Hey guys,
Recently I have been seeing companies releasing devices for Android that are not phones e.g.
Android USB Sticks:
techland.time.com/2012/05/18/pc-in-your-pocket-74-android-stick-goes-on-sale/
or more recently a game console:
kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console
I'm in University now studying Electrical Engineering and I've had an interest in electronics since I was young, so now I thought it was possible for me to design my own device. But so far my only luck with getting anywhere was drafting designs of the device and finding development boards online. Sure i could start off with development boards to test software (which i'm planning to do) but I am quite lost as to where I should go next. For example where to I get a manufacturer to produce my device or where to purchase a processor/motherboard that is custom designed for my project.
It would be really great if someone could point me in the right direction,
Scott
that's an ambitious project, I've just finished 2 degrees in EE and in the long term i'm looking to do similiar projects, but right now it is beyond my capabilities. But what i have done is buy a very cheap dev kit from STmicroelectronics with their ARM m4 chip onboard. (STM32F4)
this chip should be powerful enough to get started on and all the pins are broken out, plus the device includes a programmer and is powered over usb.
It was less than €20 but is still sat in its box as I've a lot to learn before cracking it open.
Have you any experience with RTOS for ARM, Keil offer a free trial version of their well respected uVision MDK software, it supports the above board directly and removes the need to configure a tool chain etc. Personally i'm trying to get eclipse on ubuntu to program it bit Keil uVision will allow me to blink LED's etc so long as my program is under 4Kb.
I too am only starting down this project but i hope the little i know has been of some help.
As for custom devices, well thats a whole other ball game, you will need to make out a schematic, then a board layout, then gerber files. After that you need a small run on a pick and place / reflow line. It's very rare these work out first time round, attention has to be paid to details like noise sinking, pull up resistors, matching logic levels and optically isolating external devices etc.
It's great that you are looking beyond your course material, I've learned much more from personal geekery rather than just taking notes from a lecturer. Anything you do outside the course will benefit you in a better degree at the end.
I've never been designing device from scratch, and I'm also just first grade student. Anyway I could imagine how this might look for small company or single person:
1) Decide what do you want to build-up. Easiest todo is custom dev-board, it can be always redesigned and packed into tablet case. The hardest to-do is mobile phone, and it's nearly impossible to create such thing due to high level of embedding everything, and need to sign pretty serious agreements with RF CPU (and other things like transceivers, antennas, duplexers) supplier like Infineon or Qualcomm.
2) Think what main components you'll need, like LPDDR, SoC (CPU), PMIC (SoC manufacturer usually recommend PMICs to be used and provide reference board schemas for using both), battery fuel gauge, charging controller (both might be built into PMIC, depends on model), screen+touchscreen (there are dozens of such, one might want to decide its size already, but in case of dev-board like build it usually can be replaced by some smaller/bigger with small HW modifications or without modifications at all), sensors like gyro, compass, pressure, light, whatever.
3) Search through suppliers websites and decide what models of ICs you want to use (I'd pick only open hardware), order engineering samples and get reference schemas, rather start from SoC(OMAP4460 for eg.)+PMIC pair, then decide about the rest.
4) Don't forget about extension slots like USB ports, DC supply, serial converters, whatsoever.
5) Start designing PCB board. IMO it's impossible for begginer to project any usable PCB for embedded system, I'm begginer and I'm failing with simplest boost HF DC/DC converters (like 10-20 parts on board), while such board would have thousands of elements on it, and multi layer board to fit it everything in some rational size.
6) Find company that will make prototype for you - they should make board + solder all the components you provide them - one with no professional (and very, very expensive) soldering stations is not able to solder BGA components at home.
7) Test it out.
Relatively, assuming that main components are free engineering samples, this might be not so money-expensive way to create some useful stuff. But for sure it's very, very time expensive, and begginer alone will nearly for sure fail.
//edit:
I just re-read my post and figured it might be pretty demotivating. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'd suggest you to start from something easier - ARM dev board is the thing you need. As Quiggers stated above.
Just noticed these - cheap and powerful dev boards:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Allwinner_A10#Other
Custom design
I'm looking to do the same, has this worked for you? I'm looking to build a custom android based mobile device as the original poster. I haven't had any look finding the correct electrical or device engineer to provide me any assistance. Are you available to assist?
Quiggers said:
that's an ambitious project, I've just finished 2 degrees in EE and in the long term i'm looking to do similiar projects, but right now it is beyond my capabilities. But what i have done is buy a very cheap dev kit from STmicroelectronics with their ARM m4 chip onboard. (STM32F4)
this chip should be powerful enough to get started on and all the pins are broken out, plus the device includes a programmer and is powered over usb.
It was less than €20 but is still sat in its box as I've a lot to learn before cracking it open.
