Hardware wishlist

This page contains a list of things people wish PineTime did differently

Hardware

  • Other display technology could be explored.

    • E-ink

      • Still images require no power to maintain **[//en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_display A transflective LCD]

      • Increased readability in bright daylight **[//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED OLED]

      • Self-emissive display (pixels emit their own light)

      • Allows for lower power usage with mostly black screens

      • Allows for low power visual notifications (imagine an always-on small red square in the corner to indicate a notification)

  • Touchscreen with configurable sensitivity

    • Ideal for gloved fingers and water droplet resistance

    • Preferably it should remain capacitive, as a resistive touchscreen would have too many trade-offs.

  • A slightly bigger 256×256 pixel display

    • This resolution is preferable for its binary alignment for low-level simplicity

    • It has the property that its X and Y coordinates are each addressable with a single byte, with no bounds checking

    • Its total number of pixels is a power of 2 (65536), and each pixel is addressable with exactly 2 bytes.

    • The IBNIZ (Ideally Bare Numeric Impression giZmo) virtual machine, designed for minimalist demoscene graphics, has chosen 256×256 for its virtual display specifically for code efficiency.

      • If PineTime also chose 256×256 then it would be a target platform for unclipped IBNIZ demoscene programmes, which would be really fun to play around with on one’s wrist!

  • Full screen refresh is very slow

    • A full 16-bit redraw on the display takes at worst 120ms, which is 8Hz

    • Modest optimization is possible by adopting 12-bit color

    • A smooth scrolling/usage/animation experience would be 30Hz minimum, preferably 60hz

    • Display redraw is currently bottlenecked by the nRF52832 maximum SPI clock (8MHz).

    • The nRF528(33/40) has one high speed SPI master which supports 32MHz, still well below the ST7789 maximum

    • Parallel data transfer could be an option, but using more GPIOs (which don’t look available)

  • Some sort of scroll wheel (and possibly button combination) would be nice as an additional input method

  • Changed GPIO assignment so more functionality is available (i.e. NFC and VSYNC)

  • Wireless charging, or Qi Charging capability

  • Different MCU with more RAM and ROM, higher clock

    • nRF5840 update

      • 32MHz HS SPI, QuadSPI

      • CryptoCell + Secure Key Storage

      • More RAM, a coprocessor

      • The possibility to expose USB through power pins

    • Ox64/BL808

      • Open hardware RISC-V based MCU

      • Significant jump in performance

      • Significant jump in memory and storage, allowing for more features and better UI’s

    • Possibly a pre-certified MCU module with a ceramic antenna

  • Version without sensors but maybe bigger battery

  • Pins on the programmer connector to allow UART while developing (currently there is a TX test point on PCB). (Note: There’s ARM SemiHosting, ITM and Segger RTT that fulfil this purpose for most)

  • Connect SDO of ST7889 LCD controller to MCU

    • Allows MCU to execute READ commands

    • Possibility of leveraging ST7889 RAM to save MCU RAM?

  • LCD must be centered on case. Currently is not and watchfaces seems different when clock is put on the other wrist.

  • A NFC antenna around the case, connected to the NFC pins.

  • Used sensors should be NDA-free and preferably also blob-free for easier development

    • Possibly replace BMA421 accelerometer with a magnetometer + gyroscope + accelerometer combination

      • The BMA421 doesn’t have a public datasheet

      • Special attention should be paid to advanced features, such as step counting integration or flick detection.

  • PineTime SoC could support USB or have a FTDI chip with the relevant pins exposed

    • It could allow flashing a sealed device, just like Arduinos work.

    • Alternatively, an USB-C port could be added that provides these features.

  • A bigger pulldown resistor for the power button

    • 100k still leaks a noticeable amount of power when the button is always on.

  • Ceramic Bluetooth antenna for better signal reception

  • An external RTC circuit

    • Allows the main MCU go to deep-sleep while retaining time.

    • Allows time retention through MCU reset.

  • Ultra low quiescent current PMIC

    • In theory could provide a hard reset capability based on button press

    • Better deep sleep/shipping/storage/off lifetime

      • A nano-power system timer IC could in theory provide a RTC, MOSFET-controlled deep sleep, watchdog timer and button-controlled reset

    • Built-in "fuel gauge" for better estimation of battery capacity

  • Improved haptic or audible feedback

    • E.g. small Piezo buzzer

    • Use case would be for very short beeps (think old-school casio watch) as notification.

    • Of course developers can PWM other frequency to make it sing, but piezos tend to be shrill.

  • A built-in microphone

    • Would allow phone call functionality to be built into the watch.

    • Could potentially allow for speech recognition for text input.

    • Direct access to the external (flash) storage

    • Only a small jump in price