Have you ever ever wished your smartwatch was extra of a pc and fewer of a trend merchandise? Have you ever ever felt the necessity to sort on keys which might be absolutely too small for regular human fingers to make use of? The dream of the Eighties was a pc the scale of a watch, and within the twenty first century we’re gifted with this and extra. Chinese language firm Lilygo, whose merchandise we’ve featured earlier than, harks again to the Eighties aesthetic with this tiny Bluetooth keyboard, as noticed by CNX Software program.
It is cute, however the quantity of precise use you may get out of it’s questionable. And sadly, you will require a selected smartwatch, so there isn’t any turning your Apple Watch right into a productiveness machine this time. The Watch-Keyboard-C3, because it’s snappily identified, connects to an ESP-32 C3 microcontroller and a LilyGo T-watch. The watch is included with the keyboard bundle if you do not have one. There’s additionally an non-obligatory audio module with a mic and speaker.
The mini keyboard connects over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 4 for all of your wi-fi networking wants, and a USB-C port for energy and information. There’s additionally a three-axis accelerometer on board, actually designed for counting steps however with the suitable code it might be used as a gesture management enter system. The tiny laptop could be programmed through Arduino instruments; there isn’t any desktop OS on this one. As well as, there’s some pattern code on GitHub in two repositories, however not a lot else concerning documentation or instruments.
ESP-32 C3 | RP2040 (Raspberry Pi Pico) | |
Controller | C3 RISC-V | Twin-core Arm Cortex-M0+ (32-bit) |
Velocity | as much as 240 MHz | as much as 133 MHz |
Voltage | 3.3V / 5V | 5V |
Flash storage | 4MB | 2MB |
RAM | 520KB | 264KB |
GPIO | 30 pins | 26 digital i/o |
Interfaces | 2x SPI, 2x I2C, 2x UART | 2x I2C, 2x I2S, 1x IR, 4x SPI, 3x UART, Bluetooth, WiFi (W model) |
The ESP32-C3 was introduced in November 2020 and it’s a part of the bigger ESP32 vary of boards which began manner again in 2016. The ESP32 microcontrollers have turn into well-liked because of its low price, plentiful provide and ease of use. The numerous fashions of ESP32 are available varied configurations. Some providing single or dual-core CPUs with speeds reaching 240 MHz and as much as 512KB of SRAM. With sooner CPU speeds and extra RAM than a Raspberry Pi Pico W, ESP32’s are a sensible choice for the established maker.
The Keyboard-C3 is accessible proper now from AliExpress (opens in new tab) for simply shy of $50 in order for you the entire package deal and do not have already got a suitable smartwatch.