Have you any experience with RTOS for ARM, Keil offer a free trial version of their well respected uVision MDK software, it supports the above board directly and removes the need to configure a tool chain etc. Personally i'm trying to get eclipse on ubuntu to program it bit Keil uVision will allow me to blink LED's etc so long as my program is under 4Kb.
I too am only starting down this project but i hope the little i know has been of some help.
As for custom devices, well thats a whole other ball game, you will need to make out a schematic, then a board layout, then gerber files. After that you need a small run on a pick and place / reflow line. It's very rare these work out first time round, attention has to be paid to details like noise sinking, pull up resistors, matching logic levels and optically isolating external devices etc.
It's great that you are looking beyond your course material, I've learned much more from personal geekery rather than just taking notes from a lecturer. Anything you do outside the course will benefit you in a better degree at the end.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Technexion
I have used OMAP3530 CPU. The TAO3530 is a good starting point and you can get a Tsunami board.
s8500 board with tablet touchscreen
hi dudes,
i have an old wave s8500 but the screen is broken. and i have an old tablet screen 7" from herotab8/dropad8.
can i use the tablet screen with the s8500 board? is not drivers necessary for the touchscreen? and where will i get the drivers?
and do i not need the datasheets of the pins to connect?
)
What we REALLY need is for someone to make a SoC that's basically like the one in the Raspberry Pi, but substitutes a FPGA for the GPU that's big enough to re-implement GPU functionality... long after the chip has left the fab & gotten soldered onto an open-ended generic ARM stick with no specific purpose, and thus manages to officially avoid getting infected by DRM-mandated licensing terms (ie, anything *officially* licensed to support h.264 or HDMI) that keep making totally open drivers nearly impossible. After all, if the drivers were 100% open source, there's no way they can stop you from commenting out the part responsible for implementing Cinavia, or lying to endpoint devices (like your home theater amp) about HDCP compliance
To deflect infringement claims, a company that made Android boards from the FPGA-equipped SoCs could make it with a soldered-on DVI port instead of HDMI (HDMI connectors are encumbered by viral licensing, DVI isn't), and put a reference design on their website for a wacky octopus cable that used the DVI-A pins to output unbuffered 3-bit pseudo-VGA, and used the remaining pins as a high-density breakout connector for a bunch of half-duplex RS-485 ports and GPIO lines that just *happened* to use DVI/HDMI logic levels
Of course, you'd never be able to legally sell a product based upon that board to end users in the US with the taboo technologies supported "out of the box", but other companies outside the US not subject to our self-inflicted wackiness could, and hopefully WOULD, buy enough of those boards to drive the price down enough to make them cheap for American hobbyists to buy on eBay and use for our own guerrilla Android-powered hardware projects.
In theory, the Xilinx Zynq 7000 series sort of does this... but at the moment, they're so ungodly expensive, you could almost buy a half-dozen Nexus 7 tablets for the price of their Android-capable dev board.
sounds great dude
Nice
Nice post
Hardware for Android D
Its not even turning on now...guess i will have to take it to a computer shop now, are you sure it has to be major things like "dead hard drive to a burned up chip to a bad motherboard."?
I'm just looking to be pointed in the right general direction here.
How would I go about hooking up an LCD and touch panel to an Android board (Raspberry PI or something similar). This is for an embedded device.
Something like a Hannstar HSD062IDW1
sbarrow said:
I'm just looking to be pointed in the right general direction here.
How would I go about hooking up an LCD and touch panel to an Android board (Raspberry PI or something similar). This is for an embedded device.
Something like a Hannstar HSD062IDW1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey, most of these ARM dev boards have raw LCD headers. If you're an electronics designer then you can go design a PCB to do things like level shift those bits and maybe convert those parallel signals to something else (LVDS or HDMI or watever). But from what I understand, you already have a video out in the form of HDMI and svideo. Some of us here at ArcDatum have done embedded systems research on a whole bunch of ARM boards (BeagleBoard, Pandaboard, the obscure ODROID-X) and almost all of them should have LCD headers. As for touch screens, that's more difficult. Chances are you'll have to use GPIOs or find a screen with HDMI input and USB output for touch sensing. Otherwise you'll have to design an touch screen input/output driver (which actually isn't that hard once you know how.....finding out how is the difficult part since so many of the chips they use have little or no documentation).
You might be in luck with iPhone screens. I personally have heard rumors of people reverse engineering the screen signals and driving them.
