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I just got a few 51822 boards, all with 16K RAM (same story: seller claimed QFAC). Can you tell me what to define/comment out so I can make a minimal working build? I'm hoping to use them as simple bluetooth switches.

It's hard to read all this and not jump to Bangle's defense. It does seem like your experience is not ideal, and that must be disappointing. But I don't believe the BangleJS line were meant to replace Pebbles at all. It is first and foremost a programmable microcontroller you can wear. The fact that it has evolved an ecosystem that can be compared to Pebble's is quite impressive. To fault it for not achieving Pebble's equal seems unfair to me.

The battery issue is concerning, and maybe others are having similar issues, but mine lasts over a week (admittedly with modest use). As for the button, I've read about a few having issues, yes. Gordon has worked with folks to fix or replace those.

For me it's rekindled a desire to create simple software, experiment with rudimentary UI and learn a ton about microcontrollers and their capabilities (and their limitations).

I believe that is more of its intended use.

Thanks for all these great improvements! Looking forward to trying them out.

You can never brick a Bangle2. It's an involved process though, you'll need a special USB connector (USB Female on one end, exposed 4 wires on the other) and connect the 4 wires to an SWD-capable dongle or device (like an ST-Link or Raspberry pi).

I would do as fanoush suggests: see if you can use nrfConnect on an android device or from a PC first.

and yes, my thought was sunset Bangle 1, and use this as Bangle 3 (only supporting B2 and B3). It's darn impossible to find ONE watch to make everyone happy, with these two you cover a lot of ground.

BTW: the TK78G has a 405mAh battery inside (likely to accommodate for all the sensors) and 64Mb (8MB) SPI flash. I've mapped quite a few pins so far, but I am not an electrical engineer so I am likely missing some step to get SPI Flash working (like setting, resetting or toggling some pin). I've found 10 pins on the LCD/touch panel connector and am running through those permutations when I can.

How did you get the firmware on yours? Did you have to crack it open?

Yes. I've opened several watches now, and this one is not too bad. Hair dryer to heat the screen edges, then a plastic spudge to loosen the screen.

I am open to bringing support for more watches into the main Espruino project if it doesn't mess the code around too much

Some of jeffmer's solutions use a modified spi_lcd_unbuf to accommodate shared SPI between LCD and Flash chip, but that looks like it's only a few #ifdefs to make it happen. He also exposes a function that lets you send init commands to the LCD from Espurino, so custom init sequences don't require custom firmware.

...you can still run apps from the main app store

Mostly you can, obviously with some exceptions for watches that don't have barometer, GPS, etc. but he has a "Bangle" object that honours many functions, and that can be embellished.

If the plan is to use an existing watch for a base, I'll just toss in the TK78G: https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb­=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&tab=all&S­earchText=tk78g It may be on the way out (it's mostly disappeared from AliExpress) but it has some features that make it an interesting blend of B1 and B2: NRF52840, two physical buttons, GPS, Thermometer (external), heart rate sensor, accelerometer, touch screen and a nice 1.6" screen. I have it running Espruino right now (in the process of RE the screen and sensors). It may not replace the B2's always-on display, but it may be a replacement for B1?

Thanks, Gordon. I rebuilt with that, and erased the flash (.eraseAll()) and it seems to work better, but it still seems to choke on larger files (5k or so). A file that works when sent to RAM will throw an error like:

Uncaught ReferenceError: "retur" is not defined
 at line 1 col 1036
...
                              ^
in function "connect" called from line 1 col 410
...
                              ^
in function "GC9A01" called from line 1 col 29
GC9A01(D25, D3, D2, D18, D26);
                            ^
>

as if the keyword "return" were incomplete; but as I said, it IS complete, and works when sent to RAM.
After this point, trying to list files shows an empty list; but if I "reset()", the file list is restored.

It's like it goes to sleep and can't wake up at some point! Insomniac flash.

Hey all, I've put Espruino on a smartwatch (SN80-Y from Yfit) and have figured out most of the pins and components (lcd, accel, touch) but am having trouble getting the XTX XT25F32B (4MB flash) chip to be reliable. Verified the following pins using multimeter: CS=D19, SO=D18, SI=D17, CLK=D20. Doing a wakeup, followed by getting vendor ID and capacity seems fine:

>  spif = new SPI();
=SPI: {  }
>  spif.setup({sck: CLK, miso: SO, mosi: SI, mode:0, baud: 8000000});
=undefined
>  spif.send([0xab], CS);
=new Uint8Array([255])
>  print(spif.send([0x90,0,0,1,0,0], CS));
new Uint8Array([255, 255, 255, 255, 21, 11])
=undefined
>  print(spif.send([0x9f,0,0,0], CS));
new Uint8Array([254, 11, 64, 22])
=undefined

That seems fine:22 at the end should mean 2^22 bits, or 4MB. So i've included it in my board file. In the devices section I have:

