[HN Gopher] Casio F91 smart watch reboot
___________________________________________________________________
Casio F91 smart watch reboot
Author : rcarmo
Score : 459 points
Date : 2022-07-21 07:04 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gitlab.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gitlab.com)
| mr_o47 wrote:
| Has anyone looked into amazefit retro
| zczc wrote:
| Amazfit Neo is much bigger than F91
| visviva wrote:
| Recommend the title be changed to "Casio F91 smart watch reboot".
| It's kind of nonsensical as-is.
| HKH2 wrote:
| If you're getting the stock band, you might want to buy some
| spares because they're the first thing to go.
| fellerts wrote:
| Or replace the band with a NATO strap. I've been very happy
| with my conversion.
|
| Check out r/F91Ws_on_NATOs for inspiration.
| aeolis_mons wrote:
| I love my F91 (I'm wearing it right now!), and I love minimalist
| smartwatches. So this is right up my alley. I hope it keeps
| moving forward!
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > At this point (read more like a year ago) I am burnt out from
| this project and now I figured to open it up and hopefully more
| people can be involved.
|
| This is not moving forward, it looks like the author is just
| lofting it up as a resource for others to use as a starting
| point for similar projects.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It might be up to you, dear reader, to take it forward
| yourself.
|
| Deeply heartfelt thanks to the original author for taking it
| this far.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I first saw this from the Hackaday article (The Casio Smartwatch
| You Never Had) - https://hackaday.com/2022/07/20/the-casio-
| smartwatch-you-nev...
|
| Hackaday is something I'd definitely recommend to the average HN
| reader if they like the hardware side of things.
|
| I'd also recommend N-O-D-E's channel for anyone interested in
| such things, here's his video on his F91 mod:
| https://youtu.be/cvtvm7N_qj4
| ginko wrote:
| This feels like a product that Casio should be selling.
| nooumenon wrote:
| wow, amazing how much functionality they packed into this tiny
| case. this would be the only smartwatch on the planet that isn't
| comically chunky, while still giving you the two things you need
| (namely time and notification icons, so you can break the habit
| of checking your phone). I'd pay for this, no doubt, if only I
| could!
| red369 wrote:
| Have you checked out the Pebble Time Round? Pebble was
| purchased by Fitbit, who were in turn bought out by Google, but
| there is good community support (1). Recently, the original
| Pebble app was taken down by whoever last maintained it
| (Pebble? Fitbit?), so at the moment there's no iOS app. I'm
| using a Nokia Steel HR as a temporary measure, but it is nearly
| comically chunky. I can't wait to switch back - I miss the
| Pebble.
|
| Bad Casio and Pebble comparison photos:
| https://imgur.com/a/LrS8xI4
|
| (1) https://pebble-help-
| legacy.rebble.io/help.getpebble.com/cust...
| Gigachad wrote:
| A huge amount of the bulk in smart watches is the health
| sensors and vibration motor. Can easily slim things down if
| those aren't required along with a big display.
| nooumenon wrote:
| that makes sense, and now that I've seen proof that it's
| possible to build a watch-sized smartwatch, I'm even more
| puzzled that not a single one is on the market
| numpad0 wrote:
| There's also competition aspect. Full iOS/Android is
| required to be relevant in the market, so all mainstream
| smartwatches integrates equivalents to literally late 80s
| supercomputer in them. There are exceptions like Xiaomi
| watches, but they're low-end, low margin options.
|
| I think it's plausible that none of operational nuclear
| warheads were designed with supercomputer clusters more
| than half as fast as the latest Apple Watch. Resources
| packed into watches are that plenty.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Does anyone else get annoying jittery scroll experience on
| mobile?
|
| https://imgur.com/Dn6vQiY
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Nope, works fine here on current webview and firefox nightly.
| smelbe wrote:
| Wow. Another project is doing something similar, but it doesn't
| have Bluetooth or an OLED display (it uses the same display), so
| it's not as useful in everyday life, but it's still very
| impressive work.
| shriphani wrote:
| Amazing project! Great tribute to one of the greatest timepieces
| ever made.
| julieturner99 wrote:
| so cool. would love to see this fit into a slightly larger
| footprint such as my square gshock tough solar (5610)
| alexb_ wrote:
| The F91W is a classic, and I really love that this project
| exists.
| malkia wrote:
| That looks beautiful!