Edit: So i looked at your Hannstar link. Looks like you have a 10.5V LED backlight. So u'll have to drive that separately; that's easy enough. As for the actual signals. Looks like the pinouts you have all the RGB 8bit per color channels as well as your power stuff, ground stuff, and your clock inputs all of which can come from either your LCD header on ur RPi (if it has one; i know the BeagleBoard-XM has them) or an external power supply (for Vcc etc). Note you should tie all grounds together in many cases. As for the other random signals you will have to figure out if they're necessary to connect to something (Even if it's ground) or if you can leave them floating. Watch out for your voltage levels and how much current the RGB signals on the display will sink. Likely case is you have to do a level shift from something like 1.8V logic to 3.3V logic or something like that. When you're picking your IC to do that level shifting, also be very aware that the IC has to be able to change from 0 to 3.3V fast enough. You will have to verify that within one clock cycle, the slew rate of every pin (aka each bit for the RGB channels) is high enough to change from a high value to low or vice versa before the next clock edge comes along. If not you're data will be considered corrupt or just completely invalid.
Edit2: Your title states that you're trying to make this work with Android. I think in fact you are trying to drive the LCD with the System on a Chip on the RPi. Depending on the SoC and kernel, you might have to enable the LCD header pinouts in the kernel. Don't quote me on this though. I could be totally bull****ting you. My GUESS is that the same signals that go to the HDMI chip go to the header and in fact when using the header, you're just pulling the logic of those same signal lines (which also means you have to be extra careful of the current you're sourcing from those lines)
I wish to understand your motivation.
There are plenty of cheap Android tablets available with LCD touch screen. Now instead of trying to use one of these you want to get inferior "WhateverBerry" and engineer LCD interface + software stack etc spending your time and money.
Am I correct describing your intention?
Also I am not sure that Android is a good fit for embedded development which is mostly applied to some type of real-time controllers. It is not real-time OS.
If your want to build quickly an embedded controller with LCD touch you can get it done using Arduino boards. There are few LCD modules with touch capabilities available but with very poor documentation. It will require some work but it is feasible to achieve in a few days. It would cost you about $100 in components including Arduino and LCD shield and software is free.
Good luck!
sbarrow said:
I'm just looking to be pointed in the right general direction here.
How would I go about hooking up an LCD and touch panel to an Android board (Raspberry PI or something similar). This is for an embedded device.
Something like a Hannstar HSD062IDW1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Adapt0r said:
I wish to understand your motivation.
There are plenty of cheap Android tablets available with LCD touch screen. Now instead of trying to use one of these you want to get inferior "WhateverBerry" and engineer LCD interface + software stack etc spending your time and money.
Am I correct describing your intention?
Also I am not sure that Android is a good fit for embedded development which is mostly applied to some type of real-time controllers. It is not real-time OS.
If your want to build quickly an embedded controller with LCD touch you can get it done using Arduino boards. There are few LCD modules with touch capabilities available but with very poor documentation. It will require some work but it is feasible to achieve in a few days. It would cost you about $100 in components including Arduino and LCD shield and software is free.
Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with this, for the most part. Although theres no reason his application wouldnt be better with Android. What if theyre making some sort of consumer friendly appliance. Android wud be a great place to start. Arduinos wud be good for tiny applications but if they want anything pretty it wont have enough horse power.
Also Im not sure how RTOS fits into this. Sure Android isnt an RTOS, but ur phone is Android and thats an embedded system too. Just because it isnt deterministic doesnt mean it isnt suited for embedded. Just go look at basically any of the Texas Instruments ARM based android/linux dev boards.
Anyway back to the topic at hand. If you want a high powered device then try a BeagleBoard with a third party LCD attachment. It wont be cheap, you would basically have an android tablet only itd be for development (and I mean product development, not just software development). But if you dont need 700+mghz of 32 bit addressing lol, then yes go with a much cheaper arduino and lcd.
Edit: Look at this, I think you'll like it (its an all in one ARM development board):
e2e.ti.com/group/universityprogram/educators/w/wiki/2252.am335x-starter-kit.aspx?sp_rid_pod4=MTk2NzAwNDYzODgS1&sp_mid_pod4=40798754
Also I should clarify Arduinos are a 'cheaper' solution, not a 'cheap' solution. Arduinos are not cheap for the amount of processing power u get and they are almost never suited for LCD applications (but there are a few).
Sent from my SGH-I747M using xda app-developers app
I am glad to have this discussion, it helps to clarify choices we make and avoid waste of time.
RTOS is needed if high rate data acquisition is the core application. If time uncertainty of Android apps execution is tolerable then it might be a good choice considering great UI and communication capabilities.
A number of projects utilize commercial Android hardware with external Bluetooth or USB accessory/ host. In this configuration external accessory acquires and stores data in a buffer, Android terminal reads this data buffer and then does data processing and visualization if necessary.
This combination looks the most efficient since it provides great flexibility with minimal resources.
Low price of Raspberry PI and good marketing attracted a lot of people but usability of this board is very limited. You get what you paid for. It is underpowered for modern Linux and Android, does not have ADC, not suitable for low power (battery) applications. Originally, its main purpose was declared to make learning of programming languages more accessible.
