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Gordon, the bangle.js2 software could literally power 10s or 100s of watches [...]
Espruino was originally created as a way to bring together a bunch of third party hardware that was otherwise hard to program, but I had to swap to selling hardware
In my opinion, for consumer hardware like this smartwatches selling the hardware is the only option for having good support. Consumer hardware manufacturers don't care about third party software. The model names doesn't mean anything, except the same external design and similar features. This happens with things like routers, you end looking for specific revisions of what is supposed to be the same model, probably looking for old revisions as you don't know if newer ones would work (or you know that don't). You don't know the specific revision of the device sold over the Internet, not even the seller cares which revision it is.
I no doubt prefer Gordon selling the watch. In addition to funding the development, he, buying way higher number than we could, can get the correct revisions. If only a new revision is available he can port the code for the exact revision he starts to sell. I'm tired of running free software on half working devices. If I need a new watch I would buy Bangle.js 2 again until Gordon moves to a new device.
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adjtm
I'd have liked that too, and Espruino was originally created as a way to bring together a bunch of third party hardware that was otherwise hard to program, but I had to swap to selling hardware because staggeringly few people were willing to pay anything for it (we're talking me making $30 in an entire year)
I'm sure there are one or two people like you that might support it, but the reality is that the majority of people wouldn't - and as I mentioned in my post above, the process of flashing software to these watches isn't always entirely reliable, and I don't want to be held responsible if/when it doesn't work and the watch is bricked.
This is a pretty good start:
https://jeffmer.github.io/WatchApps/
https://github.com/jeffmer/WatchApps