[time-nuts] F*watch

Javier Serrano javier.serrano.pareja at gmail.com
Sun Oct 12 05:10:05 EDT 2014


On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Chris Albertson
<albertson.chris at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 1:50 PM, Javier Serrano <
> javier.serrano.pareja at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's as free-as-in-freedom as we could make it: schematics, layout,
>> case and code, all using free tools.
>
> That is really the best part.   But I wonder what it would cost to build a
> copy using your design files.  Or what would it cost to build a run of say
> one dozen?    Apple prices their watch at $350 which at first seemed really
> high but then I started thinking if that was a high price or not

I haven't done the math myself, since our objective was never to save
money, but I am pretty sure you can convince yourself by looking at
the parts list and contacting your favourite distributors (and
excluding your own time to learn about it and make it) that the
f*watch can be made cheaper than Apple's watch. Having said that, I
think you would be comparing apples and oranges ;) Our main objectives
with this development were others, in order of decreasing priority:

- to give our colleague a gift and a departure party he would remember
forever. I think we succeeded on this one! :)
- to give him something which would keep him coming back to us to do
what he likes best (aside from hiking): hack low-level software.
- to explore the limits of what a bunch of hackers can do meeting
irregularly on Friday evenings and working intermittently at night and
on weekends for a few months, using only free tools.
- to start eating our own dog food. We have been contributing to KiCad
for some time now [1], and we wanted to evaluate how far we still are
from being able to use it at work without a big productivity penalty.

So I don't look at the f*watch as a way to save money (and even less,
time!) but as a great platform to experiment and have fun.

Cheers,

Javier

[1] http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki


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