  'SPIFLASH' : {
            'pin_sck' : 'D20',
            'pin_mosi' : 'D17',
            'pin_miso' : 'D18',
            'pin_cs' : 'D19',
            'size' : 4096*1024, # 4MB
            'memmap_base' : 0x60000000 # map into the address space (in software)
  }

And when flashed I see:

>require("Storage").getFree()
=4194304

I then use this test script just to read the first few blocks of 256 bytes:

CS=D19, SO=D18; SI=D17; CLK=D20;

setTimeout(()=>{
  spif = new SPI();
  spif.setup({sck: CLK, miso: SO, mosi: SI, mode:0, baud: 8000000});
  spif.send([0xab], CS);
  print(spif.send([0x90,0,0,1,0,0], CS));
  print(spif.send([0x9f,0,0,0], CS));
  let hex = (d) => { return ('0'+d.toString(16)).slice(-2);};
  let buf = new Uint8Array(256);

  // 3 byte address: 0x7f 0xff 0xff (0x7f = 8MB, 0x3f = 4MB, 0x1f = 2MB)
  for(let b1=0; b1 < 1; b1++) {
    for(let b2=0; b2 < 5; b2++) {
      let bufstr = '';
      for(let b3 = 0; b3 < 256; b3++) {
        res = spif.send([0x03, b1, b2, b3, 0], CS);
        buf[b3] = res[4];
        bufstr += ("0"+buf[b3].toString(16)).slice(-2)+" ";
      }
      print(`${hex(b1)} ${hex(b2)} ${hex(b3)}: ${bufstr}`); //${btoa(buf)}`);

    }
  }
}, 1000);

The timeout was added because I was running into issues without it. This seems to work if I save it to RAM, as I get data (remnants from previous attempts to write):

new Uint8Array([255, 255, 255, 255, 21, 11])
new Uint8Array([254, 11, 64, 22])
00 00 00: 04 04 00 00 54 45 53 54 ...
00 01 00: 64 65 65 70 20 73 6c 65 ...
00 02 00: 4c 4b 7d 20 20 41 42 3d ...
00 03 00: 70 69 66 2e 73 65 6e 64 ...

In the first line you can see the ASCII for "TEST" which was the name of the file I attempted to write in the IDE.
So the problem is when I try to save the test code to Storage (or Flash):

|  __|___ ___ ___ _ _|_|___ ___
|  __|_ -| . |  _| | | |   | . |
|____|___|  _|_| |___|_|_|_|___|
         |_| espruino.com
 2v12.925 (c) 2021 G.Williams
Espruino is Open Source. Our work is supported
only by sales of official boards and donations:
http://espruino.com/Donate
>
FW addr 0x00000000 fail
Status 0
Uncaught Error: File already written with different data
 at line 1 col 1106
...{\n    for(let b2=0",0,1349);
                              ^
Uncaught Error: Too much data for file size
 at line 2 col 380
...    }\n  }\n}, 1000);",1024);
                              ^
 ____                 _
|  __|___ ___ ___ _ _|_|___ ___
|  __|_ -| . |  _| | | |   | . |
|____|___|  _|_| |___|_|_|_|___|
         |_| espruino.com
 2v12.925 (c) 2021 G.Williams
Espruino is Open Source. Our work is supported
only by sales of official boards and donations:
http://espruino.com/Donate
new Uint8Array([112, 105, 102, 46, 115, 101])
new Uint8Array([32, 104, 101, 120])
Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected end of Input
 at line 42 col 18 in TEST
    for(let b3 =
                 ^
> 

The other notable thing is that the CLK and SI lines are shared with the LCD (also SPI) and the accelerometer (I2C). However, I have not initialized either of those. In other tests, LCD works fine as does the accel, but I'm trying to leave out any issues with line sharing.

Any pointers greatly appreciated!

Burned how?

@fanoush figured out the issue. The display driver uses D9, which is an NFC pin for the nrf52832. Solution was covered in another conversation as a temporary measure, and to compile the firmware with the special tag ('DEFINES += -DCONFIG_NFCT_PINS_AS_GPIOS',) to let the NFC tags be treated as normal GPIOs.

I'm hoping some folks here with more experience can give me some direction here. I have an nrf52832 smartwatch that I have ported Espruino to, and the core runs fine. I used some Espruino tools and a multimeter to figure out what pins are used on the display cable. I verified those by checking the GPIO setup and state while running the original firmware (using openocd to dump 0x50000700 and SPIM2). I believe I have CLK,MOSI,DC,CS,RST correct, and I am 99% sure it's a GC9A01 since my test code lights up both the SN80 and GW32 watches (both GC9A01). But my code does not work on this board. I figured there may be an ENable pin, so i walked through EVERY remaining pin: setting, resetting, pulling up/down before initializing and still get nothing. The backlight is on but I get no other visuals (even on other boards, if you get the pins right you see something: static, blurred pixels...).

