This was the second device I purchased as a small accelerometer based computer.  So far I’m really not impressed by this device.

A lot of time and effort has gone into the look and finish of this watch. Too bad there wasn’t equivalent effort for funtionality

Pros

• Polished interface

Cons

• Poor battery life – another watch with phone like battery endurance.
• Incomplete Android OS – no sensor libraries.
• Poor developer support – many known issues not published
• Outrageous pricing ( they seriously have one listed for $21000 )
• Cloud based configuration

This one has been a fail pretty much since day 1. I ordered the watch in February and it didn’t show up until October. During that time they were pushing hard to have developers create apps for the device. I didn’t bother with their SDK as I needed hardware accelerometers for my software.

When the watch arrived I installed the latest version of the software, installed the SDK and started to write my first program for it. I hooked it up to the computer and tried to find it with adb, nothing. After messing around for a while I fired off an email to developer tech support. They informed me there is currently no adb support. Nice a new paper weight.

A month later on their site I find a new OS version that includes adb support. Excellent now maybe I’ll be able to use it. By downloading and installing adb for this device you void your warranty ??? You don’t really own a device until you’ve void the warranty so I installed the new developer rom.

For some odd reason adb on the watch only supports network mode.

A couple hours later I’ve written a shiny new app to talk to the sensors. But no matter how hard I try I can’t SensorManager.getSensors() to return a sensor. I start digging around the logs and find this.

 
W/HAL (20912): load: module=/system/lib/hw/sensors.imwatch.so error=Cannot load library: load_library[984]: Library '/system/lib/hw/sensors.imwatch.so' not found

So another email off to tech support Ticket: #EFB-458-37919 and they inform me they are trying to get that fixed for the next software update. So back on the shelf it goes.

At least it’s taught me something new. Howto generate a screen capture using adb.

adb pull /dev/graphics/fb0
ffmpeg -vframes 1 -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 -s 240x240 -i fb0 fb0.png

I’ve been working with this device for about 9 months now. I’ve been writing some software for a medical accelerometer device for a couple of different research projects. Once the results of those studies get published I’ll link to them here.

Pros

• Small form factor – 32×36×12.5mm
• Lightweight – 22 grams and ~30 grams with the strap
• Water resistant – I fully submerged it for about 5 seconds ( accidentaly )
• Wifi – used to automatically upload data
• adb support – standard
• Standard sensors – the module has most of the sensors you’ll find in current phones

Cons

• Poor battery life – never more than 48 hours
• Incomplete Sensor API implementation – Accelerometer problem
• Cloud based configuration – should be an option not a requirement
• power  button – the module needs to be removed from the strap to get to the power button

Of all of the small form factor android devices I’ve been working with this is my favourite. As a developer device it’s great as it has all of the hardware sensors you’ll have in a phone and lots of great code examples. The hardware form factor is also interesting because of its’s size and that and i2c interfaces is accessible.

As a consumer device it still has some annoying quirks. I’ve never had the battery last more than 48 hours and typical was around 36. A watch that needs plugging in everyday has limited usefulness in my book. For my particular application it wasn’t a problem as it wasn’t ever used untethered for extensive periods.

Data entry is one of the most painful experiences on this device. I’m not talking about writing a novel here just try to get a wpa key entered. It’s got a rotating dial with the alaphabet and numbers, takes a long time to get from Aa to Zz.

Unfortunately it looks like it may no longer be being produced. Ted Ladd who was head of WIMM Developer Relations now lists his job as a university professor. I also contacted WiMM and they’ve stated “We’ve decided to move in a different strategic direction, which I can’t discuss”. I hope it’s a WiMM two.

Edit:

It looks like WiMM is discontinuing their support for WiMM one developers. I found a version of the WiMM addon package.  I also did a recursive get of the documentation before they take that down. I also have a copy of their “Opensource Package”

Here are the sdk and the usb setup instructions for windows.