Cheers!
screen
hello Folks,
i even have a broken tablet, but the touchscreen is still ok.
and i still have a samsung wave s8500 with broken screen but it still running.
is there any solution how i can connect the 7 inch screen with the wave?
the 7 inch screen is a mid tablet dropad/haipad.
is there any link to hardware manuall..
and where can i get the driver of the mid?
thanks in advance
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7" to LCD
is ther anyone trying connect samsung galaxy tab 2 7" to LCD
or it is imposible.... (
Hi guys, I am the owner of OXY SmartWatch, a new SmartWatch available in two versions: Round and Square.
Here a few preview renders of our final product:
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This is our website:
http://www.oxytechs.com/
And our Google+ page where you can follow our progresses:
https://www.google.com/+Oxytechswatch
The watch is running Android 4.4 AOSP and we have built a custom version of Android that is more feasible for SmartWatches than Android WEAR. Plus we have custom Android Studio templates to work with our product and we give the possibility to install any ROM without breaking warranty or support.
In this thread I want to share with this community a preview of the Watch and our links.
We are also looking for Android Developers, Android Kernel Developers and iOS Developers.
We also accept candidates from remote locations so feel free to share with us at info[at]netarchitectures[dot]co[dot]uk your resume or feedbacks about our product.
If you want to join our Developer Program, follow this link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/software/oxy-smartwatch-development-t3185452
The watches have:
CPU MIPS M200 Dual Core
512 MB RAM
4 GB Disk Space
Heart Rate Sensor
Vibration
AMOLED Touch display covered with Gorilla Glass
Speakers and Microphones
Magnetic contact charging mechanism
Gyroscope, Accellerometer and Magnetometer
Bluetooth 4.0 and BLE Compatible with iOS and Android and PC
Light sensor
400 mAh LiPo Battery
72 hours with BLE and 1 week without Bluetooth enabled
Stainless steel IPV6 water proof
Right now we are working at our website www[dot]OXYTECHS[dot]com and for the end of August you will be able to see the full product description, accessories and various demo.
The 15th of November 2015 we will open the PRE-SALE Campaign.
We have a batch of 5,000 pieces available per model, so a total of 20,000 pieces:
5,000 Round Stainless Steel
5,000 Round Black Stainless Steel
5,000 Square Stainless Steel
5,000 Square Black Stainless Steel
This project is related to the porting of IWOP (Ingenic Wearable Open Platform) for OXY SmartWatches.
The platform IWOP is available here for download: http://iwop.ingenic.com/.
OXY is giving hardware development kit to each developer who is willing to contribute to the platform.
Attached to this thread there are architecture views, UX mocks and interaction design about the OXY custom ROM.
More details related to OXY are available here: http://www.oxytechs.com/
OXY ROM is composed by:
A watchface manager
Home launcher
Control manager app
Settings app
Apps navigator
A set of utilities apps delivered with the product
XDA:DevDB Information
OXY SmartWatch V 1.0, ROM for the Android General
Contributors
raffaeu
Source Code: http://iwop.ingenic.com/
ROM OS Version: 4.4.x KitKat
ROM Kernel: Linux 3.10.x
Based On: IWOP
Some preview videos of OXY ROM:
Notifications Manager
Watchfaces Manager
Phone Calls Manager
Only IPx6, multiple (more than 3) actions to access key info and apps for "Probably 249 or 299"? Hard sell, even with custom ROM support.
On the square version, a bezeless display is easily possible if the PCB and battery are not larger in area than the display area.
Lokifish Marz said:
Only IPx6, multiple (more than 3) actions to access key info and apps for "Probably 249 or 299"? Hard sell, even with custom ROM support.
On the square version, a bezeless display is easily possible if the PCB and battery are not larger in area than the display area.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Lokifish and thank you for your feedback.
The answer you mention is about the Black version, which is full Black Stainless Steel, including the wristband. Consider that only the wristband has a production cost of 28$ (without VAT) the price of 249$ does not look that bad to me. Think about OLIO SmartWatch, it's a full Stainless Steel watch with locked ROM and it's sold for almost 600$ a piece.
About the square version, we couldn't find ANY manufacturer in Taiwan, China and Singapore capable to produce a full baseless square display, only round can be baseless but if you know any manufacturer capable of making AMOLED display squared with Gorilla Glass I would be more than happy to get your help, we are still in the beta version of our product and any feedback is welcome and well appreciated.
The OLIO is also design by watchmakers, uses 316L SS, and has a water resistance 50 times greater than that IPx7 with no time limit like IPx7 has.
As far as the band, you can get decent quality folded SS bands for around $15-20 USD at full retail price.
