Announcing the Sensor Watch Pro Campaign Pre-launch
Big news this month: the Sensor Watch Pro prelaunch is live at Crowd Supply! Read the full update.
Sensor Watch Lite shipping soon — check your shipping details!
Sensor Watch Lite is in manufacturing even as we speak, and the first 500 boards will ship out to Mouser in the coming days! Read the full update.
Opening a New Chapter & Closing the Books on the Original Sensor Watch
The big news: as of today, we are taking orders for a new version of Sensor Watch. It’s called Sensor Watch Lite, and it’s a simplified, streamlined design that removes the 9-pin connector and moves the temperature sensor onto the board itself. It’s available for pre-order now and will ship this summer. Read the full update.
All Boards Shipping, Lessons Learned, and a Fork in the Road for Sensor Watch
First off, the big news: as you read this email, ALL Sensor Watch boards have been fully tested, packed, shipped and delivered to Mouser Electronics, Crowd Supply’s fulfillment partner. Read the full update.
Green Boards Shipping, Battery Life Updates and Other News of the Watch
Hi all! Joey here. Good news to report: the first batch of Sensor Watch boards are about to ship! Mouser now has 384 Sensor Watch boards and 384 temperature sensor boards on hand and ready to ship to the first backers. These boards will be shipping to backers over the next couple weeks. It's a good time to double check your shipping address! Read the full update.
Green Boards Underway, Battery Experiments, and a Teardown Session Tomorrow!
Hey y’all! Joey here. It’s been a minute, but there’s good news on all fronts: boards being built, battery tests looking good, AND you can tune in tomorrow for a Teardown Session livestream at noon Pacific! We've got a lot to cover, so let's get to it. Read the full update.
Good News on the Parts Shortage, Sensor Watch Field Reports, and New Community Watch Faces
Hey all! Joey here. It’s been a wild month. When I last checked in, it was to inform you that the ship date for our microcontroller had slipped from this summer to next spring. Well, there’s been another change: Earlier this month, I arrived at the workshop to discover 1,650 SAM L22 microcontrollers sitting on my bench. The chips have arrived! Read the full update.
Blue Boards Shipping (Check Your Address!), Green Boards Delayed, and Other News of the Watch
Hey y'all! It's been a minute, I know. The weeks have been full of activity: filling out the paperwork and purchasing of all the parts for the big run of Sensor Watch boards, as well as the final sprint to get those first 89 Limited Edition boards out to backers. That included things like assembling and testing the 89 temperature sensor boards, flashing the final version of the Movement firmware, and so much printing and packing. Read the full update.
Flex PCB’s, Sensor Boards, Lower Low Power, and the Solar System on Your Wrist
Over the last few weeks I’ve been iterating on the final design for the temperature sensor board that’s going to come with Sensor Watch. At last I think I have a design I'm happy with, and so this week I gave my PCB fabricator, PCBWay, approval for the first test panel of temperature boards! This update includes a very cool panel rendering of that board and delves into the design of that and other add-on boards. It also covers our recent work to make Sensor Watch even more power efficient and describes two new watch faces: the moon-phase face and the astronomy face! Read the full update.
Sleep Mode, Battery Tests, and a Sunrise/Sunset Simulator
One of the first questions I got about Sensor Watch came up during our Teardown Session, back when we were assembling the first hundred boards. Helen Leigh, Crowd Supply’s Head of Community, asked: “That one-year battery life: is that real?” The short answer is: I think so! The longer answer involves explaining that thinking, and testing it by experiment. Read the full update.
How We Got To Blinky: A Tour of Our Circuit Board
It's funny: I didn't set out to become a watchmaker, or for that matter to build wearable tech. I didn't get into hardware for the gadgets at all. I got into it because I wanted to understand the objects that surround us. We live in a world where slabs of glass and silicon arrive fully formed in our lives, and there's a temptation to view them as magic. But there's no such thing as magic: every gadget that is was made, and made by folks like you and me. That means that they can be understood by folks like you and me. Read the full update.
Week Three: Coding a New Watch Face & Another Bike Ride
The plan for this week's post was to walk through creating a useful watch face for Movement from scratch, just to show off how the process works. The problem I had was I didn't have a great idea for a watch face. Then I went to bike home, and the battery in my flashing red taillight was dead... Read the full update.
Week Two: Your Questions, My Questions, and a Camping Trip
We answer backer questions and go camping with Sensor Watch. (Also, a reminder that I’ll be live-streaming a Teardown Session with Helen Leigh of Crowd Supply tomorrow, Friday, January 21st, at 12:00 noon PST!) Read the full update.
Fully Funded in 23 Hours! What’s next?
Y'all, that was fast! In just 23 hours, 236 backers pledged $10,010 to bring Sensor Watch into this world — and those numbers keep climbing. Over 300 of you have ordered a watch, and some of you have ordered two! I’m blown away by the interest in this humble project, and so grateful to everyone who pledged their support to make Sensor Watch real. To be honest, I imagined this first update would be a longer deep dive into some of features of the watch, but we’ll move that to next week. For now, just a quick update about where we are and what comes next. (Also, if you’d like to see a demonstration of the latest features of the watch, I’ll be joining Adafruit’s weekly Show and Tell this evening—Wednesday, January 12th—at 7:30 PM EST. Come check it out!) Read the full update.
Our Campaign Is Now Live on Crowd Supply!
It's been a year in coming, but at last: you can back Sensor Watch on Crowd Supply and get one of your own! Sensor Watch is a board swap for the classic Casio F-91W wristwatch. It replaces the standard quartz movement with a brainy ARM Cortex M0+ microcontroller, the Microchip SAM L22, and a flexible accessory port for adding different kinds of sensors to the watch. With its extremely low power draw and classic LCD display, Sensor Watch lets you wear a hackable technology platform all year long (estimated) without recharging or replacing a battery. Read the full update.