T-Watch Touch Keyboard & Watch Faces

[shell bobcat]

Hey folks! I have recently been on a quest to make the T-Watch actually useful as both a timepiece and a standalone node, and wanted to share a quick demo of my current progress. I should state at the outset that there are touch screen UI developments in the works that are waaay cooler and more comprehensive than this (see #mui) so my intent here was just to tinker and see what I could accomplish in the shorter term.

I added a touch keyboard to the canned message module, which I find to be surprisingly usable (if a bit slow). I also added a new UI frame where you can select either a digital or an analog watch face and view battery/bluetooth connection state. In combination with the recent updates to the firmware re: timezone, this allows the watch to achieve the long-sought goal of telling the time accurately 😀

Feedback welcome! If there is interest, I'd be happy to make the branch available for others to test and improve on, and/or PR it to the firmware repo. (Though not sure the latter would be welcome, given that it would eventually be superseded by the UI work in #mui mentioned above.)

(Btw apologies for the weird aspect ratio of the demo video – discord can be a pain ha. The top is cut off on mobile, but it looks fine on desktop in fullscreen.)

[weak spear]

This looks really neat and like it was a lot of work. I'd love to revie this as a PR.

[shell bobcat]

@weak spear Thanks! Yes it took a bit of fidgeting for sure, but overall wasn't too bad. I'll tidy up the branch and push it up in the next day or two.

[untold fractal]

WOW, the watch can actually be a timepiece now 🙂

[tired girder]

Oh wow would love to use this thanks for putting it together!

[loud pebble]

Want!

[tired girder]

@shell bobcat did you have a chance to put this in a repo somewhere yet? 🙏 would love to use it!

[shell bobcat]

Sorry for the delay, meant to follow up here – it’s merged as of a couple days ago! However, it’s worth noting that re: the “actually telling time” part, I feel like there’s still some room for improvement. The watch doesn’t seem to keep track of the time when off (despite having an RTC 🤔), and once it’s back on and paired with my phone, it usually syncs back up within a handful of minutes…but sometimes doesn’t for hours. Gonna look into that more this weekend.

[weak spear]

there's a call to set the device time from RTC in RTC.cpp - maybe this neds to be added to the wakeup event?

[shell bobcat]

Just PRed a fix! I think the issue was RTC::perhapsSetRtc ignoring updates of an equal or lesser quality... the watch seems to just freeze when it's off, with the time read from the RTC upon startup being the same as the time when it was shut off. Since that time is still considered RTCQualityNTP, updates from the phone are then ignored (because they're also RTCQualityNTP). So with this update, the watch will sync with a connected BLE device as frequently as specified by the client app.

Not sure if I am misunderstanding what's actually going on with the RTC though – seems odd that it would remain powered when the watch is off, yet not mark time...

[weak spear]

i think the RTC is working fine, the watch firmware just doesn't access it after waking up 🙂

[loud pebble]

I tried the alpha and do not see your code in meshtastic for the T-Watch-S3. Did you say your changes got merged in?

[weak spear]

it's only in the nightly builds as of now, the next alpha will have it.

[loud pebble]

Anyone have any tips on extending the runtime of the tiny battery in this watch?

So far I have decreased transmit power from 30 to 10, decreased the screen timeout from 60 to 10. I have doubled Lora and GPS timers, and also decided to disable transmitting of Lora so that I can monitor but not have it repeat unless I specifically want to transmit. I left bluetooth enabled so i can connect easily to make changes. Any better ideas that I can also implement? 🙂

I also can't seem to get the nightly to load via the web flasher. I download the zip and choose it as the firmware I want to load and it never gets past the stub. Either with it booted normally or by holding the boot button under the cover.

[dusty echo]

any eta on the alpha for testing? Would really like to play.

disregard. found it in nightlies

[dusty echo]

hrm. 10 installs fine. When I load the zips for alpha 11 for a t-deck and t-watch 3 i get 'Unexpected error: The firmware binary is invalid (magic byte=50, should be E9). Tried some tinkering but can't seem to get them to install. Am I doing something obviously wrong

[dusty echo]

web flasher gets stuck on "MAC: 74:4d:bd:7b:aa:64
Uploading stub...
Running stub...
Stub running...
" if I try just the .bin

[weak spear]

Ther was a new power save mode introduced in ( i think) 2.3.6 - if you did an upgrade it will not activate itself, you have to wipe&reinstall a recent alpha.

[loud pebble]

I installed 2.3.11 and I like the watch faces, but I can't figure out how to get it to show the right time zone. It only shows UTC.