A bezeless square display can be done. It requires an approach not seen in smartwatches though that makes assembly a little more difficult but is still doable. Also, "Off the shelf" designs simply don't cut it as it requires the "crystal" be cut a certain way.
Have your guys look over "U.I Design", "Why this Martian.. ", and "I bet your smartwatch..." links in my signature below. Feel free to pick my brain and use the information in the links. The minimum I ask is that you give proper credit if you use any of it.
Looking at your G+ posts, nice job with the Ingenic BTW. I designed and built a smartwatch using the same platform. Too bad I killed it during a 5 ATM water resistance test.
Hi Lokifish, again useful details and feedback.
You are right, a nice and decent band is probably available on AliExpress for less than 20 bucks, but we made our with a different manufacturer and for the first batch we ended up with a cost of 28$.
This is another reason why we want to get this project into the community, to get feedback and suggestions from people that faced these problems before us.
About OLIO, of course they used high quality materials, a nice design, but I personally disagree about the ROM and UX choices (but this is my personal feeling). The point for me it's about the price. Pebble manufacturer their watch for 18$ and sell it for almost 199$, now dropped to 149$ if I am not wrong.
We are a startup and we will probably endup in some incubators or crowdfunding website in order to start the mass production. Probably the price will be around 199$ on retail but again, the prices and costs we are facing are a bit different than the one faced by watchmakers that have been on the market for many years.
What we believe is different between OXY and the rest of the world is the community, we want to make an open product, we want to make the customer capable to install custom ROM, customize the body and more. This is where we see the added value that other watch makers do not have at the moment.
@Lokifish Marz - thanks for the reply and pointing out OXY ... I feel like there's ... just a little hope ... maybe
@raffaeu - please take into account Lokifish Marz's advice, he will be very valuable to you, from a historical, current & future point of view. You'll save a lot of time and effort.
There are only a few people in the world that can make a decent, let alone a 'good smartwatch', due to greed/profit, but it can be done with the right goals and vision. Always know your history! Courtesy to the Martian ... again
I'm not a techy as such, but an important aspect of a good product is the non-functional business aspects, how to make a robust watch and then marketing, communication, support, together with making a little profit of course. Techies alone can't do this (no offense). Out of desperation we started the Nowt Watch thread, please have read, some very interesting discussion. No doubt you're at a stage where you can't go back with your current products, but we can always better our understanding and add to our knowledge and experiences.
I purchased an Omate clone recently (I had to get it out of my system), some of the non-techy issues, charging it - a pain! Straps - awful! A companion watch, should still be like a stand-alone watch first, meaning, above all its a robust time-piece that many can/would use without a phone as maybe a sports and leisure watch.
I'm curious, what does OXY mean? You have my support if you want it. I used to be a software tester, as well as marketing, strategy, process ... all that boring important stuff. Good luck
@Lokifish Marz has some interesting articles and idea that we are taking into consideration. Our primary targets are:
make an open source product
build a brand and trust from the community
make a real watch, solid, durable and with style
We designed OXY to being able to run with a phone and without, in fact without the battery stay charged for almost 1 week. Secondly is the charger which is magnetic, so that our customers are not having the frustration of the USB cable pain.
We are here to get feedback, idea and of course help. Anybody is welcome to join us, we are also hiring so anything is possible. Of course we are a startup so we still need to pay salaries and bills but we are not willing to become rich but we are willing to build a trusted brand for IoT products and more precisely for smartwatch. I always say that OXY is a mission for me and not a company.
OXY is an acronym for oxygen, something that you need and that's required to humans to live.
Feel free to contact me @simple1i and we can discuss further our project. In the meantime I'll have a look at your links.
Oh I see Oxy. I do like the name Horology, that's what all good (smart)watch lovers are, there's an idea for a name of a smartwatch.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you decided to used Android because it's the cheaper/faster (way to get it up and ready) option? Do you have Playstore on the OXY? Google can be very awkward about this.
Listening to the tech' community is a good thing, but for a 'fine dining' watch the experts are few, you need the Horologists, the real trick to to know what opinions to take on and what to discard. Then its a matter of goods ideas/functions vs costs. This might be a tough one to address, but the OXY needs to be either better then the Moto 360 2's (rumoured specs) or similar with a lower cost. So far I'm impressed. I am waiting to see what Pebbles does with the I/O port on the back of their watch, what hardware add-ons will they come up with? A good future proof strategy for them to expand functionality.
I'll be in touch.
@simple1i it was not easy, we had to search for conflicts with other trademarks, copyright and we also needed something simple to pronounce considering that our product will be sold worldwide. OXY sound easy but it is still a nice sound to pronounce
Our PCB is an extension of Ingenic Newton2. We had to modify the plug for the display because the original one was not enough for round and square displays plus we added an heart rate, a vibration motor a different Bluetooth and a Lipo battery of 400mAh. We changed the USB port and overall we came up with the cheapest but more flexible solution.
