It's Time to Check Out the Spectra Customizable Smartwatch

When choosing a smartwatch, most people want something that has excellent features, looks good, and integrates with your lifestyle without much hassle. If you prefer the maker approach where everything is up for customization, there are certainly options available. But, you may have to compromise on available features, and the watch may not look as good and/or perform as well as what you’d expect from, say Apple or Garmin.

The Spectra watch, now crowdfunding on Kickstarter from the team that brought you the Pocuter miniature computing device, aims to change that as a high-end timepiece that is designed for repair and customization. The device features a CNC-milled aluminum frame, plus a 164,854-pixel screen as its face, and it can be taken apart via just seven screws.

Inside, the watch is powered by an ESP32-S3 processor (with 8MB of RAM and 32MB of flash memory), which will be familiar to many readers. It also employs an nRF52832 co-processor to handle Bluetooth wireless, as well as low-power standby. These processors together, along with the associated electronics, allow the watch to balance high performance with sustainable power usage.

While the device should have plenty of off-the-shelf uses when launched, it is meant to be programmed to your needs. The team is developing a live app coding platform that simulates the watch's behavior, enabling a streamlined watch programming process.

The watch also includes a microSD card slot, allowing its memory to be expanded by up to 512GB. One interesting use idea for a watch with this sort of memory capacity would be to use it as a portable wrist-based “cloud storage” device. However, between a massive amount of possible memory, and its other sensing/communication/processing capabilities, the possibilities are practically limitless!