LILYGO® TTGO T-Watch GPS + Lora (S76G) watch expansion card.
I do not own this watch, but it seemed to me an interesting format. Although there will be obvious problems with the antenna. But everything will be fine near the camp.
I think these could make a really good kid tracker. Especially if we could setup a few programmed messages that are easy to select with the watch’s buttons.
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The location is convenient, but the antenna spoils everything. it either works poorly or is inconvenient. I also drew attention to it because I wanted a collar for my dogs. T-beem is too long for that.
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I’ve bought one like this a couple of months ago, containing the S76G LoRa+GPS board.
But this means the comms libraries for LoRa and GPS would have to be adapted, which seems to be a big job as an extra controller is translating all the communication with the ESP32.
It could make a great tracker though, as you can connect external antennas without any problem and stick them to your animal’s collar or to your kids’ backpack.
But then, for sending Meshtastic messages, a smartphone often already has gps built-in, so in that case one could rely on a cheaper LoRa board, based on the SX1276 we already use in Meshtastic. I had bought such a T-watch LoRa 868-915 board recently from LilyGo, to fit a cheaper version of the T-watch (which doesn’t have the touchscreen but only the buttons).
You’ll find the links to them in my regularly updated excel sheet of Meshtastic compatible ESP32 LoRa boards where I added pinout columns for these 2 T-watches with the S76G and SX1276 optional boards.
Anyone interested on working together on some Meshtastic solution for those ? It could improve my very limited PlatformIO skills, so I’m planning to start with the easiest board which is SX1276 !
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I’m up for collaborating on a watch interface. I have the https://www.tindie.com/products/ttgo/lilygor-ttgo-t-watch-2020/ device which is almost a perfect thinness for a smart watch. I am working on networking the two mesh radios and then I will start on the watch… I’m confused by how bluetooth and wifi differ on the mesh nodes, since the watch does both, I would like to support all options.
@Ride33Comfy can you check if the t-watch-2020 has the “(optional) LoRa + GPS board” available like the older thick model ? Or can you “stack” the lora board onto this newer version 2020 ? It seems sold-out at the tindie site, but I find it at banggood and aliexpress.
My interest is the 1.5" touch screen capabilities… or could we run the app on the t-watch and bluetooth to a t-beam ?
No gps or other expansion. It is as close to an open smart watch platform as you can get. The app will have to be coded in python / or embedded. No android. I’m seeing some issues with onbarding new users / devices in the current design and hope to smooth this out on the watch.
Alas, for the 2020 watch, that’s why I didn’t buy one because it’s too thin to receive a 2nd board. So yes, Meshtastic comms would need an extra LoRa relay module.
Both the T-watch and T-watch-N, however, do support the SX127x based LoRa boards.
I bought one 868 MHz board from LilyGo and after asking for a 433 MHz version, TTGO … simply built one!!!
All three (Lora 433, 868 and 915) are now on the same LilyGo Aliexpress page. These guys are just Great !
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I hope we can generate some interest by developers since this seems like a nice hiking use case. I had hoped the indiegogo project called XQUAD could work , BUT it may never get finished. The price for the T-Watch (touch version) with the gps/lora 915 already installed seems pretty good at $55 US plus shipping. I had read some reviewers concerns that it only had 5 hours on the internal lithium battery, maybe less if the gps is active.
I think the 1.5" touch screen could be a real challenge to type a message, but shorter is usually better.
In the care package I just received from TTGO was an interesting new SKU. Apparently they are making a version of the T-WATCH that has a keyboard attached and has a GPS + LORA radio internally (so it is kinda a T-PAGER instead?)
It will be a few weeks before I can play with it (want to get some of those tasty 1.1 work items finished first) but here’s a photo.
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GPS+LoRa is AcSip S7xG then ? Nice idea, though!
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This looks to be an excellent development, as many are interested in being able to keyboard directly to the t-beam,and also have a better form factor, any advance info about the antenna, external antenna or i/o port options?
Thanks
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I haven’t looked carefully. Seems to be a standard twatch 1.0 with their Lora+gps add-on board and then the keyboard is connected via i2c. The keyboard attaches where the watch band would usually go.
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My 433 SX-based Twatch inset board arrived in the mail today!
LoRa SX module H379 version Lora 433 with SX1278 (HPDTek HPD14A)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001085755614.html
It’s got an ipex connector and a sticker-patch antenna for 433.
LoRa SX module H361 version Lora 868 or 915 with SX1276 (HPDTek HPD13A)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001085755614.html
It’s got an ipex connector and a soldered spiral antenna for 868/915.
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How is it powered? Is there space for a lipo battery?
Hey Erik - if you want to add support for twatch:
Now (since I just added kinda crummy / slow TFT display support) it probably would be a fairly easy addition (just a new entry in configuration.h with the right GPIOs and adding the right TFT definitions in platformio.ini - see lora-relay-v1 in that file)
I’m happy to help if you have questions and I think it would be super cool.
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okay Kevin, I’m in. Trying to sort out a maximum in PIO. I’m working on it!
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From power consumption perspective is AcSip S7xG a really nice SiP - it integrates LoRa Radio (SEMTECH SX1276), GNSS Radio (Sony CXD5603GF - best low power GNSS) with Cortex M0+ MCU (STM32L073x). Unfortunately, it is not supported yet, but maybe somebody will port this code to STM32L0 as well as guys from SoftRF project did.
For super low power device (for example a tracker) you can run all the needed code for GNSS and LoRa on AcSip and then use ESP32 only for UI, or you can get rid of ESP32 completely.
I have two devices with this both running SoftRF:
- TTGO T-Watch with AcSip module;
- TTGO T-Motion.
Any update on this product as currently shown on lora version tab $46 US
to be on-sale soon for $43 US
link:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000910537648.html
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Hello sir wanted to ask if i can power use this board as a stand alone gps tracker is that possible ?
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