Why? Because we have a public AOSP for Android 4.4 and Linux which means that our product can fit any development configuration without any license problems. Just use git, download our AOSP and create your own smartwatch.
Google play will be added later, as I said our goal is to provide an open platform with a default set of apps but without any license or warranty limit. Our license and warranty will cover only the hardware, about the software our customers will be able to fully customize the product.
For sure v1 won't be perfect, for sure we will need time to build up a community but based on the fact that we have an AOSP on git, that you can easily make custom apps with Android studio and that our price range will be lower than other android smartwatches, I think and hope that our product will be well known very soon.
Finally, we will run a crowdfunding but our mass production is already set. A big, big advantage compared to other crowdfunding campaigns
Unless Google has retroactively changed a number of things and not published it, official Google Services support (certification, service framework, Play Store, etc) is a no go. A couple of smartwatch manufacturers found out the hard way, one of which made it into tech news because of it. That's just one of many sites that covered it and I was working directly with Omate at the time this happened. The only smartwatches with official support run Wear, which requires partnership status.
Here's a good place to start
@Lokifish Marz partnership status is a no go. Also Pebble tried somehow to have a sort of partnership with Google, even if Pebble does not run Android at all, but they go a big no. Regarding Android WEAR, we have submitted in June 2 requests including draw, project details, hardware details and more and we never got an answer from anybody. We know that our OXY can run Android WEAR, we also took apart the SDK of Android WEAR to see how it works and at the end we choose to stay Open Source and give up on Google WEAR for now. Then in the future anything can happen, we are totally open to any conversation but our mission is to make an Open Source Smartwatch, so having a smartwatch locked down by Android WEAR .apk is not our business model right now. The giant Samsung has left Android WEAR and also OLIO did not even approach Google at all. Why? Probably because Google is taking some business decisions that cannot fit all watchmakers out there right now.
About Google Play, that's a different story. Our current hardware is better than Asus Zenwatch and the Moto 360 v1.0, the only limit for Google Play is the resolution. Our Round watch has a resolution of 400x400 while the squared has a resolution of 320x320 and we are using the same displays manufacturers used by LG and ASUS. But again, when you talk about smartwatch, you open a Pandora Box. It is the new business for any manufacturer, Forbes announced an estimation of over 30 billion dollars business between now and 2020.
But again, we can manually install Google Play and it just works fine, so what's the point here? We need first to create a community, distribute our product with a basic ROM so that users can receive notifications, phone calls, download and create watchfaces and all the things you want to achieve with a smartwatch. We have already setup an Azure play store where any developer can grab our SDK and our Genymotion virtual image, create apps and distribute them via our Cloud.
Then, probably next year, we will see how the things go and we will be able to present again a request to Google for both, Android WEAR and Google Play.
Again, I have spent now almost 1 year in R&D and I feel confident that Android WEAR is a closed business. You must be a big firm otherwise is a no go for now. About Google Play I am more positive but only time will say. For now we are focused on our website and marketing campaign, building a community and customizing our existing ROM and SDK. Btw, if you look at the potentialities of OXY, we have already a more powerful product in terms of frameworks and hardware, than a Pebble, which has sold more than 1,---,--- pieces between 2012 and 2015. We also got a conversation with Cyanogen which gave us a go to customize Cyanogen for OXY but at this point is worth to have our own Open Source Android version and move from there with the help of the community.
I get the issues with Wear and Google, I've been there multiple times. I also agree that open source is needed for the development community. The issue with not having Google Services support (Play Store) on an Android based smartwatch is that a fully stocked app store needs to be in place and filled with all big names like Facebook, EAT24 and the like and properly formatted to the display/UI/UX. If not, it severely limits your customer base. That's why many of the Chinese based smartwatches have had a hard time getting traction.
Now if you have a long haul plan that brings in average Joe smartwatch and watch buyer on, lets say, v.2 that's great. Keep in mind that after the multitude of less than stellar attempts by others, both xda and G+ can be very unforgiving. Especially if crowdfunding is involved.
This is starting to get into areas where private conversation may be justified so lets table this until after you make a decision. Then we can pick it up elsewhere.
@Lokifish Marz you got the point and probably you got it because you have been there before us. The only big difference thing is that we want to build a smartwatch, I don't think it would be of any use having a squeezed Facebook or Google+ app on your 400 pixels smartwatch. We are focusing on other criteria.
Motion track so that you don't have to press a button to view the time, real time notifications that when received turn on the display and show the notifications on top of the watch and many other watch oriented functionalities. V1 will give to crowdfunders a working "companion", a smartwatch that is a smartwatch, a companion app that can download .apk and install them and a decent SDK that allows developer to create custom apps and watchfaces or customize existing functionalities.
