Infringement

Hey. I was looking at watches on another site, and they have a watch that is the bangle.js but under another name.

https://www.boltwatches.com/products/tactical-military-watch-5

The Bangle is an existing smartwatch running custom firmware. DT No1 F18, looks like it's missing now from the manufacturer's site, but for example it's here too: https://www.smartwatchspecifications.com/Products/no-1-f18-sports-smartwatch/ the images show the stock firmware.

Hi - thanks for letting us know - but as @AkosLukacs points out, we actually use an off the shelf watch and just put our firmware on it - so this is just someone selling that watch.

If there was someone else selling hardware that ran Espruino, while potentially it may not be illegal depending on what they've done (as Espruino is open source) it'd definitely be good to know!

Thanks for the links! Now I know that my Bangle.js is a programmable tactical military watch with a sapphire 3D-glass and fitness tracker functions :)
Actually, it sounds cool!

Why sell a watch if you only change the firmware?

I do not agree with such a wording. To begin with, a lot of work was done on the choice of a suitable donor watch. Was conducted reverse engineering. As a result, I as a consumer got completely ready-to-work smart watch on Espruino + support and software updates for a specific watch model.

Honestly, I personally have no time to do this. I think, like many other users. And this information (with the donor) was known from the very beginning.

Yes, it makes perfect sense to do it like that. If you invest lot of effort to port Espruino to it and polish everything then you want to keep them in stock so you have easy and supported way for the customers to get it. Makes no sense to do it in any other way. The question is weird.

Sat 2021.06.12

re post #5: 'Why sell a watch if you only change the firmware?'

I believe you answered this very question three months ago:

Can I display a bitmap on top of another bitmap?
so, I want it to draw a clock face

Changing the firmware allows the user the ability to modify the original functionality to that of what one desires, as in your case the desire to create a unique new clock face.

Why sell a watch if you only change the firmware?

There's another side to this as well - even if you don't consider any of the work done on the software worth supporting, actually writing the firmware on to the device in the first place can be a real pain.

Trying to update the firmware wirelessly involves several steps, including patching the original bootloader. Even though we've done well over 5000 watches so far, we still end up 'bricking' almost 1 in 10 and have to open them and manually reflash them.

Reflashing with hardware requires quite a lot of setup and ideally the purchase of a $40 nRF52DK board

I think unless you really want the experience of flashing your own device and don't mind spending time on it, it makes quite a lot of sense to buy a Bangle.js rather than doing it yourself.