Sensor Watch Firmware
While you can build any number of bare-metal applications for Sensor Watch, when we refer to the Sensor Watch firmware, we’re really talking about Movement, the community firmware for Sensor Watch. You can read more about Movement here; for now, the important thing to know is that it manages a series of watch faces that you advance through using the mode button. It’s a very similar idiom to the classic Casio F-91W, which advances from Clock -> Alarm -> Stopwatch -> Time Set, and then wraps around to Clock.
Movement offers many more watch faces — some of which, like World Clock, you can include more than once! Still: you’d be pressing the Mode button for hours if we included them all, so instead, we only build a subset of the available faces into any given firmware. This means that you can download an alternate firmware that includes the kind of functionality you want, or build custom firmware that includes just the watch faces you desire.
1 - Flashing Firmware onto Sensor Watch
The small spade at the top of Sensor Watch is designed to plug directly into a USB Micro B cable. This allows you to flash new firmware directly onto the device via the built-in UF2 bootloader.
To accomplish this, disassemble your watch completely, and plug the Sensor Watch board into a USB Micro B cable plugged into your computer. Double tap the tiny Reset button on the back of the board; the LED should begin to pulse red (or blue, for Special Edition boards). You should see a disk drive called “WATCHBOOT” appear on your computer.
Drag a UF2 file with the firmware you want to use onto the WATCHBOOT drive. You can find some prebuilt firmware images right here on the Sensor Watch website, or you can build your own firmware with just the watch faces you want to wear.
After you drag the file over to WATCHBOOT, the LED should pulse intensely for a few seconds, and then turn off. This signals that the firmware has uploaded successfully; you can now reassemble the watch and wear the new firmware on your wrist.
NOTE: As a failsafe (in case the watch inadvertently enters bootloader mode while being worn), the bootloader is programmed to exit after 60 seconds of inactivity. This means that once you enter bootloader mode (red LED pulsing), you have one minute to copy over your firmware, or the watch will exit bootloader mode, and you will have to double-tap reset again.
2 - Prebuilt Alternative Firmware for Sensor Watch
As part of the move to Second Movement, we are paring down the number of alternative firmware images available on this page. Soon an online watch face builder will make it easier to build your own firmware, tailored to your device, with just the watch faces you want to make use of. In the meantime, we are offering two firmware images: the standard Movement firmware image, and an alternative version that supports experimentation with activity tracking.
Select the firmware image that matches both the color of your Sensor Watch board and the display you are using. Note that unless you bought a custom LCD from Crowd Supply, and swapped it out for the original Casio LCD that came with your wristwatch, you probably want to download variant 1: Original Casio display. Plug your board into a USB Micro-B cable, double tap the Reset button (the LED should pulse in red), and drag the new firmware over to the WATCHBOOT drive.
If you drag over the wrong color of firmware, i.e. if you put the blue/green firmware onto a red board, or the red firmware onto a Pro board, the LED will likely light up in yellow or white before you even unplug the board. This indicates an error; if this happens, double tap Reset, and drag the correct firmware onto your board.
If you drag over the wrong display variant, i.e. a Classic display when you have the custom LCD or vice versa, the display will appear garbled and unreadable when assembled. Disassemble the watch and repeat the above steps with the correct firmware image.
Note that all of these firmware images have the “Preferences” and “Time Set” screens hidden behind a long press of the Mode button from the Clock display. To set the time or change your settings, you must long-press the Mode button once, and then press it a few more times until you reach those screens.
Second Movement Standard Edition
Optional Sensor Boards: Temperature Sensor, Motion Sensor
This is the standard firmware for Second Movement.
This firmware image contains the following watch faces:
- Simple Clock - A basic clock with date for timekeeping. Long press ALARM to toggle hourly chime.
- World Clock - Long press ALARM to configure with a custom two- or three-letter title and time zone.
- Sunrise/Sunset - Local sunrise and sunset times. (Press Alarm to see the next sunrise / sunset)
- Moon Phase - Today’s moon phase. (press Alarm to see days in the future, if you want to know i.e. the next full moon)
- Stopwatch (by Wesley Ellis) - A stopwatch with one-second resolution.
