Tag: pinetime

Using only a Raspberry Pi, we can debug the firmware on PineTime Smart Watch: Step into the flashed program line by line, set a breakpoint to pause execution at a line, inspect variables at runtime, … Just like the Embedded Pros!

It’s a great way to learn how real IoT gadgets are created… At a fraction of the cost of professional embedded tools and workstations!

Here are the steps to configure a Raspberry Pi (1, 2, 3 or 4, with 1 GB RAM or more) for debugging the Rust+Mynewt Firmware for PineTime…

All you need is a Raspberry Pi and a Windows or macOS computer!

Welcome to the World of Modern IoT Gadgets! If you’re used to old-school IoT gadgets like Arduino Uno that are underpowered and have no networking and display… PineTime Smart Watch will surprise you! PineTime is powered by a Nordic nRF52 Microcontroller with an Arm Cortex-M4F CPU… The same microcontroller found in a high-end gaming mouse! With built-in colour touchscreen and Bluetooth networking, embedded programming on PineTime becomes really fun and exciting.

PineTime is a prime example of a real-world, off-the-shelf gadget that’s powerful and yet affordable, because it’s manufactured in huge quantities. But they can be intimidating to newbies who have not programmed such commercial devices. Today I’ll show you that programming a PineTime is not that hard… All you need is a Raspberry Pi, some wires and a little creativity!

Simple tweaks like Batched Updates and Non-Blocking SPI can have a huge impact on rendering performance… PineTime Smart Watch has been an awesome educational tool for teaching embedded coding with Rust and Mynewt OS… But stare closely at the video demos in the articles… You’ll realise that the rendering of graphics on PineTime’s LCD display looks sluggish. Can we expect speedy screen updates from a $20 smart watch… Powered by a Nordic nRF52832 Microcontroller that drives an ST7789 Display Controller over SPI? Yes we can! Check the rendering performance of Rust and Mynewt OS on PineTime, before and after optimisation…