| walrus01 wrote:
| The Casio F91, as approved by Osama Bin Laden himself:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=bin+laden+casio+F91&client=f...
| [deleted]
| oriettaxx wrote:
| you may end up in Guantanamo
| https://www.theguardian.com./world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-fi...
|
| :(
| ncmncm wrote:
| Favored trigger mechanism for IEDs?
| walrus01 wrote:
| Well I sure wouldn't recommend it as an IUD
| ncmncm wrote:
| Hmm, might work better than many items actually used.
| jonatron wrote:
| The watch with a "Usage in terrorism" section on Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Usage_in_terrorism
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Wow. There is another project doing a similar thing, but they
| don't have bluetooth nor an OLED display (they reuse the same
| display) so it's not nearly as useful in daily life, though still
| very impressive work nonetheless.
|
| But this is really amazing work. I hope you find some
| collaborators to continue!!
|
| I recently got an F-105W which I had when I was a teen (which is
| basically the F-91 but with a cool glowy EL backlight). And one
| thing that really surprised me how small that thing is. It seemed
| bigger at the time.
|
| I'm really amazed how much technology this project managed to fit
| in that tiny case. Battery, OLED, bluetooth.. Just wow.
|
| I would pay for this, I was thinking of buying that other project
| on crowdsupply but without BT connectivity I just don't really
| have any use for it.
| teraflop wrote:
| I assume you're referring to the Pluto watch?
| https://github.com/carrotIndustries/pluto-fw
| GeorgeHahn wrote:
| I suspect they're referring to the more recent Sensor Watch:
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/sensor-
| wa...
|
| Quick review: I have one of the early units and I've really
| enjoyed using it. It's totally hackable, well documented, and
| I fully anticipate using mine for the next decade or longer.
| It's far from a smartwatch - it's more like you're sitting in
| on the Casio product meeting where they wrote the original
| F-91W specs. The year-scale battery life remains, but it
| comes with the ability to fully customize the watch behavior.
| For me, that meant adding sunrise/sunset and moon phase
| faces. I might build a quick-timezone switcher in the future.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It is indeed very nice, I would just really want some kind
| of wireless connectivity for any of the usecases I could
| come up with :) Otherwise I'd have bought one for sure.
| [deleted]
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| No, the other one on crowdsupply that the other person below
| was talking about. I didn't link to it as it was already
| mentioned in other places in this thread as well.
| elbigbad wrote:
| I would pay as much for this as I would for an Apple Watch.
| b3nji wrote:
| This is what I've been waiting for.
|
| I love Casio watches, I own many. I have dreamed about having an
| F91 with smart functionality, ideally, a private, security
| focused device.
|
| I feel you might have hit the nail on the head.
|
| Can't wait to see this grow.
| 12ian34 wrote:
| from the repo readme it looks like the owner is burnt out from
| the project and that there's much to do. I wouldn't get your
| hopes up unless you're interested in helping out!
| b3nji wrote:
| Yes, I understand that. However, now that more people know
| about it, and many see the potential, I would be surprised if
| some people don't run with it.
|
| I would help out if I knew where to start! I'll have a read
| and see if I can dip in.
| redorb wrote:
| This is the barebones Android smart watch I want. As a side note
| why won't apple make it's watch work well with android - wouldn't
| that add a few million users? ~ or do they sell it as a loss
| leader for IOS?
|
| I want a future where we have bare-metal versions of smart
| watches with low power screens, thin form factor and long battery
| life compete with full feature dick tracy phone watches.
| deevious wrote:
| You might want to give the Amazfit Bip a go, it's as barebones
| as it gets. The only gripes I have with it is the craptastic
| app and the lack of vibration, it only has a beeper.
| abecedarius wrote:
| There's an open-source replacement app called gadgetbridge.
| (I'm not sure it works with the exact model you mention, but
| I did use it with a cheap Android watch from, iirc, Amazfit.)
| PaulsWallet wrote:
| > As a side note why won't apple make it's watch work well with
| android
|
| This is the way Apple works. You don't own enough products so
| you aren't worthy of full functionality. Last time I checked
| you can't update Airpods firmware without another Apple device
| nor can you change settings on the pro XDR display without a
| device running macOS.
| lloeki wrote:
| > nor can you change settings on the pro XDR display without
| a device running macOS.
