Readit News> Another area that stumped me is how to shut the power off 100% on the device, so that it can remain “off” for weeks or months.
This is actually a pretty solvable problem...
https://circuitcellar.com/resources/quickbits/soft-latching-...
Then the microcontroller can choose at any time to completely shut off the entire circuit (including itself), and extremely little power will be consumed until something (like a button) completes the power-on circuit again.
For ease of prototyping, there are off-the-shelf units you can play with: https://www.sparkfun.com/sparkfun-soft-power-switch-jst-2mm....
Some more advanced soft power switch circuits (like the SparkFun switch) also include the ability to forcibly power down a misbehaving device by holding down the button.
The design used in the SparkFun switch also allows your microcontroller to know if the button is pushed while the device is running, so you could imagine repurposing your existing button to also restore power to the device if the device is off, and still retain the existing functionality for cycling through watch faces. Then, either the device could automatically shut itself off after a period of inactivity or when the battery gets too low, or the user could click and hold the button for some number of seconds to turn the device off completely that way.
https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32c...
It uses little power, so standard 18650 battery could last years with single charge.
https://www.programmingelectronics.com/esp32-deep-sleep-mode
I launched my first game in 2015 which took 6 months to even reach $100/month. From there it earned around $500/month for the last 7 years. It required a huge upfront investment, ongoing updates to keep relevant and a significant fraction of revenue going into advertising.
I launched a few additional games that were low quality and ended up removing them. I started another 4-5 ideas that were abandoned.
In 2021, during a few month break from my job, I produced one more game that has averaged around $2000/month revenue for the last 2 years. Also needs regular updates and promotion to stay relevant.
Overall I would only recommend this route if you’re really passionate about game dev. The overall time investment has been really high, and it isn’t truly passive income because mobile games lose users quickly when not updated often.