{"id":1243,"date":"2025-03-08T16:32:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T16:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/?p=1243"},"modified":"2025-03-09T04:00:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-09T04:00:02","slug":"thanks-watchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/thanks-watchy\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks, Watchy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I loved my Watchy<\/a>. It is a watch for geeks. I got a lot of fun out of it. But it has now stopped working. Probably the battery. But I made the decision not to replace the battery. In the spirit of adventure, I’ve opted for a new toy. I never took a photo of it before it went to the happy place old hardware goes, so you have to look at a copy of the code I changed instead. Can you spot the bug? Not too much of a problem. I’m very seldom awake between midnight and 1am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why I loved my Watchy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It arrives in pieces<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

My favourite thing about the Watchy is that you receive it in pieces. You have to assemble it yourself. No soldering required. The PCB is already complete. But that is all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not self-obvious how to assemble it, but the instructions <\/a>are very clear, and no previous knowledge required. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fully Open Source<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Watchy is fully Open Source<\/a> hardware <\/a>and software. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open Source is such a progressive way of development. It has proved its value in the operating system called Linux<\/a>, a university project for a Finnish student called Linus Torvalds. Linux has now overtaken all other operating systems, to become the leading platform for servers in the world. Yup this website is on a variation of a Linux server, as are over 50% of the websites you will visit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You need to Change the Code<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Again there are full instructions on the Getting Started page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing you need to do is get your own OpenWeather Map<\/a> API key. This doesn’t cost money unless you make a ridiculously high number of calls. I already had my own, from when I was making changes to my weather app<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then you need to put in the location that the weather and time zone should come from. This can be done in the Arduino IDE<\/a>, which I’ve already used for countless other projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Unique<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

One thing the Watchy is not – is pretty. But I have never aspired to wearing the same accessories as the cool kids. That is the opposite to who I am. I loved that no matter where I went, nobody else had the same watch as me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t get a photo of it, but you can easily DuckDuckGo <\/a>it. Or type ‘Watchy watch’ into whatever search engine you use, and click images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why I Decided to Replace my Watchy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Despite all these cool things, I decided not to get a new battery. Here are some reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Location is not Automatic<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

No, there is no GPS functionality. And there is no connectivity with the watch. When you go to a different location and want the weather – and often the time – to update, you have to go into the code, update the location, and then flash it back onto the Watchy. This did become a bit of a pain on some holidays where we moved around a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Preparations
Preparations for going on holiday. All the locations I was planning to visit and the co-ordinates.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

WiFi is a bit Picky<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Most places you go these days have WiFi, so it is not hugely problematic to log into a different one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to connect to WiFi, you have to turn your watch into a router, connect to it from a computer or phone, and then select the WiFi network and enter the password. This is fine – and quirky. But you cannot use a WiFi that you have to sign into via a form, or even a page where you accept terms and conditions. And it will not accept a WiFi that has no password. So this was limiting especially on holiday. And I never could persuade it to connect to the phone hotspot. Not sure the science behind that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that’s it – Watchy is now in Hardware Heaven, and ‘watch’ this spot to find out what I got instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I loved my Watchy. It is a watch for geeks. I got a lot of fun out of it. But it has now stopped working. Probably the battery. But I made the decision not to replace the battery. In the spirit of adventure, I’ve opted for a new toy. I never took a photo of The full story here…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,11,77],"tags":[78,79],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-electronics","category-other-projects","category-watches","tag-watch","tag-watchy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1283,"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snersbots.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}