|
| You can't even natively change brightness nor volume on non-
| Apple displays, even though DDC/CI is a thing and third party
| apps can do just that. The Mac Mini M1 HDMI port is even
| crippled at the hardware level and DDC/CI flat out doesn't
| work there (works fine via USB-C which uses DP).
|
| The usual public rationale from Apple is that a perfect
| experience can only be achieved within a fully owned
| ecosystem.
|
| I don't quite buy that the core strategic intent is
| intentionally using this to push people into owning
| only/buying more of Apple stuff, I bet it's more about not
| having to handle dev, fixes, workarounds, and a storm of
| support cases for third party hardware that may be of less
| than stellar quality, and then Apple being blamed for things
| not working.
|
| IOW brand image control + dev resources, not a sales ploy.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| This is the way a lot of companies work and have historically
| worked. Why spend a ton of resources supporting every
| operating system and hardware combination out there for all
| of your devices when you have a perfectly good way of doing
| it in house?
| PaulsWallet wrote:
| > Why spend a ton of resources supporting every operating
| system and hardware combination...
|
| Making it so Android users can update their bluetooth
| headphones is not supporting every hardware combination.
| Adding a OSD to your monitor so people don't need OS X
| specific software to change their monitor settings is not
| supporting every operating system or hardware combination.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| They aren't _just_ bluetooth headphones, they are
| airpods, you bought airpods because you are in the
| iecosystem.
|
| Who buys airpods and expects them to work well with
| anything other than an apple device? You buy them because
| it'll work well in _their_ ecosystem, really well.
|
| I have some cheap earbuds that work decent everywhere, as
| well as a generic bluetooth speaker, but I generally use
| my apple earbuds because they work the best with what I
| have.
|
| When you support only your ecosystem you can improve the
| connectivity that bluetooth alone doesn't allow.
| Morgawr wrote:
| > Who buys airpods and expects them to work well with
| anything other than an apple device? You buy them because
| it'll work well in their ecosystem, really well.
|
| This feels like a hindsight kind of statement. We are
| conditioned to think that since it's Apple it won't work
| well with other ecosystems, so "you don't buy apple if
| you don't have everything apple" which... I mean, it
| makes sense but it's the reverse logic. I bought my
| pixelbuds and I can use them on a wide range of bluetooth
| devices that aren't Google-specific, and they work as
| you'd expect them to. It's fine if Apple wants to have
| Apple-specific features if you use them with Apple
| devices, just like Google pixelbuds have specific
| integration with google home app and similar google-
| specific devices, but at least the core bluetooth
| functionality (+ settings) should be provided to be able
| to work on any device.
|
| Disclaimer: I've never used airpods so I have no idea how
| they work, just commenting on the logic of the original
| statement alone.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| > I have no idea how they work
|
| There is definitely some proprietary "glue" in there. One
| nice thing about them is that you pair them to one device
| and then all of your other iCloud devices can see them. I
| would not expect that kind of feature to work elsewhere
| for obvious reasons. I could be wrong?
|
| They also support spatial audio which _is_ now supported
| with Android.
|
| There are definitely features of the AirPods which are
| new or were new when they were released. It's up to Apple
| to support those features on their own hardware/OS. It's
| up to others to add support to their own operating
| systems if they deem it worthwhile. Similar goes for
| other hardware. Yes, the hardware works differently than
| so many generic components out in the world but that's
| kind of the point.
| chesc wrote:
| I have airpods and an android phone. They work well now
| (I really am not interested in spatial audio). They did
| however work pretty badly until I connected them to an
| iphone to allow the firmware to update. I dislike the
| ecosystem argument. They are just Bluetooth earphones...
| Quite expensive ones at that.
| antihero wrote:
| The current iteration of the Samsung Buds Pro didn't have
| an iOS app, which was annoying.
|
| Ended up just getting a UTWS5 and Moondrop Katos and
| being a lot happier.
| Teever wrote:
| What I'm hearing from you is that we need to regulate
| companies to mandate interoperability.
|
| Could you imagine a world where telephones couldn't make
| calls to each other or cars needed special gasoline that
| was only available from gas station chains that licensed it
| from your car maker?
|
| What a terrible world that would be.
|
| Why do we accept similar things with computers?
| happyopossum wrote:
| > What I'm hearing from you is that we need to regulate
| companies to mandate interoperability. Could you imagine
| a world where telephones couldn't make calls to each
| other or cars needed special gasoline that was only
| available from gas station chains that licensed it from
| your car maker?
