SmartWatch Geek

A few days ago Allerta, the company that also created the inPulse smartwatch, submitted a new concept watch to Kickstarter for funding.   While they only needed $100K to get this watch into production, they’re well above their original goal and it seems this concept watch is going to become reality later on this year.   This is rather exciting news for smartwatch enthousiasts like myself since smartwatches are typically not all that popular amongst mainstream buyers. Have Eric and his persistent team at Allerta been able to turn the tide?  Only time well tell!

What is exciting about this new smartwatch is that it uses e-ink technology. While this is not the first watch to use e-ink, it is (as far as I’m aware) the first smartwatch that is using an e-ink display.  The major advantage of e-ink is its readability in bright daylight and battery life. This always-on watch has a battery life of 7+ days according to Allerta!

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That’s right – here is a Wimm One running a Gameboy Color Emulator.  Alex, one of the more active developers within the Wimm One community has ported over the Gameboy Color emulator to work with the Wimm One.   While the emulator won’t run at full speed on your watch, I actually liked the fact it was a little slower as it allowed me to play Pacman and Breakout on my Wimm One unit.  Sure it will devour your battery as Alex described it, but it’s just one of those apps that showcase how amazing the Wimm One truly is.

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What I love about the Wimm One watch is that it runs Android OS which means there are some great development environments available for this device.    We’re in conversion hell at work and while I’ve had the watch for a while, it took me a while to actually develop a little app.  All in all once I had the development environment setup, it only took me short time to get my first app completed.   Although Wimm doesn’t like us to call the Wimm One a watch, most people will wear this device as a watch so it only made sense to write a watch app first. 

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As I mentioned in my initial review, what I like about the Wimm One is the fact that the manufacturer has clearly spent a lot of time on the user interface.  This is rather clear during the installation process of this unit but also when you’re using the unit every day.

Installing a new app on your Wimm One smartwatch is very simple.  You can either go online to their web site and add applications that way to your watch, or you can use their smartphone app (Wimm Companion App).

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First impressions?  Let’s start from the top…

Unwrapping Process

I have to say, I was very impressed with how the unit was presented in the box.  Yep, I’m one of those weird people that appreciates those things.  To me it shows that a lot of care was put in the actual design of the watch.  Yes I know I shouldn’t use the word watch but that’s my only interest in this unit.  Anyway, as a comparison, I received my inPulse smartwatch (not a free unit btw) wrapped in cellophane.

Sliding my Wimm One unit in the wristband was pretty easy and although the Wimm One used as a wrist watch is rather bulky, the actual wrist band does make it appear a little smaller.  Size wise, it’s nearly the exact same size as the Fossil WristPda (which was also rather big) although it does appear a bit smaller due to the design of the wrist band.  Size wise definitely one of the bigger watches I’ve worn on my wrist.

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For the last 17 days we’ve been closely following Hudson with his latest inPulse related challenge.  His goal?  Create a new watch app every day for 30 days.  So far he seems to be able to keep up with his goal.

He started the 30 day challenge with a 3d representation of a teapot, and has since come out with other cool watch apps like an odometer, Nixie Clock, Roman Numerals, and a Metronome watch app.

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The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replay ability (no two games are the same), permanent death, and turn-based movement.  Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics like the one implemented by Jeff Lait.

When I first saw this implementation of a Roguelike for inPulse I couldn’t help but wonder how the creator of this game conquered the one button challenge. Jeff cleverly used Morse code to gain control over the whole keyboard.  While traditional roguelikes use vi-keys for movement (hjlk), these are awkward in Morse code so the developer opted to use shorter keys: mian, where m is left, i is down, a is up, and n is right.

What’s also pretty cool is that the game even has a little “menu” which you can access from the “ls” command again all through Morse code.

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When I first received my Inpulse smart watch I was wondering what game I could easily write that would only require one button.  Yes no doubt a watch with 2 buttons would have made writing games much easier but after some thinking I realized that a slot machine truly only needs one button.  Anyway, as far as I know this is the first real game ever created for the inPulse watch.  I’ve got my next game already in mind and I can’t wait to see what games others will come up with.  Visit the app store at www.inpulsewatch.com to download your free copy.

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For months I’ve pinged Eric the CEO of Allerta (the makers of this watch) to find out when they would release this watch for Android since I don’t own and don’t care about owning a blackberry.  Now that Allerta has publicly made it known that their watch is “officially” supporting Android, it was clearly time for me to finally purchase my next smartwatch.  As you can see in the picture, my watch arrived after a wait of a little over a week.  Check out the unboxing process after the break.

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