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ESP32-Based Smart Watch

Reporting from Shanghai, China
Feb 13, 2023

Independent maker Philippe Cadic has created a smart watch based on Espressif’s ESP32-PICO-D4, which can be connected to a mobile phone or other smart devices.

The 603-200 Morphwatch® is a versatile smart watch which is based on Espressif’s ESP32-PICO-D4. It has been created by independent maker Philippe Cadic, who has been inspired by the Japanese TokyoFlash® brand in this project. In fact, Philippe Cadic designed a modern smart watch capable of establishing communication with a smart phone or any other IoT device, while also producing exciting visual effects with a total of 192 LEDs on the watch. To be precise, there are four circles of 603 SMD LEDs. More specifically:

- 1 external circle of white LEDs for the seconds
- 2 intermediate circles of purple LEDs for the minutes
- 1 internal circle of yellow 603 LEDs for the hours

Each LED can be programmed independently with I2C libraries or through a Python script.

Apart from the visual effects, however, the watch has much more to offer, because at its core there is a powerful ESP32-PICO-D4, which is a System-in-Package (SiP) module that is based on ESP32, providing complete Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® functionality. Thus, apart from supporting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the 603-200 Morphwatch® also uses ESP-NOW (a communication protocol defined by Espressif that does not require a Wi-Fi connection), in order to create a Mesh network. In this network, the 603-200 Morphwatch® can communicate with another smart watch, even when the distance between them is more than a few hundred meters. With ESP-NOW, users you can also build their own private long-range messaging system beyond conventional mobile networks.

The smart watch also has one vibration motor, one RTC, one USB-C connector, and four buttons with which users can make their smart watch trigger a relay, send an emergency email, send a vibration to another smart watch, and more! For example, users can switch their watch to an access point or a web server, so that anyone can connect to it and share information (e.g. the digital equivalent of a business card).

If you want to get the engineering code of this watch, you can click here for all the relevant information.