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ustad commented on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C   shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/08/... · Posted by u/blenderob
LarMachinarum · 9 days ago
that could indeed be an option depending on your use case. The problem with those (aside from finding a suitable enclosure) is that while more powerful, they aren't at all optimized for use in really low-power conditions and that their energy consumption is consequently enormously higher than that of e.g. an nRF52 (e.g. nRF52832 or nRF52840), so that the battery time would likely be significantly shorter.
ustad · 5 days ago
Regarding power I agree - a weeks worth is hard to get. inside i don’t mind plugging in power and outside if a lipo battery can last afew hours (while jogging etc) I’m good to go. Also these cpus have very good sleep modes.
ustad commented on Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file   hyperclay.com/... · Posted by u/pil0u
codedokode · 5 days ago
I would like web standards have better support for pages stored in a local file (opened using file:// protocol). Sometimes I write simple HTML/Vue based mini-apps for myself and every time something doesn't work and I need workarounds, for example:

- local HTML file cannot import local JS modules, so I have to use legacy writing style

- local HTML file cannot open other local files (for example, audio files)

I understand that there is a risk if we allow local HTML files to access anything, but there should be some way - for example, a file or directory might have some suffix that allows access to it.

I do not want to use a web-server because it feels like overengineering and I don't want to open a terminal, navigate to a directory and start a server every time, it takes too much time. I just want to type the URL and have my app running.

ustad · 5 days ago
“…I don't want to open a terminal, navigate to a directory and start a server every time, it takes too much time…”

I have a shell script that does these steps - including opening the browser with the target url. I use it on a regular basis.

ustad commented on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C   shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/08/... · Posted by u/blenderob
LarMachinarum · 14 days ago
The Colmi P8, which is older, long replaced by myriads of newer china watches and now hard to even find, was one of the last cheap smartwatches to be based on the nRF52832 microcontroller/SOC which had the advantage (for that purpose) of being both well documented and yet not locked down. The successor SOC, the nRF52840, already had a flash securing feature that (except for devices that wouldn't use it or that would have exploitable vulns) made it easy for the manufacturer to lock the device down and to prevent the install of alternative firmwares. Also about that time, cheaper chinese SOCs came out and cheapo china smartwatches switched to using those instead of nRF. Trouble being: most of those chinese SOCs for smartwatches, aside from probably also having the lockdown problem, don't have much in terms of openly accessible documentation or developer tools.

Consequently, pretty much all open source projects for cheapo china smartwatches apparently only support devices that are so old that you don't even find them anymore on aliexpress or other such shops.

I'd be interested to know for what currently easily available cheap (i.e. not in a much higher price category) china smart watches there is an open source alternative firmware that does not miss half of the features.

ustad · 10 days ago
I’ve started playing with esp32/rp2350 based boards that have everything in the same form factor. The only thing missing is a fully waterproof enclosure (they expose the back pcb). And vibration motor.

u/ustad

KarmaCake day1030July 24, 2023View Original