- Countdown (by Wesley Ellis) - A countdown timer.
- Alarm (by Josh Berson) - A simple alarm that fires daily at the same time.
- After a long press of the Mode button:
- Temperature Display - shows the current temperature, if a temperature sensor is available. If not, this watch face is skipped.
- Battery - Shows the current battery voltage.
- Settings - Allows you to configure your device. You can set: clock mode (12/24 hour), button volume (no beep / low / high), Timeout (for some watch faces to snap back to the Clock view), low energy timeout (how long until entering sleep mode), LED duration and finally LED color (red / green / blue from 0 to 15).
- Time Set - Allows you to set the system time. You will first set the year, month and day, then the time zone, then the hour, minute and second.
Second Movement Activity Explorer
Required Sensor Board: Motion Sensor
Does not work with Sensor Watch Lite, which lacks exposed I2C pins.
This firmware image contains the following watch faces:
- Simple Clock - A basic clock with date for timekeeping. Long press ALARM to toggle hourly chime.
- World Clock - Long press ALARM to configure with a custom two- or three-letter title and time zone.
- Sunrise/Sunset - Local sunrise and sunset times. (Press Alarm to see the next sunrise / sunset)
- Moon Phase - Today’s moon phase. (press Alarm to see days in the future, if you want to know i.e. the next full moon)
- Stopwatch (by Wesley Ellis) - A stopwatch with one-second resolution.
- Countdown (by Wesley Ellis) - A countdown timer.
- Alarm (by Josh Berson) - A simple alarm that fires daily at the same time.
- After a long press of the Mode button:
- Activity Log - A 14-day log of active minutes, defined as two consecutive minutes with acceleration over a given threshold.
- Temperature Display - shows the current temperature. On Pro, this will use the on-board thermistor; on green and blue boards, it will use the accelerometer’s temperature sensor.
- Battery - Shows the current battery voltage.
- Accelerometer Status - Shows whether the accelerometer believes the wearer is “Still” or “Active”. This state latches for about 10 seconds. A long press of ALARM allows you to change the threshold for “Active” detection.
- Settings - Allows you to configure your device. You can set: clock mode (12/24 hour), button volume (no beep / low / high), Timeout (for some watch faces to snap back to the Clock view), low energy timeout (how long until entering sleep mode), LED duration and finally LED color (red / green / blue from 0 to 15).
- Time Set - Allows you to set the system time. You will first set the year, month and day, then the time zone, then the hour, minute and second.
3 - Building Firmware for the Custom LCD
TL;DR: If you are upgrading an existing Sensor Watch or Sensor Watch Lite board, you will need to re-flash your board with new firmware to take advantage of the new display. Firmware images are linked below.
All variants of Sensor Watch — Sensor Watch Pro, Sensor Watch Lite and both the green and blue versions of the original Sensor Watch board — have the ability to drive either the classic Casio LCD, or the new custom LCD designed by Oddly Specific Objects and available from Crowd Supply, but you need a firmware image targeted to your display. Your two options are to download a pre-built firmware image, or to build your own custom firmware with support for the custom LCD.
Boards ordered on Crowd Supply ship with a special firmware image that can support both displays, but we still highly recommend replacing that firmware with a version targeted to your chosen display.
Flashing Pre-Built Firmware
For the sake of convenience, a pre-built firmware image for the standard Second Movement firmware is provided here. Select the firmware image that matches your board variant and your choice of LCD:
More custom firmware images are available on the Prebuilt Alternative Firmware page.
Building Custom Firmware
If you want to use watch faces not available in the prebuilt images, uou can also clone the Second Movement repository and
build your own firmware image. Make sure to add DISPLAY=classic or DISPLAY=custom as a flag to make; this will ensure that the built firmware image targets the display you have installed.
Second Movement Builder
We are working on a web-based GUI for point-and-click generation of Sensor Watch firmware images.
Watch this space!