Ourglass

Ourglass is kind of a big deal to me. It’s my baby. It’s the reason I learned to solder SMT properly, in an oven, with the right temperature curves and everything. It made me learn to use 3d printers and KiCad and got me several conference talks. It has its own twitter. After about three years, I’ve put the project aside, but I still catch myself thinking thoughts about a better smart watch.

These photos are of the final version 7 as assembled, with a vibe motor for notifications, and the buttons blocked off. The watch also features a bluetooth connection to any BLE-compatible smartphone, an accelerometer for step counting, a real-time clock for accurate timekeeping, an always-on screen, and a 3-4 day battery life. I made versions that were half the thickness of the apple watch, just to show off.

The original reason for doing this was to take some of the control of my personal data back from bigcorps, and then later because smartwatches that were available simply were bad for telling time. The choices I made were deliberate; I could have had a color screen, but then battery life would suck and it wouldn’t be readable in bright sun. I could have added a lot more features, but instead I made the expansion header, to allow myself more flexibility.