A programmable watch you can actually wear (opens in new tab)

Biometrics, heart rate and sleep tracking are huge, like 95% of the reason I own a smart watch. It's a sensor, not a UI. Everything else can be done better on a phone.

I turn off notifications (because if I get a message on my watch, what am I going to do with it? watch is basically read-only)

One use that comes up a lot: setting a timer. Being able to ad hoc set timers with your voice is huge - without it, my coffee would get cold, my laundry would stay wet, and my kid would be late because dad got distracted by a HN comment.

Apple Series 3 owner for about 9 years.

1. Notifications. Most useful in noisy environments such as grocery stores, airports, shop floors, or any place you may be wearing hearing protection. Also great while working with your hands, like car work or cooking and directions while driving. It’s best to limit them to the apps that matter, and only when you need them.

2. Biometrics.

However, after this watch finally dies, I don’t think I will be going back. Big reason is smart watches are not stylish at all. For men watches are our only fashion accessory that we can freely wear in all occasions. No matter what band or watch face you use you are stuck with a black square attached to your wrist. Also smart watch battery life is a bit of a bummer, it’s hard to beat self winding or solar powered watches that you never think about changing as long as you wear them.

I run every day. Started doing it for multiple reasons, some of them being health. The watch tells me my pulse, speed, cadence, calories burned. I doubt the numbers are very accurate, but they are consistent, and, probably, not too far off outside of cases of obvious misreading. It also has a way of collecting some data about swimming (which I don't understand, like what is swolf? I know, I could look it up, but I'm a terrible swimmer, so I don't bother).

For people who like to leave their phone in random places around the house, the watch can help in locating it. You can also almost always turn off the alarm on your phone w/o getting out of bed (provided you sleep with your watch on and the phone's bluetooth didn't decide to randomly disconnect).

All this said, I think that smartphones, in general, provide very marginal utility. A little bit of convenience here and there but nothing groundbreaking. If phones had better GPS antennas and a framework to attach devices like pulseox or sphygmomanometer they'd be preferable to the watch because the display is bigger and the input is (slightly) more convenient.

I stopped wearing my Apple Watch because notifications were too distracting when trying to work (even with Work Focus, I want some notifications, but I don’t want my wrist buzzing and lighting up all the time). I don’t miss it. The only real use I ever got was GPS directions when riding a bike or electronic scooter. I guess I also tracked my runs with it. But I don’t use those often enough, and I can wear the watch for those situations if needed.

I do also love the idea, though. I think part of the limiting factor is that you can’t attach sensors or peripherals to it. Even with a hackable watch like in TFA, there’s only so much you could add without it getting bulky. And the screen is too small to do much with.

I switched from Apple Watch to a Garmin Fenix 7, for much longer battery life (advertised as ~14 days, in practice 10-12), durability (they're very tough), better biometrics, and stuff like built-in maps/GPS (I camp/hike/hunt/etc a lot). I just didn't use any watchOS features, and I use an MVNO that doesn't support sim cloning so cellular's a wash. In short even with reduced features I am considering just going back to an old analog Timex Explorer and using a dedicated GPS device, because even the more limited feature set of the Garmin seems like I'm barely using what it's capable of.

Don’t have one capable of it, but listening to music whilst running without a clumsy phone to hold/strap to my arm/put in a silly belt would be awesome.

Same here, loved the idea since I was a kid and I spend a lot more money on gadgets than I probably should but somehow managed to avoid getting a smartwatch because it doesn’t do anything a smartphone does better. I just wear a simple casio solar powered watch I got for about $100 which I never have to charge. I still like the idea of something programmable though, but this watch in OP is a bit too DIY for my tastes.

They're great for doing phone stuff without pulling your phone out of your pocket and unlocking it. I can check if a notification is important, get GPS directions, snooze alarms, get OTP/2FA codes, or check the weather. None of it it is critical but it's collectively a quality of life improvement.

Just two things for me: telling time, same as yourself, and notifying me that my watch has a text message I might want to attend to. If I could replace the notification feature somehow I’d do that.

I used to use it for running but it performs that job very poorly compared to my $200 Garmin.

Lately the only useful thing I get out of it is Auto Unlock my phone when I’m wearing a helmet and gloves.

Some applications that we use in smartphones are very useful, like the alarm clock. I have begrudgingly adapted to their quirks and privacy implications. I'd rather program my own versions, same for smartwatches.

