeck Contest: IP00-Minus, A Daring Wearable

  1. > Plus, it’s no doubt a great conversation starter in nerd and non-nerd circles alike.

    Questions along the line of: “is that going to go tick-boom any minute?” Non-technical people, particularly those in the security industry, are likely going to be the most paranoid.

    1. Yeah, my experiences with airport security have been fairly positive (I am a nerdy white guy), the threshold for what’s allowed in tends to be “might a skittish person think this is a bomb?” Which is reasonable, I think. Lots of people are nervous about flying and I wouldn’t want them panicking because of my hobby project. Home made RPi Game Boy was zero issue, for example.

    2. My experience is that non-technical people are not going to be paranoid but rather, curious and perhaps somewhat aesthetically off-put. People in security industry might be – but only the less-competent ones and/or more enforce-y ones, like some airport workers or metal detector gate workers. I’ve also seen that being confident and ready to explain what is it that you’re doing would help a lot if someone in security industry ever takes an actual issue. Or even, like, smile and start an unsolicited infodump – “it’s a prototype computer, I’m a geek like that, see, this screen and this and this one, and they all do different things, and these are different sensors”, setting them up for dissonance if they try to imply that it’s something dangerous.

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