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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Jun 04, 2020 9:39 am

Sure, I have a static image of Workbench on my Apple Watch, but wait until you see this.

Steve Lord (@stevelord), author of The Dork Web blog, has created an INCREDIBLE new hack.

He's taken a TTGO T-Watch programmable smart watch and transformed it into an Amiga Workbench inspired watch (OS 1.3, natch). \
https___bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com_public_images_888d3e0f-37b8-4764-86bf-5fa59f45a4fe_1031x576.jpg
https___bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com_public_images_afaa08f3-e9ed-4e87-9058-84794626b9a7_4608x2617.jpg

VERY cool - read all about his project here.

User avatar
walldog

Posted Thu Jun 04, 2020 12:06 pm

wow thats cool.. how do you get one

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Jun 04, 2020 12:24 pm

how do you get one
=)

I think you'd have to buy one of those watches (which are shockingly cheap.) and follow his steps. Maybe?

Steven mentioned that there's a new version of the watch on pre-order here. But it comes with some caveats.

But in terms of replicating his steps, that's beyond me to be honest. Over my head.

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stevelord

Posted Thu Jun 04, 2020 1:34 pm

Hi guys,

I made this. Thanks so much for highlighting it here and online. If you want to get your own you can get them from Banggood or Aliexpress if you want one in white. There's a load of daughterboards available, including a GSM one, a camera one, even a keyboard one. I'm using the basic SD Card and Sound daughterboard for the alarm.

The code here. Once your watch arrives all you need to do is:
  1. Assemble the watch with any daughterboard that has a speaker.
  2. Install the Arduino IDE.
  3. Install the libraries referenced in the AWatch repo
  4. Clone the repo
  5. Copy the Awatch folder to your Arduino sketches folder
  6. Connect your watch to your computer via USB
  7. Open the Arduino IDE, the AWatch.ino sketch and hit upload.
Be warned, the code is terribad, and barely even alpha quality, but it does work. You can add/replace tunes using the Unix xxd command on your protracker mods, and you can synchronise time over NTP. I normally get just over a day per charge.

In terms of what works, earlier versions used the back button 2nd in from the top right to go back. Now what happens is when you tap the workbench disk icon and go to the menu, an intuition close gadget appears where the boing ball is. You can close the menu with that.

I'm taking a break from it as it's been an intense few days on this, but I'm going to look through the rebble source code and possibly rewrite this as a proper smartwatch OS with theme support if there's sufficient demand. Although Intuition gadgets don't work well in this form factor, I think I could possibly port enough of intuition over time in a way that might allow some Amiga apps to work in some way a la Aros but honestly I have no idea how feasible this is. It seems very much in "just because you can doesn't mean you should territory".

I am hoping to do an updated release once I get my hands on the 2020 model.

User avatar
stevelord

Posted Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:40 am

Thanks to a kind contributor and with a bit of work the Smart Watch now works on the current 2020 TTGO T-Watch model. The new model looks a lot nicer than the old one, but is less expandable. I've updated the Github repo, which also has details of how to get one of these. Currently Banggood is selling them for under US$30.

Image

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:22 am

Man that is so cool, Steve! Thanks for sharing.

User avatar
austin90

Posted Sun Apr 03, 2022 9:06 am

intric8 wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 12:24 pm
how do you get one
=)

I think you'd have to buy one of those watches (which are shockingly cheap.) and follow his steps. Maybe?
Hey intric, I know this is an old post but I just came across it and I'm intrigued. I probably won't be able to get the specified smartwatch since It won't deliver in my area, but the static image of Workbench looked really cool. I didn't want to make a whole new post for this but I'm in the market for a new watch (here are some of the options I'm looking at) and was wondering if I'd be able to customize any smartwatch like this or its an Apple watch only type deal? would love to be able to give it that retro look like yours! :D

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Stevemartinz

Posted Sun Apr 02, 2023 2:33 pm

A "Workbench Inspired Smart Watch Hack" refers to a modification or customization of a smartwatch's user interface to resemble the iconic user interface of the Workbench operating system that was used on the Amiga computer.

This hack is often done as a tribute to the Amiga computer and its legacy, as well as to add a unique and nostalgic touch to the smartwatch's design. The Workbench-inspired smartwatch hack typically involves using custom watch faces, icons, and other graphical elements to recreate the look and feel of the Workbench interface on the smartwatch's screen.





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