The Tardis Watch is a perfect DIY alternative to those either ‘boring’ wearables.
Maker Moritz Wenzel has created an Arduino-compatible, software and hardware expandable smartwatch appropriately named Tardis Smartwatch.
“Currently, every company on the market [has] built their own smartwatch, nice small devices that makes your life a little bit easier and more comfortable. But for a Maker, a hacker, a hobbyist or a nerd who loves hackable devices and creating own projects, these ‘boring’ smartwatches are no real alternative,” Wenzel writes.
According to the Maker, the Tardis Smartwatch makes it possible to visualize Arduino projects, connecting them with either the watch itself or your smartphone via Bluetooth.
Powered by an ATmega32U4 MCU, the wearable device is comparable in size to typical watch faces already on the market (41mm x 40mm x 13mm) and is equipped with a wide-range of components:
- 1.44” TFT color display with 128 x 128 resolution
- USB 2.0
- Gyro, accelerometer and magnetometer
- Real-time clock
- LiPo battery
- microSD card slot
- Tiny speaker
- Temperature sensor
- Two (2) tactile switches for navigation (one for UI, another for home/reset button)
Inspired by former AVR Hero and recent Kickstarter success Phoenard, the Tardis Smartwatch features a Phoenex-compatible connector for the I/O pins. This enables Makers to effortlessly connect their development boards, DIY projects and common Arduino Shields via a board adapter to the watch.
Such compatibility allows Makers to easily and cost-efficiently create smart clothes, an area which is bound for tremendous growth. In fact, Gartner believes the emergence of these electronic textiles will potentially disrupt the wearables space, increasing these garments to 26 million units in 2016.
Wenzel notes that users won’t need to integrate a power supply (battery) and an MCU into their wearables; instead, they can simply connect their shirt, pullover, jacket or any other sort of garment trough the Phoenex-compatible GPIO Port to the Tardis Smartwatch.
“Jump with the wearable technology into the next galaxy: Your watch can be the controlling and powering unit for your clothes, and simply turn them into smart clothes.”
Interested in learning more about the megaAVR based watch? You can follow along with his build on the project’s Facebook page here.
