Watchy the E-Paper "Smartwatch"

2021-06-17

I have received my e-paper smartwatch that I ordered back in February, the Watchy. The original estimated ship date was the end of May and it arrived only 10 days after that estimated date. Not bad at all!

Watchy next to my Pebble Time Steel

Overview

Watchy is a fully open source, arduino compatible, ESP32 powered watch. Many will consider the key feature to be the e-paper display. The ESP32 microcontroller is also an important piece as it provides some pretty hefty processing power as well as Bluetooth and Wifi connectivity.

Assembly

The watch comes unassembled but the process is not too difficult. Plug in the display and battery, apply some adhesive and snap it together. Unfortunately, my case does not seem to want to stay securely snapped shut at the top.

Usage and Functionality

This is an area I have not explored much yet. Being a hacker type device it is also very open ended and up to what you want to make it do. The default sketch that comes with it is a fairly passive display of the time and some other info. I have swapped the default watchface out for one that just shows the time, date, battery meter and step count. There is a little menu that lets you test some of the hardware and set the time.

Final Thoughts

Who is this for? Well, hackers and tinkerers mostly. It's not going to be up to most people's standards as an end user device. It requires assembly. The case is a little flimsy. The display is really cool though. It's e-paper and e-paper is one of the coolest kinds of non-lit displays. It really does look like ink on paper and is just as readable in any lighting condition as black ink on a white piece of paper. The default sketch only wakes up once every minute to refresh the display with the current time and steps or whatever else it is showing. This means that it is using an extremely minuscule amount of power 99% of the time because it's in standby mode. The claim is 5-7 days of runtime and that appears to be pretty accurate so far. Watchy also is keeping accurate time so far which is pretty important for a watch.

My watchy has a case defect where the top clip does not stay fastened so the front pops off at the slightest nudge. This could and probably will be remedied with a replacement case or a 3d printed case of a different design. Even still, I don't see this ever becoming a watch I would wear regularly. With zero water resistance, I just would never feel comfortable even washing my hands with it on. This isn't to say I'm disappointed or unhappy with the Watchy. The price was pretty low and I knew what I was getting. Which is a completely open hardware and software e-paper watch made for hacking on and playing with. There is some really good potential here with the ESP32 and I think I will end up finding something cool to do with it eventually. For now, it's just a very cool demonstration piece waiting for a good idea.

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