Paragon Project: The Best Smart Watch Ever?

Avid readers of our blog know that a few weeks back, we covered the worst smart watch ever. Well, we’ve stumbled upon what could perhaps be described as the best smart watch ever and we are very proud to feature it in our Paragon Projects series.

Credit to Matthew James Bellafaire, who put this project together and very kindly made it entirely open-source and available on GitHub.

The idea of this smart watch is very simple. You finally have total control of all the hardware and all the software. That’s why this is project is so fantastic.

Hardware

The watch revolves around an ESP32 WROOM module that Matthew has placed alongside a custom-built board. As this project has developed, both the board and the overall watch itself have successively shrunk.

The smart watch also needs a 1.8″ LCD screen, of course, the 3D-printed case, and a lithium ion battery.

As you can see in the picture above, the watch is powered by a micro USB connector, so you’ll also need to be sure you have one of those lying around.

Software

When it comes to software, you can really begin to play with full customization.

Here you can add and remove apps as you see fit. But the watch comes with the ability to run things like Spotify, a calendar app, and a calculator.

Through Bluetooth running on the ESP32, the watch makes consistent calls to your phone so that it can also give you notifications. You can decide which messages you want to keep track of.

So once you get the firmware and software installed (all the code is on the GitHub page), then you just need to download the Android app to sync the two devices.

It’s super straightforward, which is another reason to love a project like this.

Conclusion

With a smart watch like this, the possibilities are endless – you can really create a device that tailors to your needs. And with an ESP32 chip, you can program everything via the Arduino IDE and hook it up to both Bluetooth and WiFi.

You can turn your smart watch into the ultimate remote control for your smart devices, for example.

Go check out more details about the project over on hackaday.io or on Matthew’s GitHub repository for the project.

You can also check out more Paragon Projects that we’ve featured by clicking here.

What would you add to this smart watch? How could it be even better?