There’s no shortage of cheap wearable devices that you can use as step counters, fitness trackers, or smartwatch companions to your smartphone. But for the most part they’re designed to run proprietary software. If you’re looking for something a little more versatile/hackable, the LILYGO TTGO T-Wristband may be up your alley.

At first glance, it looks like a Xiaomi Mi Band 4 clone. But this inexpensive wearable device is programmable device that can be set to run custom software. In addition to a wrist strap and charging adapter, it comes with an expansion board with additional I/O ports for programming, and there’s a github page with documentation for the T-Wristband.

The T-Wristband is available from AliExpress for less than $18 (plus shipping), or from Tindie for about $19 (plus shipping).

The device features a 0.96 inch IPS color display, an ESP32-PICO-D4 processor, a nin-axis sensor for motion sensing, and support for 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy. There’s a clock chip for keeping time, and an 80 mA rechargeable battery.

Meanwhile the expansion board gives you access to GPIO and UART pins as well as other functions. It has micro USB and USB Type-C ports that you can use to connect the T-Wristband to a computer for programming.

At this point I’m not entirely clear on what kind of functionality the wristband has out of the box, or what kind of developer community exists around this platform. But theoretically it could be an interesting piece of hardware for folks looking to build a secure activity tracker that doesn’t share their data with cloud services, or one that uses motion sensors in interesting ways (LILYGO’s website mentions support for posture detection, for example).

via CNX-Software

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3 replies on “This $18 wristband is a programmable smart bracelet”

  1. 80 *mAh
    It doesn’t appear to say what sort of runtime that will give on the product page. Interesting, regardless. I’ve been thinking of getting something like this to hack together a home automation controller.

    1. Probably about 3 days between charges, if it mirrors my experience with cheap wearables.

    2. Looks very similar to the Mi Band, which I get 40 days of battery life (barely using the screen though).

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