[shell bobcat]

If you're using the iOS app, you should be able to set the device timezone under Settings > Device > Time Zone. I would guess this can be set in the Android app too, but not sure exactly where since I don't have any Android devices on hand.

You'll need to use the POSIX timezone format; a fairly complete list can be found here: https://github.com/nayarsystems/posix_tz_db/blob/master/zones.csv

[loud pebble]

Ah...I see it. It wasn't obvious, but it would be nice someday if it was just a pulldown to select the timezone instead of having to look it up and paste in the text. Thanks for the reply.

[loud pebble]

I wonder if it will adjust for DST automatically, or if I need to change the POSIX timezone twice a year.

[dusty echo]

The icon in the lower right changes time display from analog to digital, does the box in the upper right do anything? Possibly an updated page is needed for the t-watch hardware

[unkempt iron]

Wow! Thanks for the work on this, it’s a major improvement over the old firmware. I look forward to flashing my t watch s3 once I’m back from my vacation. What’s the news with the battery life?. Is there a way to disable lora and or Bluetooth to save battery life?.

[dusty echo]

For the life of me I can't figure out how to get to the keyboard. Read parts of the code, looked in posts here, what obvious am I missing?

[shell bobcat]

You have to enable the canned message module. For the T-Watch, I believe in the iOS app you just need to enable it and leave all other canned message settings at their defaults. (Actually, you may need to add at least one canned message; not remembering at the moment, but something to try if you end up needing to troubleshoot.) Once enabled, you should be able to swipe up from the bottom of the screen to show a list of canned messages. At the top of this list will be an option titled ‘free text’, and selecting this (via double tap) is what brings up the keyboard.

[dusty echo]

Much Thanks!

[dusty echo]

I'm not an apple watch guy... but is the band on the twatch the same as a 38mm Apple iWatch band? anyone tried?

[dusty echo]

can't wait till someone 3D prints a back for this watch that holds a battery 4 times the size. maybe even space for SMA jack.

[shell bobcat]

The T-Watch band houses its flex PCB antenna, so swapping bands would be tricky. But someday I may attempt to transplant in a better antenna…even accounting for size constraints and its proximity to the wrist, the one it comes with sets the bar pretty low 😂

[dusty echo]

Oh. had no idea. Thank god I didn't try harder to get the band off. Loving the new interface. Just need to find a way to get a much larger battery in it with a 3D printed thick back and something 3 to 4 times the mAh

setting posix to "PST8PDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0" Doesn

Doesnt seem to do anything. Does it pull time from the phone, and then that string is supposed to correct it?

[dusty echo]

DId you have any luck relocating the antenna into a new band? Is it a bare wire? Inusulated? Flex?

[dusty echo]

Still looking for an .STL for an extended battery back for the t-watch... if anyone has any leads. Love the watch now, but unusable with a half a day's battery life.

[unkempt iron]

any more fixes incoming for this project?.

[dusty echo]

good Q

Just loaded the new alpha today after a month or two.

Kinda written this thing off because it's useless with it's shit battery life.

I'm waiting for someone to offer up a 3D print for a big back for a large battery, or wait for a new model

The hard work in coding can hopefully shift to a more practical model that lasts at least a day on a charge

[dusty echo]

like the newer firmware.... the clock updated right away.... for some reason the older one it tooks days

[dusty echo]

nice work~

[dusty echo]

whats the spacer ascii when creating a list of canned messages again?

I did it before, can't remember now. I thought it was a ',' or a ';' as "Yes,No,On my way," or the same with semicolons.... but neither is working, I just get a long list on 1 item (Config in Android)

[tall vine]

It's a pipe, eg:
Yes|No|On my way

[unreal abyss]

It's great, what is the battery life like on it?

[unkempt iron]

With the update it’s about 4/5 hours, but with constant use it goes down to about 2.

[dusty echo]

forgot that. thanks

[unkempt iron]

@shell bobcat are you still about?, just wondered if you'd be able to update it to show 24hr clock rather than 12hr.. any improvments being made?.

[dusty echo]

slowed down a lot in here... Wondering if anyone has seen any 3D printed extened battery case mods for the watch

don't want to write the watch off totally, but having half a days battery life is kinda a deal breaker.

[unkempt iron]

I have seen the battery mods you talk about just makes it look stupid in my opinion.. i've managed to get a day of usage out of the watch when setting it to client_mute around lots of other nodes (London), its very situational but that's probably its best use case.. i'd personally quite like to see the other watch features added as a modules, like it can record sound and has IR remote etc.