I am open to have a nice conversation with you guys. This month I'll visit China and Taiwan soon, where we are manufacturing the watches but it would be nice to setup a private call/chat for when I'll be back. Probably you know better than anybody else other members of XDA that may be seriously interested and involved in the project.
Update
We are preparing some VMs on Azure running Ubuntu LT12 with our Android AOSP source code.
Right now we have 3 versions for the AOSP: Android Square watch, Android Round watch, Ubuntu Touch.
Compilation is quite easy, for Android is something like:
./build/smk.sh --preset=oxy_v11_wisesquare_iwop
./build/smk.sh --preset=oxy_v11_naturalround_iwop
Next step for us is to host the whole repository over a public Git and distribute the Ubuntu VM so that anybody can start to download the VMs (already synchronized) and contribute. As soon as everything is ready I will open a different thread and start to have private conversations with the people interested in the OXY project.
Re: Ingenic Newton2 - (someone made this point) you can buy the Newton1 or Newton2 as a devkit, but you cannot buy the modules wholesale. So this isn't truly a SoM - it isn't meant to buy off the shelf and integrate into a product. It's meant to be a reference design that you can either copy, or tweak, or modify in to suit.
In other words, with Newton, you're still going to need to have someone manufacture and assemble PCBs, and it'll require a normal (and expensive, unpleasant) certification process. A true SoM would come pre-certified, making that process a lot easier (you still need to do a certification, but one one that's much less rigorous and costs a lot less)?
simple1i said:
Re: Ingenic Newton2 - (someone made this point) you can buy the Newton1 or Newton2 as a devkit, but you cannot buy the modules wholesale. So this isn't truly a SoM - it isn't meant to buy off the shelf and integrate into a product. It's meant to be a reference design that you can either copy, or tweak, or modify in to suit.
In other words, with Newton, you're still going to need to have someone manufacture and assemble PCBs, and it'll require a normal (and expensive, unpleasant) certification process. A true SoM would come pre-certified, making that process a lot easier (you still need to do a certification, but one one that's much less rigorous and costs a lot less)?
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@simple1i You got the point. We bought Newton2 and made our watch using 3D print. Later we joined IWOP (Ingenic Watch Open Platform) which is a custom version of Android but more powerful than WEAR and better designed. At that point Ingenic gave us access to resources that are absolutely not available to private, so you can purchase the Newton2 dev kit but you cannot go far without their IWOP platform.
After that, we joined a partnership with two manufacturers, which are partners of Ingenic, and start to built our PCB and changed the Display (the display of Newton2 kit sucks, it has only 130 DPI).
About certifications, there are two phases. First you need to be sure that your PCB is ready for mass production, second, when the smartwatch is ready, you have to make IFC and CE at minimum, depending on where you want to sell. And this is the most painful part cause especially for CE, the process is long and full of obstacles. Consider that products like Pebble or other crowdfunded watches were shipped without any certification cause they were T2 prototypes expressly produced for the crowdfund campaign.
It looks like a nice piece of kit - in fact I love the design, it actually looks like a watch! Unfortunately, I'm not really sold on the idea of buying a 'smart' device where there's a very good chance of there being zero app development. Android Wear is rubbish right now (and of course, as you say, is a closed platform which creates big issues for us 'experimental' types and smaller organisations like yours trying to bring a device to market) but at least it's a group of companies working towards a common goal - in my mind that's far more likely to foster a community of developers than yet another smartwatch platform with a small userbase which will depend on yet another third party companion app and the headaches that creates with ongoing OS updates and trying to properly handle notifications and other interactions with the host device. I love the Pebble platform and larger ecosystem - I find the hardware and usage model vastly preferable to Wear (passively lit displays and buttons vs backlit displays and touchscreens, though I prefer the black and white ones, the Time lacks the contrast that makes the OG so easy to use AS A WATCH.) but they're odd looking devices which are 'obviously' not normal watches (not that I care, but I guess most people do) and the companion app has serious issues - they tend to get fixed fairly promptly but other app updates cause new issues pretty frequently - I still can't figure out how to stop it giving me notifications from the GMail app twice... What makes you think you could even do as well as a company who easily garners the kind of support they do on Kickstarter (and hence probably has a sizeable budget for a development team)?
Azurael said:
What makes you think you could even do as well as a company who easily garners the kind of support they do on Kickstarter (and hence probably has a sizeable budget for a development team)?
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@Azurael you make a good point here.
I do not want to talk about WEAR because it's obvious that WEAR is the biggest market so far, but only because Google is pushing really hard to get tons of Watchfaces and Apps available for their platform. Also, comparing ourself to WEAR will sound very arrogant. We will never be able to become big like Google WEAR community and this is not the mission of OXY.
