Pseudonymous maker “Valentine” is engaged on a Bluetooth Low Power smartwatch, emphasis on the “low vitality” — concentrating on a 10-year runtime on a single cost, with the potential so as to add a compact photo voltaic panel to energy the system ceaselessly.

“Creating a sensible watch from scratch can be an excellent studying expertise to advance my information of low-power, self-contained powered units. Therefore, we study watches, smartwatches, and wearables normally by designing one,” Valentine explains of the mission. “This isn’t a industrial effort. I doubt that we’re making something new per se, nevertheless, we are attempting to advance the artwork quite a bit additional than others into the low-power area.”

Valentine has some massive asks for his smartwatch design, even earlier than you get into the need for a decade-long runtime. It ought to be maintenance-free, he says, without having to open the system, and it shouldn’t have any buttons or different shifting elements. It ought to be powerful sufficient to “crush rocks,” function within the depths of the ocean, and will embrace on-board sensors, sync to atomic clocks, and even present a compass — although, on the time of writing, the mission was specializing in core watch performance, together with alarms.

“Testing the facility consumption with a 200mA[h] battery, BLE at -40db. Estimated lifetime of that setup with none energy tuning can be about 5,000 hours (~200 days),” Valentine writes of preliminary testing with a “pre-alpha” board. “To present you an concept how laborious that is, it takes a group of extremely certified folks working for months to get to this stage. I did it over a couple of weekends in my bed room listening to Gert van Hoef.”

The preliminary design is constructed round a Sharp reminiscence show, providing a sunlight-readable monochrome panel which attracts much less energy than rival liquid-crystal show applied sciences, linked to a Nordic Semi nRF52 offering the controlling logic and Bluetooth Low Power (BLE) connectivity to a smartphone and a five-parts-per-million temperature-compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO) for timekeeping.

Initially, Valentine discovered the antenna design inflicting points with reaching a low sufficient energy draw — till Nordic provided to optimize the design in-house. “I used to be extraordinarily impressed by the extent of customer support,” Valentine writes. “I am going to take them up the provide as soon as I finalize my case design.”

Valentine is not solely fascinated by what is going on into the watch, although, however about what the skin will appear to be — exhibiting off a chunky physique which protects the show behind a mineral crystal glass panel and encloses the electronics in a completely-sealed stainless-steel physique. Additional experiments have proven that the system attracts so little energy it could run from a photo voltaic cell — although the maker is engaged on constructing the self-contained model first earlier than probably investigating including photo voltaic charging to the design.

Extra data on the work-in-progress mission is obtainable on Valentine’s Hackaday.io web page; no design information or supply code have but been launched.