|
| That's nonsensical - none of your examples came about
| from regulation, they were market-driven.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I mean considering the continuous erosion of consumers'
| rights on their devices and manufacturing trying the
| assume the position of licensor instead of seller, I
| don't have a lot of trouble imagining such a world. If
| Apple said that they will void the warranty on iCars if
| users put anything other than iGas and make the iGas
| connectors proprietary, I'm sure a lot of people would
| nod and queue up to pay, like they do now because the
| build quality of iCars is the best and they want their
| cars to _just work_.
| projektfu wrote:
| Although, Tesla continues to equip a proprietary charging
| port and an adapter is required to use CCS1. Futuristic
| companies seem to hate standards.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| > Futuristic companies seem to hate standards.
|
| A standard is just something that gets adopted by a bunch
| of people. There are competing standards for all kinds of
| things... the market generally decides what standards
| win. Any company doing something new is by definition
| attempting to set a new standard.
| izacus wrote:
| Luckly EU put a boot to the neck of that dumbass idea and
| EU Teslas have CCS2 port.
|
| I wonder if mandatory opening of interoperability
| protocols for popular products would improve health of
| electronics markets.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Yes, let's choose something that will work with
| everything, say:
|
| RS232 for any wired data connectivity 110 VAC for any
| kind of power 802.11b for any kind of wireless data
| connectivity ...
|
| Now that we have these mandated, let's zoom to the
| present day and figure out just how bad of an idea each
| of those decisions were.
|
| I don't know what "mandating interoperability" would mean
| for all cases in the original argument. eg: Does someone
| need to write software that can run on every single
| operating system that supports Bluetooth to perform a
| firmware update for AirPods before releasing them? That
| sounds pretty abysmal for anyone that doesn't have the
| resources to understand/target/maintain a process for
| BeOS/Haiku/Linux/Android/iOS/Windows/whatever my car's
| console is running/etc.
|
| OTOH, you could write a standard for firmware updates to
| devices over different channels and see who would adopt
| it. Make sure it is future proof and covers all currently
| known use-cases. If it's adopted by enough people, you
| aren't using your local government to write something in
| stone which will likely be outdated in a decade or so
| anyway.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Yeah, for me, what I really want in a smartwatch are the
| following:
|
| 1. long battery life. (as in a week+) 2. Always on display. 3.
| Notifications. (Ability to display all notifications that make
| a sound/vibrate in android, ideally also providing access to
| notification's quick actions, and ability to dismiss
| notification from phone. It should also provide incoming call
| notification, with caller name or number and hang-up button
| support). 4. Media controls for phone. (I don't really care
| about this, but if a watch lacks it, it would be suspicious).
| 5. Basic watch functions, like time, date, stopwatch, timer,
| alarms. (Possibly synchronized with android device, but not is
| not a requirement).
|
| Beyond those five, things health sensors, app support or
| whatever are just bonuses.
|
| The display should probably be a reflective display with
| optional backlight triggered by tilt-to-view, or even a button.
| It probably should use something like epaper or memory lcd to
| be low power. Honestly color is not even critical, although
| would be a nice-to-have.
|
| Pebble came somewhat close, although its notification support
| was somewhat more limited than I would have liked. But I've
| seen nothing else since then. Everybody is too focused on apps,
| fitness sensors, etc, and have laughable battery life, even
| without an always on display.
| deaddodo wrote:
| You literally just described the Garmin Fenix (or a vast
| majority of their more affordable options, the Fenix is just
| the Jack-of-all-trades model). 1) Gets about
| 14 days with default sensors (HR, GPS, altimeter, barometer,
| compass, etc) enabled (turning on high resolution Sp02, for
| instance, will knock it down to 6-8 days) 2) Yup
| 3) Yup, all features requested 4) Technically, only
| for a few apps. And it supports Android's media APIs better
| than Apple's. But they're there. This is probably the weakest
| supported of your requirements. 5) Admirably.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Very interesting. One thing I've pondered - this project contains
| various pieces of off the shelf hardware, and some custom 3D CAD
| files. These don't seem to fit as neatly into the way Git
| functions. Is there/has there been any attempts to replicate Git
| with Bill of Materials or 3D CAD data?
| dm319 wrote:
| I guess if that data can be easily represented as plain text
| then git would work ok?
