- Oh, God, this is it. A smartwatch, but it just, ah,
Oh yeah, look, there it is. It's still keeping time, wearables. Some of them are okay, but
a lot of them are less okay between their un-intuitive interfaces patchy app compatibility,
subpar battery life and nasty habit of phoning
home with all of your most intimate details. It is no wonder that someone
finally said it, forget this. I'm gonna build my own
smartwatch with blackjack. And with this message from
our sponsor Smartdeploy enables IT admins to
manage PCs from the cloud. You can push windows, apps, bios, updates and security patches to any device without leaving your desk. Get your exclusive free software worth over $800 @smartdeploy.com/linus (upbeat music) I'm gonna be upfront. We didn't do this whole thing on our own. In fact, all we really
did was print ourselves a neat watch case and wrist strap. But what's cool about this project is that we could make this
watch if we wanted to. Both the hardware and the software are completely open source. And the name of the project you ask? I'm glad you did. It's Open Source Smartwatch. It's a good name. Paul Smith, the lead is a
full stack cloud developer by day maker by night. And you might think that someone who works in cloud computing would
have wanted every aspect of their project to
synchronize with cloud servers but it's actually quite the opposite while wearables might
not be on your radar. The biggest tech giants in the
world have latched onto them. And for good reason besides being an ever-present
link to your smartphone they're the perfect opportunity to load somebody up with sensors. And while those sensors can
do extremely valuable things like measure your heart
rate or your movement the unseen bonus for these tech companies is
the absolute treasure trove of data that can be harvested from them. That is what made Paul so uncomfortable. Starting back in 2018 then he began with an E ink
display, an older ESP module and a handful of surface mount components. The first test meal might not have been the prettiest thing in the world, but it was clearly a strong start because look where we are
just a few short years later like, look at this thing. It's a little on the bulky
side, but damn it's wearable you know, like, cause
it's a wearable, get it. But I just mean it's not
luggable like it's wearable a little rough around the edges, literally like, Oh, but there it is. The goal was to make
a watch that supported modern conveniences,
GPS, maps and tracking but stored the data
locally on a micro SD card. And Paul has actually
got all of that going. But the version that I'm
wearing is the Light Edition. That means no GPS or SD expansion but it also means a smaller
PCB and therefore body size as far as the software goes,
there are a few watch faces and some hardware demos,
but that's about it. Now the late edition here
started out as a side quest but has become a pretty popular
one just a few days ago. PCB manufacturer really go made a trial run of these watch assemblies
that sold out within minutes. And that bonds really well
for getting this hardware into the hands of a community
of people that will build upon Paul's work and to
develop new software for it. But then let's say they do that. What would you get? Every part of our watch is 3D printed. Even the flexible strap,
which before we did this video I didn't even know that you could print such
like rugged, flexible things. That's super neat. At first glance here, we've got a 200 by 200
pixel round IPS display. Of course it's not quite 4,000
pixels because it's round but it looks pretty good
from all angles and has more than ample brightness below
that we've got four buttons and a micro USB port for
data transfer and charging. The top left button is reset. Then the other three are utility buttons that vary depending on
what app you're using. And I got to say, I am so
glad to see hardware buttons, like I use my pebble
time for music control when I'm on my motorcycle and
it's like tactile buttons. Hello, sometimes I wear gloves, On this one then if we long
pressed the lower left button, like so, we get a little
white square that pops up and then on release, we change pages. So far, they're only six pages. The watch face, a stopwatch, a connection test to link
to the wifi you configured, a ball and crosshair test
for the accelerometer. This can kind of pass for a game, right? How long can you hold your arm level? And finally, some system info. Paul was also nice enough
to do a costume page for us that actually plays our
intro, which is super neat. It has some issues you can actually see there's a bit of artifacting in the beginning of the animation but considering he slapped
this together in 20 minutes I think I'll give him a pass. Now because it's not all sealed up with an insane amount of adhesive. All we have to do to take
it apart is remove... Again we can get the strap working and then all we have to do
is take off these four screws to show you what's inside. I fixed it score 10 out of 10. Just like the shirts@ttstore.com we'll make you a 10 out of 10. Do you know what I mean? Okay, so we just gotta