My question: is there anything else a GC9A01 (or any small display controller) may need just to fire up? Something like special timings for the RST (right now I'm pulsing it with 50ms in between, then waiting 120ms before initialization).?

Any input or direction would be greatly appreciated... it would be nice to have Espruino fully running on this. Thanks.

wish I could "like" this message.... oh! wait.....

This is a boutique "oddity" gift. There's a market for that....

Maybe I could even have a wifi-connection in it.
Well, there goes your battery! ;-) Actually I think the Puck would be perfect for this. Press the button to start BLE, download to phone, back to low power data collection. And adding the humidity sensor shouldn't affect the footprint.

I've narrowed down a bug to when I use Esprima's Mangle to shorten variable names (other minification options don't generate the error).

I'm seeing an error in the Bangle emulator when I execute this:

// works fine
g.clear();

function dothis() {
  g.clear();
}

function test(one, two, three, four, five) {
  let arrTmp = 0; //new Uint8Array(12);
  for(let i=0; i<1; i++) {}
  
  // fails
  g.clear();
  dothis();
}

test();

I'm getting this error:

>Uncaught Error: Function "clear" not found!
 at line 1 col 23
let a=0;for(let g=0;g<1;g++);g.clear(),dothis()
                               ^
in function "test" called from line 1 col 92
...(),dothis()}g.clear(),test()
                              ^

You can see that it changed the loop variable to 'g' , which should still be a local variable, but it clearly affects Bangle's 'g'.

However, if you do any one of the following, the error goes away and the Bangle 'g' is fine:

• if you comment out g.clear() and use the "dothis()" function instead
  
• if you comment out the "let arrTmp" assignment
  
• if you comment out the empty for loop
  
• if you reduce the argument list to 4 items
  
  

Just thought I'd share; not sure whether this is an Esprima bug, or an interpreter bug (a "let g=" within a for loop should be its own scope and not interfere with global context?)

you'll need a buffer for each moving part (which could eat a lot of memory on Bangle1), set timeouts to loop through each "frame", calculating coordinates to copy from buffer to the lcd, and you may see some lag & jitter as you're asking the little cpu to do a lot of work (assuming Bangle1 again).

Bangle2 is more capable of this and could probably handle the ones you've shared fine. which watch are you targeting?

you flashed a hex file intended for a different board. The Rock is an nrf52840, which has more SRAM, flash and thus different addresses for DFU entry points, etc. So your board is in an unknown state, you'll need a full build of Magic3 with bootloader and soft device as a .hex file. Are you set up to do your own builds?

BTW: the Rock is not an officially supported Espruino board, you won't find any firmware for it here.

Agreed.... on both counts!

with a combination of online meeting tools / screen sharing, and the Web IDE relay, you can probably still teach them remotely?

A survey would indeed help shape JS3 into what most current users would like to see. And having the older alternatives is good for those who want the specialty items (like the barometer, or full color LCD). It depends on what Bangle's intended use really is.. a smart watch for hackers, or a hackable smart watch (they sound similar, but they're different!)

Myself, I am into the visual, and would enjoy the screen to be physically larger, hopefully without making the case TOO much larger. That would help touch screen behaviour as well. With more pixels (240x240 or greater) one can forgive the lack of colors (as anti-aliasing would be less necessary). I found the 64 color screen on the DK08 to be fantastic, if a tad too small and (sadly) low contrast (watches must be visible INDOORS on cloudy, dark Canadian "days"!)

That said, I also want to thank Gordon (and team!) for the fantastic work they've done and continue to do. I will certainly be a Kickstarter when the BJ3 is ready.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hldJC7V­xSTJEAsg58bTm_5uf5vYUMxqG/view?usp=drive­sdk
Up at the top under some foam, you'll see the 4 pins. from left to right: IO, CLK, 3.3, GND. Good to test them first though. If you leave the battery connected, you don't need to use the 3.3v.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XsxoQC_­5yIpBad0jxVS1WACeJpYWmc6P/view?usp=shari­ng

sorry should have warned you about the fake screws....

Not sure how your Rock/Brick turned out, but if it's still bricked, consider opening the watch. The Rock is VERY simple to open, then you can use SWD to flash new firmware.

That's some nice work there, thank you for that! I have a hopefully easy Q. I am simply trying to identify the display that I have, a round 1.3" (probably a GC9A01) but I don't think I've got the read part of spi correct. I'm trying to ure spi.send:
let c = new Uint8Array([4,0,0,0]); JSON.stringify(SPI1.send(c,CS)); assuming SPI1 and CS are initialized correctly, should that code return the manufacturer information (command is 0x4, returns 4 bytes)?
I've tried it on a known GC9A01 and it doesn't work. Bad syntax? Do I need to lower DC? any help appreciated!