| rjsw wrote:
| The data for CAD exchange files is usually plain text, the
| problem is that the exporter doesn't try to preserve the same
| order of stuff as previous times that it was saved.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| That seems almost asinine. It should be trivial to have a
| standard sorting algorithm so any implementation produces
| the same result.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I'm almost of the opinion that it should be thrown back on
| the software to convert their save files to text where
| possible. Binary files just aren't great for a wide range of
| issues further than just git.
| bmitc wrote:
| Perforce and Plastic SCM are heavily used in certain
| industries. I think they're both superior to Git.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Plastic seems heavily tied to unity, so thats a hard pass for
| those of us who dont want to be slave to an engine.
| bmitc wrote:
| It was purchased by Unity, but I don't see anything that
| heavily ties it to Unity. I've used it locally, and it
| certainly didn't require any Unity dependencies.
| blamazon wrote:
| There are many softwares attempting to solve this problem.
| Airplanes, bridges, cars, robots, they are catalogued in these
| systems. They tend to fall under the "Product Lifecycle
| Management" or 'PLM' name of softwares. Or also "Product Data
| Management"/'PDM'. Tends to be enterprisey.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| I've used those systems previously. Sadly, none seems to be
| functional on a distributed scale like Git functions for
| codebases.
| [deleted]
| googlryas wrote:
| You can specify custom diff algorithms to git, so you could say
| all .dwg files get diffed with something which knows how to
| parse the binary data and present a reasonable diff between the
| two versions?
| vok wrote:
| There's an active F-91W watch hacking project (with somewhat
| different goals) here:
|
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/sensor-wa...
| jcul wrote:
| Wow this looks great, I will be following the project.
|
| It's a pity that shipping and taxes outside the US effectively
| doubles the price.
| josecastillo wrote:
| oh hey, this is my project! Sensor Watch definitely has
| different goals -- less smart, more watch -- but I love this,
| and I love how the F-91W represents such a blank canvas for
| folks to project their vision onto. It's small and so very thin
| (at home on any person's wrist), water-resistant and vaguely
| indestructible. It's also so inexpensive and ubiquitous that
| you can take it apart and hack on it without feeling like
| you're breaking something important, and you can safely assume
| that anyone in the world can probably grab one at a local store
| and hack along at home. It's a wonderful object.
| [deleted]
| Melatonic wrote:
| Awesome! Although I am personally a fan of the japan only F84
| myself
| cyberpunk wrote:
| W-202 here. Can't live without the countdown timer :)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Very cool. I'd prefer Sharp's memory display which uses power
| like ePaper display, but looks and works exactly like a
| traditional LCD with high refresh rates. And bluetooth/etc is not
| a feature, but a bug IMO; goes against the philosophy of F91.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Bluetooth is a good mechanism for configuration, even if it is
| wholly turned off during normal operation.
|
| Forcing all setup to go through the needle's eye of a couple of
| buttons is profoundly limiting, and a wired connection would
| violate F91 design esthetic more.
|
| A transparent back for the watch, and optical components, could
| open biomedical opportunities. There, Bluetooth readout of
| logged data would be useful.
| projektfu wrote:
| Could also do LED communication in that case.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The nice thing is that it is open source, I could just
| disable radios all together and save batt: https://gitlab.com
| /_Pegor/kepler_fw/-/blob/master/Firmware/f...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Or turn the radio on only in response to a button-press
| pattern, and automatically turn it off with a timer.
| room505 wrote:
| I wonder if an eink display would work okay. Then it would last a
| month!
| Melatonic wrote:
| Or one of those new screens (MIP I think?) that may end up
| being what eink always wanted to be but with better refresh
| chem83 wrote:
| MIP as in memory-in-pixel? Like the Sharp memory displays/LCD
| used on the Panic Playdate, for example?
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/4694
| bobthedino wrote:
| Yes, in fact Casio uses MIP displays in some of its recent
| watches, e.g. this Bluetooth connected watch has a 2 year
| battery life:
| https://www.casio.com/intl/watches/gshock/product.GBD-200-1/
| Melatonic wrote:
| Yea exactly. I was about to buy a new Pro Trek but given
| that I like negative displays I was considering waiting in
| case they switch to MIP.....although I was looking at the
| mainly analog models where the little screen matters less.
| iszomer wrote:
| The GBDH1000 is worth looking into as well, packing not only
| the MIP display but a suite of sensors as well as being
| powered by a solar element.
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