give it a little pop up. Ooh, there's the screen. Ooh, gotta be careful. All right, here we go. So under the screen you find
the brains of the operation or well, okay. Actually it's on the underside of this. Oh, good Lord. Okay, I've completely ruined it Colin. - [Colin] Why would you do that? - All the buttons fell out there it is. That right there is the open smartwatch PCB in all of its glory. It's just 36 millimeters in diameter. So that's 1.4 inches for you Liberians and it's heart is this tiny
little chip right here. The TTGO 32 micro it's a
system and package module based on the ESP 32 made by expressive. The ESP line of chips
has absolutely surged in popularity lately due to their low cost, large feature set and diminutive size. This one in particular
is actually even smaller than most of them. About half the area of a normal ESP 32 measuring it just 13.3
by 19.2 millimeters. And this tiny powerhouse
is an absolute bargain at around $7. Not only is it a very capable processor if you can even run Python on it it has built in wifi and
Bluetooth and a huge variety of open source tools and
libraries to build upon. So it's a logical choice for someone who's bootstrapping a small device like this one, we've actually been using
a relative of this guy in some of our own projects here at LG. Now we're not gonna go too
deep into the PCB design here because frankly we're not qualified. However, the fine folks
over@hackstar.io have written an excellent breakdown
of this entire board. So if you want to dive into the components we're going to have that
linked in the comments for you. To keep it simple though this light version of
the open smartwatch packs a barometer, triaxial
accelerometer, a real-time clock and all of the power
conversion and charging ICs that are needed to keep
this thing running. And run it will. In fact by Paul's calculations
before 450 million power a single cell lipo down here should give you up to
50 days of sleep time due to all the power conserving features that are built into the
board and the software. Although of course feature
clip leg, you know, say, for example, watch faces that are more than just
a thing moving like this are probably going to reduce that. And guys, that is it,
that's the whole thing. At least for the electronic side of it. Full proof of concept, we pulled
down some of the CAD files project and gave them a go ourselves in our Prusa SL1 resin
printer and made this case which is variant that
supports 20 millimeters spring pin watchbands
and whoop, well, okay. We've got the tolerance
is off just a little bit on that one, but Hey, generally speaking it feels a lot more
finished cause like man, rather than those resin printers like basically feels so good by the way, if you guys
are into 3D printing, get subscribed because we have some really cool stuff in the works. We are making a case and we're actually checking
out a chocolate printer. Now of course, for the
average consumer today the open smartwatch, isn't
very smart, really at all. It doesn't even have
on risk notifications. So pretty much all it
does is tell the time which means you might be wondering why we bothered to feature
it online as tech tips. The reason is that we
really like Paul's Moxie. Paul thinks that you should
at least have the choice to keep your data to yourself. And we want to see this
project become a success. Yeah, there's no app store, but there's also no micro-transactions, no monthly access plans
and no cloud phoning home. Just a cool tech project
that we are rooting for along with other similar
ones, like the pine time, which has made by the same folks that brought us the pine foam
that you saw in short circuit and the Watchy both of
those are also open source. These sorts of projects
hardly ever get the same sort of traction that big consumer box can bring to a device. But it's really important to
us that they continue to exist. So guys, if you've got the
time and you've got the skills reach out to the developers
in the link below if you want to help them move forward. And while you're down,
looking at the links below maybe move forward with
building your own website with our sponsors, Squarespace. With Squarespace it's easy
to make your own website and it can do almost anything. They've got award-winning templates. That'll help make your website stand out. Instead of looking like
it's from the '90s. And if you're looking to
open a business online selling products, they
have you covered there too. Squarespace can help you showcase what you're selling in a modern style. And they've got inventory management with no limit to how
many items you can sell. Even we use Squarespace,
both lensmediagroup.com and LTXexpo.com will built
quickly using Squarespace. Actually we put so little
effort into those sites. Squarespace really is fantastic. And if you get stuck, they've
got a 24/7 support team that is ready to help you out. So go to squarespace.com/LTT
and get 10% off today. We hope you guys enjoy us taking a look at this
neat little watch project. And if you like, sort
of out there wearables why not take a look at our video covering the Nubia Alpha a device that I absolutely loved, even though objectively
speaking just atrocious. It's really bad.
