wearables News - Page 10 of 27 - CNX Software

July 24, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Some Smartwatches and Fitness Trackers Double as Earbuds Holders

Wireless earbuds are nice, except I don’t really use the ones I have because they tend to fall off my ears as soon as I perform physical activities (e.g. running), and I often misplace them, so I may not have on hand when I need them. One thing I wear virtually 24 hours a day is my smartwatch/fitness tracker, namely Weloop Hey 3S (still going strong after over 2 years), so if there were some wearables that could also store earbuds that would be nice. While browsing new product arrivals this morning, I discovered there were several smartwatches that ships with Bluetooth earbuds that are stored inside the watch when not in use. ASLING S300 smartwatch (left of the above photo) ships with two Bluetooth 5.0 earbuds that are stored on the side of the watch, while ASLING G36 smart bracelet stores them through an opening on the top of […]

July 22, 2020July 22, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

ATCwatch Arduino Firmware Works with PineTime, COLMI P8, “Da Fit” Smartwatches

Earlier this week, we wrote about fake heart rate sensors found in ultra-low-cost fitness trackers as reported by Aaron Christophel. It turns out he also maintains an open-source project specific to P8 watch, PineTime, and other smartwatches compatible with Da Fit Android app: ATCwatch Arduino firmware. The firmware provides a basic menu system, notifications, and the latest implementation enables direct HTTP or HTTPS GET requests to control IoT devices and get info from the Internet. The current firmware consumes about 150-200uA standby current, and last roughly 92 hours on a charge with heavy notification and usage. While it’s possible to connect an SWD St-Link V2 to flash the bootloader and firmware, it’s not necessary, as it’s possible to flash ATCwatch Arduino firmware without having to open the watch by using over-the-air update function with DaFlasherFiles for PineTime or P8 watch together with DaFlasher Android app. Once the update is done, […]

July 20, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Beware of Fake Heart Rate Sensors in Low-Cost Fitness Trackers

Manufacturers always attempt to lower the BoM costs of their products to increase sales and boost profits. Most do it in an honest way, but some are either incompetent or deceptive as we’ve recently seen in an IR thermometer was the infrared unit was not connected to the mainboard. I’ve just been informed about another trick that’s been going on for a while. Some ultra-cheap fitness trackers come with fake heart rate sensors that are simply replaced by two LED’s to simulate the real thing. The trick was discovered last year by Aaron Christophel who purchased several fitness trackers believe to be based on Nordic Semi nRF52832 in order to as he wanted to use Arduino firmware with those. He managed to do so in several with IWOWNFIT I6HRC tracker being the best suited for the tasks. But he also found some bad apples in the lot with several trackers […]

July 1, 2020July 1, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Snapdragon Wear 4100+ Platform Combines Cortex-A53 Cores with Always-On Cortex M0 Core

Qualcomm entered the wearables market in 2016 with the launch of Snapdragon Wear 2100 quad-core Cortex A7 SoC, followed by other models all based on Cortex-A7 cores including the more recent Wear 3100 platform which also added a QCC1110 co-processor to extend battery life. The company has now made the switch to 64-bit Arm with Snapdragon Wear 4100 and Wear 4100+ both featuring a quad-core Arm Cortex A53 processor and companion chips, but the latter adds QCC1100 Arm Cortex-M0 always-on (AON) co-processor to lower power consumption. Snapdragon Wear 4100+ key features and specifications: SoC – Qualcomm SDM429w or SDA429w CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.7 GHz GPU – Adreno A504 GPU up to 320 MHz with OpenGL ES 3.1 API support DSP – Dual Qualcomm Hexagon QDSP6 v56, dedicated MDSP for modem and GPS, and dedicated ADSP for Open Sensor Execution Environment (SEE) and audio Memory & Storage […]

