LILYGO T-Watch S3 is an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth LE smartwatch with LoRa connectivity, and other interesting features such as an RTC, audio support, a vibration motor, and an infrared transmitter to control home appliances.
The watch integrates a 1.54-inch color LCD display with capacitive touch, a button to turn on and off the device, and a USB port to charge the included 400 mAh battery. The T-Watch S3 sells in silver or “gun color” with a black wrist strap.
T-Watch S3 specifications:
- Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 dual-core Tensilica LX7 @ up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration, 512KB RAM, 8MB PSRAM, 16MB flash, WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity
- Connectivity
- 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 (802.11 b/g/n)
- Bluetooth LE 5.0
- Semtech SX1262 LoRa RF transceiver: 433 MHz, 868 MHz, 915 MHz
- Display – 1.54-inch 16-bit color LCD display with 240×240 resolution, capacitive touch; ST7789V SPI controller
- Audio – Built-in PDM microphone, MAX98357A class-D amplifier
- USB – 1x Micro USB OTG port
- Sensor – BMA423 3-axis acceleration sensor
- Misc
- Power button (2S press: ON; 6S press: OFF)
- RTC
- DRV2605 haptic driver motor
- IR transmitter
- Power Supply
- Battery – 400mAh
- AXP2101 PMIC
- Dimensions – Watch face: 47.45 x 40 x 13 mm; strap: 272mm long
- Weight – TBD
The company mentions support for the Arduino IDE, ESP-IDF, VS Code, and MicroPython, but the TTGO T-Watch Library on GitHub only comes with Arduino samples. Those include the factory testing program, and plenty of code samples for the display, LoRa connectivity, LVGL library, audio playback, the built-in IR transmitter, the RTC, vibration motor, and so on.
LILYGO has been making ESP32 smartwatches for several years starting with the “T-Watch 2019” with a really thick design, but shortly following with more refined designs, and various new features. The T-Watch S3 is the first model to support LoRa connectivity and offers the most features from audio support to RTC.
LILYGO is selling the T-Watch S3 on Aliexpress for about $47 including shipping.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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What these products have been missing for the last 3-4 years is a common software project to run on it. Users are not necessarily willing to spend 30 week-ends of coding around code samples to implement basic stuff such as displaying the time of day and entering power saving mode to avoid having to recharge it every 6 hours. LilyGo should really start an opensource project which supports basic features that their customers might expect from this device (hint: try to make use of the hardware capabilities), and only once their software makes the hardware basically usable they can expect to receive contributions that will improve the product. It would also help them decide what components to add or remove depending on the difficulties faced. Look at the TS100 soldering iron for example. If it were sold just with random samples showing how to read a button and how to print something on the screen, it would never have worked. It was sold as a working product, and only then some wanted to improve it by rewriting the software. Here you buy a watch and you just have a tiny programmable computer comparable to a Wio terminal, that’s not very interesting to start with. I bought one in 2020, it’s still in its box because I’ve never had the time to develop the most basic applications to make the device less useless…
Maybe some variation of the PineTime application? Port that to get at least a functional watch, at any rate.
I would actually hope that meshtastic can be ported, (only missing the gps chip, but that can be provided by the phone companion app -as for other lora devices-, and you need the app to send messages anyway).
It would even be better if meshtastic was an background task, on the available watch software, so you can use it as a watch and receive any LORA messages, and then connect with you phone to send messages back.
“1x USB Type-C OTG port”
Sadly, I think this isn’t so.
Can someone confirm whether this is really micro USB instead of type-c? This would be an odd choice for a newly designed device! Maybe this is just an error (but in two places)? This would make all the difference for me.
Just received a T-Watch S3. It is a micro USB connector.
Could 2 of these be paired for lora communication?
why not, you can find sample transmitter and receiver code in arduino ide
Question,
Is the watch compatible with glucose monitors?