new article at Heise (german only)

A guy from Heise wrote about first experiences.
https://www.heise.de/make/artikel/Ausprobiert-Javascript-fuers-Handgelenk-mit-der-Smartwatch-Bangle-js-4597599.html
Good and helpful article. Sorry, its in german only.

Frustrating are the comments.
Most of them read the word Javascript and switch their brain to deepSleep.
In this mode they still have the power to tell the world their "facts"

• its not C, will never work
  
• JS needs MB of RAM, anything else is impossible
  
• it will be horrible slow
  
• JS eats power like crazy
  
• etc. etc.
  As mentioned above, its frustrating
  

You can always google translate it :) (layout is somewhat broken)

As for comments: oh, yeah. Same if you read comments under MicroPython or Espruino conference videos.
Altho it's somewhat true for web development: take a look at patreon or meetup, they do a bunch of requests after the initial page load to pull data for the ui. Those requests plus the re-paint that occurs when data is loaded makes the sites feel sluggish for seconds. Just why, why?

And fun aside: saw a blog post a couple of weeks ago about one's opinion about embedded in 2019. Basically use C if you are doing home hobby arduino projects. Otherwise use anything else where it's harder to buffer overflow / memory-corrupt yourself.

that's why I gave up reading comments more than a decade ago...

Thanks - I just read the translation. The article seems pretty optimistic.

Comments are always like that. IMO they don't reflect the attitude of most people reading it - just those that feel like they need to write something (and moaning about JS is easy).

I'll be really interested to see how PineTime is received when it's out there, and how many apps/how reliable it is since I imagine they will just be writing everything in C.

I have seen some posts about PineTime and Rust by Lup Yuen Lee 李立源
on medium. Since is "just" an of the shelf smartwatch, it's not a bad platform for learning and experimenting: Sneak Peek of PineTime Smart Watch… And why it’s perfect for teaching IoT

For end-users? No idea. Mostly because I think you need a convenient full usable package with app and whatnot to really use it and keep using it.

Wow, that's a huge article!

Regardless of what the commenters in that Make article might say, seeing that actually makes me really excited about what Bangle.js adds.

Just grab the $20 watch, build a simple SWD cradle

Now I'm guessing here, but I don't see any screws on the watch so I can only assume that the non-developer versions are glued shut. I wonder how developer friendly it'll end up being unless you're pretty hardcore...

Also, just look at the raw power of compiled Rust driving the graphics on that LCD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enoZVIg-6Fg

That's obviously early code but I think Bangle.js will have significantly better graphics performance. It's the same LCD, but connected via an 8 bit parallel bus rather than SPI (which is limited to 8Mhz on nRF52832). I originally started making Espruino using a watch like that, but even with all kinds of crazy hacks (12 bit color, DMA) I just couldn't get decent graphics performance.

I can only assume that the non-developer versions are glued shut.

Yes, they took some 'random' off the shelf watch for Pinetime with signed firmware. The name of watch is Y7. 'Random' means exactly this
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8114&pid=51139#pid51139
tllim is Thye Liang Lim - he e.g. signs letters to FCC

They even ship it to people still with original firmware and it needs erasing flash over SWD to unlock it.

Just skimmed that post, and didn't watch the video. I guess things like graphics performance hit you once you try it.
Looks like they could have picked a better random watch :)

Was with Pine 64's very successful kickstarter... at least the campaign was very very successful... delivery was a different story: surprised by the backer response it was quite dramatic what happened... more on the craze by backers then by the fulfillers: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pine64/pine-a64-first-15-64-bit-single-board-super-comput/description

Since then, they obviously ventured into other areas as well... and the original thread of things is still going on with more boards added.

Regarding touch control on bangle.js: 2 areas is not bad... 4 would have done a great service...

surprised by the backer response it was quite dramatic what happened

What happened? I never saw any of this and I can't read the backer-only posts?

I don't really know how Pine64 can get that cheap unless they don't intend to make money off the watches (maybe it's a stunt to get consultancy work?). Of course it means people do compare the two though: https://twitter.com/FXBOY4EVA/status/1201962843731570689

I don't really know how Pine64 can get that cheap unless they don't intend to make money off the watches (maybe it's a stunt to get consultancy work?).

I think it is a stunt in a way. This glorified dev kit is just some existing watch they put in plastic box with 4wires. So they did almost zero effort. Even the pinout they probably got from the 'Da Fit' friend so they even saved the reverse engineering effort. Most of what they said about it just hot air or weasel words (or lies) around the reality that it is just Y7 watch with no R&D done by them. And BTW the 52840 reference for future version was removed from their wiki.

OTOH I think they really want promote open source smart watch and they are shipping those watches for free basically to anyone who claims to be developer. So maybe there is just cultural difference in ways how to achieve that goal.

@Gordon, backers got so angry that they visited the local distribution, attacked the people there and had to be reprimanded by legal means and law enforcement. It is the typical example of what success can produce: total loss... (there is plenty of other examples, just from kickstarter).

Luckily, in the case of Pine 64, it did not end completely this way... today there seems to exist a tight knitted and excited community that enjoys the products produced and available, and the community is 'friendly and open' willing to live with all the setbacks, delays and other challenges that come with open, 'bleeding' edge of hackable hight tech gadgets, as cheap as possible, and a lot of individual contributions... https://www.pine64.org/

Reading the history of Raspberry Pi, it could have ended with it the same way... but it did not... thanks to warm bodies that kept pushing forward the torch with great passion and personal effort.

Ahh, that's a shame. Glad it's worked out in the end though - I met the Pine64 folks at FOSDEM and they seemed like a really nice bunch, so I doubt any issues were intentional on their part.