June 19, 2020June 19, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

nRF52805 Tiny Bluetooth 5.2 SoC is Optimized for Small Two-layer PCB Designs

Nordic Semi has just added a new member to its nRF52 Bluetooth 5 wireless SoC family with nRF52805 offered in a tiny WLCSP package measuring 2.48×2.46 mm and optimized for cost-effective 2-layer PCB designs. nRF52805 key features and specifications: MCU Core – Arm Cortex-M4 @ 64 MHz Storage & Memory – 192 KB Flash, 24 KB RAM Wireless Bluetooth Low Energy and 2.4 GHz proprietary protocols. High bitrate – 2 Mbps, 1 Mbps +4 dBm TX power -97 dBm RX sensitivity (1 Mbps Bluetooth LE) Integrated balun with single-ended output I/Os – UART, SPI, TWI, 2-channel 12-bit ADC Security 128-bit AES Power Consumption 7 mA in TX (4 dBm) 4.6 mA in TX (0 dBm) 4.6 mA in RX (1 Mbps) 0.3 μA in System OFF 1.1 μA in System ON with 24 KB RAM retained and RTC running Supply Voltage – 3.6V max Package – 2.48×2.46 mm WLCSP Note […]

June 3, 2020June 3, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

TTGO T-Watch K210 / K210 AIOT Watches Perform Face Detection with Kendryte K210 RISC-V Processor, ESP32 WiSoC

After covering ESP32 based TTGO T-Watch-2020 programmable watch last month, I noticed LilyGO launched “TTGO T-Watch K210 AIOT” watch with Kendryte K210 RISC-V AI SoC and a camera for face detection and recognition, and while searching for information, I discovered another apparently similar “TTGO T-Watch K210“. But let’s look into the specifications to find out what the differences are. I first came across TTGO T-Watch K210 AIOT, so let’s have a look at some preliminary specifications for this model: AI Processor – Kendryte K210 RISC-V Dualcore 64bit with FPU with 8MB SRAM Storage – 16MB QSPI flash, MicroSD card socket Display I/F – FPC connect for external display (not included) Camera – 2MP OV2640 sensor Audio – MAX98357A Audio codec; CVSD & SBC audio encoding Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 up to 150 Mbps, Bluetooth 4.2 BR/EDR and BLE Debugging – USB-C port via CP2104 Expansion UART, SPI, […]

May 17, 2020May 17, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Lilygo TTGO T-Watch-2020 is a Nicer Looking Arduino Programmable ESP32 Watch

We’ve covered several ESP32 watches over the last year include TTGO T-Wristand, Watchy, and DSTIKE ESP32 watch. Those don’t really have the nicest looking design, and some people complained about various shortcomings including the difficulty to customize/program the watch. Last year, Lilygo introduced TTGO T-Watch smartwatch that, due to support for expansion boards, was relatively thick, but at least documentation and Arduino code samples can be found on Github. The company has now launched a slicker version with Lilygo TTGO T-Watch-2000. TTGO T-Watch-2020 specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32 dual-core wireless processor with 520KB SRAM System Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 16MB QSPI flash Display – 1.54-inch LCD capacitive touch screen Audio – Class-D amplifier, buzzer Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.1 via ESP32 Sensors – BMA423 three-axis accelerometer with built-in step counting algorithm, activity recognition / tracking, advanced gesture recognition. Misc – Power button (round), PCF8563 RTC […]

May 7, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

NFC Wireless Charging Coming Soon to IoT Devices and Wearables

NFC is better known for contactless payment and transferring contacts, but one interesting feature is the ability to provide power as we’ve recently seen with batteryless NFC powered E-paper displays. The current NFC implementations can only provide a limited amount of power, but the NFC Forum has recently approved the Wireless Charging Specification that enables wireless charging of small, battery-powered consumer and IoT devices with a smartphone or other NFC charging device at a power transfer rate of up to one watt. One watt is not as much as other similar technologies, but NFC wireless charging (NFC WLC) should be quite more cost-effective since device-specific wireless chargers are not needed. Just take a phone or charger with NFC WLC and all compliant devices could be charged that way. The specification is free to download for NFC Forum members but must be purchased by others. There’s still short abstract available: Wireless […]