About Pebble, if you look at their backlog, most of the incoming releases have bug fixes and enhancements of the Firmware. And this is after almost 4 years (Pebble started in 2012). They sold their crowdfunding watch made of plastic, without heart rate, without AMOLED touch display and without microphone or speakers (1 version of pebble) for a range between 99$ and 149$. We will sell OXY for 199$ in PRE-SALE, and in my opinion that's a great deal compared to the hardware of the Pebble.
So, on our side we played the "partnership role" with Ingenic Semiconductor. Ingenic has developed an entire platform on top of Android AOSP called IWOP (Ingenic Wearable Open Platform). It is a set of APIs that allows you to achieve exactly the same results of WEAR but even more. It is designed specifically for Ingenic Hardware so it uses less energy, it is bug free because the hardware is tested and provided by Ingenic (so no issues with multiple smartwatches vendors) and it is already largely adopted in Asia. The advantage is that behind us there is a big hardware company which supplies already thousands of pieces to Chinese manufacturers, so it is in their interest to keep the platform up to date and bug free.
Of course we lack on apps, this is the only problem of OXY and I am totally aware of, but I am not worry about it. When Pebble came out, and same applies for WEAR, there were almost no apps or watchfaces available. After a couple of years of adoption the marketplace became bigger and bigger and now the two platforms are well known. Compared to Apple Watch, our SDK is way more powerful and more developer friendly.
We will play the same strategy here, except that we have already commissioned almost 100 apps to an external Software House in order to have a pre-set of free apps available on our platform as soon as we will be out with our PRE-SALE campaign. Than, we will start our "developer program" which will grant to each developer a free OXY smartwatch and access to all our documentation and articles. In addition to Pebble or WEAR with OXY you can also create your own ROM, your own Home Launcher and customize even the kernel. I am sure that many developers will be happy to put their hands on such a platform and get a smartwatch for free.
We have already discussed with Ingenic this topic and they are eager to expose their platform to the US/EU market, considering also that we will be the first company selling MIPS architecture in EU and US I feel confident that the gap about the lack of apps will be covered soon.
On the business plan, we will probably feed the platform for 2015/2016, so a low margin of profit will be generated but again this is not our plan (to generate money) but to make an open platform for smart devices. I think that it's important for us to explain exactly our mission in order to get the right amount of followers. Plus a bit of "viral marketing" would be beneficial too
Hardware talk
On the hardware side, could you have added more sensors if there was a need for them? And are any disadvantages for adding lots of extras sensors, like power consumption, over heating or less space to work on the PCB? Of course for every sensor you need an app for it.
Others might disagree with this view, that sensors make a device comes alive, the watch can sense more about its environment, just like a living thing. Also with the open source OS and SDK devs can make use of more of the sensors, making the watch a multi purpose device. I was hoping for a compass, it's one of those things that many won't use but like the idea of having it, just like a Swiss Army knife.
A barometer with a compass and heart rate monitor, could appeal to the sportsman. The Suunto watch gives nice weather icons to a good degree of accuracy. At least there enough sensors for the development of an app that can detect if the watch is being worn or not to stop certain functions like notifications and maybe even put the watch to sleep to save battery or have it on 'bedtime' mode.
Another advantage of having lots of sensors is that it makes the watch more of a stand-alone device.
If you talk about the Newton2 development kit the short answer is no, the long answer is yes, but with some re-design. We had to re-design the PCB of the Newton2 because we added an extra BlueTooth for iOS, an Heart rate sensor, a vibrating motor, a microphone and 5 speakers. Plus we re-designed the USB charge which is an extra PCB in the Newton2, while on our watch is into the same PCB.
Finally, the biggest and most complicated step is about the display. Newton2 use an MIPI interface specifically designed for their display, so in order to fit a Round and Square display from commercial companies like AMOLED Corp you have two options:
Make two PCB with two different MIPI, one per Display
Modify the displays MIPI to fit the same plug and play mechanism
We did not put a Baromoter because it is not easy to find a good provider and it does not deal well into mini PCB. About the GPS, we had one but we removed because it is absolutely battery drainer. If you run 3-4 hours with your GPS on the watch will end up without battery, while capturing the GPS from your Phone and streaming the amount of mt into the Watch app is way easier in terms of power consumption.
All weather apps that you see on Smartwatches are not using an internal barometer but they simply get weather conditions from a public HTTP API and stream the result into the Watch from your Phone.
What we have in additional is the WiFi so that you can run the watch in autonomous way, for example OXY can detect if you have internet on your watch, if don't then it grabs info from the internet of your Phone.
You can get fancy with sensors, we would to introduce in the future V2 more health sensors but it is early right now and you still have to deal with minimal space, each mm count.