You'd barely pick up anything with a lora antenna that small

an esp32 on an 1100mah battery will last years on deep sleep, and about a day with wifi on and in high power modes.

a pixel watch 4 says they last 30 hours , ambiguously. they use a battery less than half the size. in reality with constant use they'll drop dead in 6 hours.

the thing is clunky and heavy , anyway -- so if it lasts as long as an off the shelf watch who cares?

also, the primary reason : lilygo shoves ESPs into everything.

Yeah one of the Nordic nRF chips would be nice. But I guess the advantage of ESP is the hobby developer community. It's not going to be as good on battery power but the barrier to entry for people wanting to tinker is really low.

What would you suggest instead?

Most of their lora devices are ESP32.

An advantage of ESP32-S3 could be that it seems possible to run Linux on it.

I like your hpdl watch better than the LilyGo watch. As a lover of analog and casio watches I can tell you that your watch can soon build you a loyal following in its current form if you only build 3 such watches and put them on Amazon, etc. and price them at 50$. Next batch of 3 you could try at 100$. Don't worry about glass cover, our local watch repair guy can easily slap one in it

Ok, we'll make the title say programmable instead.

Love it, especially your choice of digit display. Very nice hack! I'd wear that.

This is mean-spirited and daft.

This is a product aimed at a very specific hobbyist segment of the smart tinkerer, who will probably get more joy out of it than most buyers get out of their Apple Watch. Is that a smaller market? Yes. That doesn't make it a bad product.

This watch shares a lot of visual characteristics with something like the original Casio GShock. Just because it doesn't look like a modern smart-watch, doesn't mean it's ugly. I quite like the rugged aesthetic.

Where you can buy pinetine for 40$?

the same for me, however I can imagine that creating a good sleep analysing software based on the hypothethical HRM and accelerometer is mission impossible. I find the best software is Garmin at the moment of writing, or at least suits me well, and it blocks me from buying any opensource watch, unless I want to have two watches on my hands

The Sensor Watch circuit board [1] inside the case of a Casio F91-W / A158W / A159W satisfies 2, 4, 5, and 6. Accelerometer or thermometer available as daughterboard. Battery life measured in months, if not years. Although the simple LED backlight and the segmented LCD leaves a bit to be desired, and there is no wireless connectivity for notifications. Open source firmware.

The Ollee watch circuit board [2] is similar, better backlight but closed-source firmware and configuration over BLE in a smartphone app. Still no notifications over BLE though.

I'd think combining 1 and 6 (O₂ monitoring and waterproofing) would be difficult.

[1]: https://www.sensorwatch.net/

[2]: https://www.olleewatch.com/

Well as a pebble evangelist I have great news! The heartrate sensor on the PT2 can also do O2 monitoring, they’re planning on implementing it in the future :)

Fitbit Inspire3 ?

It had a Bosch motion sensor with AI abilities it says in the description.

There's an older "Plus" model available on Amazon.[1] Surprisingly cheap, at US$66. This new model is the "Ultra".

It's amazing that the market is big enough to get the price that low.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/LILYGO-T-Watch-S3-Development-SX1280-...

September 18, 2020. That's when Apple released their Watch Series 6, which has an always on color display, and enough battery to last all day.

A Garmin memory-in-pixel eInk (MIP) watch? Lots of choices there, since about 2015. Modern versions (MIP not AMOLED, the category is getting confusing) last about 10 days on a charge.

Watches with color memory-in-pixel displays have existed since Pebble.

Bad.

I would consider a DIY mechanical/analog watch to be far bigger news/more impressive than a smartwatch.

Watchy fits the bill:

https://watchy.sqfmi.com/

I have one, its a bit bulkier than I'd thought it would be, but its a fine piece of timekeeping ..

The peripherals are great until you realize there's a dirth of software to use with them .. like, GPS is fun and everything, but not if all you've got is the coordinates ..

I really love the idea of LoRA in a watch though, so I hope that once this gets shipped, the software makes some leaps and bounds ..

That stood out to me, too. Garmin should take a hint.

It's an ESP32, it has wifi.

Oddly, the article didn't mention it - but the watch does have wifi.

Have you looked at the specs for the upcoming PineTime Pro [1]?

[1] https://pine64.org/2026/03/28/pinetime_march_2026/

> newer ones are encrypted/signed/locked-down

I have a garmin watch and didn't know this.

That said, I just used it out of the box, and never (on purpose) hooked it to wifi, bluetooth, garmin connect, etc. Can't do that with an apple watch.

I have a garmin from the late 90s and am saddened by the lack of FOSS software to even sync a new map onto it