Xadow strap for Pebble Time

[Jacket Chen]

Pebble Time is coming, what smart strap do you want to pair with your PebbleTime?



Do you need some extra devices to track sport activity & health, provide wireless connection or sensors detection, etc.? And what are we going to do after you make a choice? We’ll do it! Yes, we’ll make a smart strap for you to add some flavors to your Pebble Time: favorite colors, materials, various functionalities, and more.



Let’s start with one of these. People are talking about the functionalities of smart strap, and they’re saying great things and selecting it, see this poll page, what say you?

What is Xadow?
“Xadow is a series of boards which could be combined to make a smartstrap” . As it’s especially designed for wearables, Xadow is light, compact and comes with the universal connectors, making it easy to cascade and be wrapped into a strap. See the following demo, when you shake the Xadow Accelerometer, a smile will appear on the Xadow OLED screen.



How to connect?
We’re making a transfer connector to bridge Xadow and Pebble Time. Thus you can add any Xadow module to Pebble Time via this connector.



Let’s see some pictures of the wireframe



Join the community
Now we have many developers here in Seeed and we’re building the new smartstrap! We invite you to join us and please let us hear your voice and your suggestions! No compromises!

[Jacket Chen]

Process Updating...Mon Mar 23

As you may know, Seeed is a open-hardware company, and this is the first time we move into the consumer catalogs, it's a challenge but also a opportunity to us, but we would put 200% spirit into it! Let's see how the Xadow strap is designed.



Do you like this shape of cascade?

[Jacket Chen]

Process Updating...Thu Mar 26

We’d like to introduce the initial design we will put on xadow & pebble. before we dive into this section, let’s come back and review the concept design last time.



This cool self replication sketch is one of the result of our brain storm.

pro: every brink is the same, easy to assemble
con: the free space between each piece is limited



A workaround way design the shell rather than the brick itself, we place a two-brick length shell wrap up the bricks, the opposite shell will be shift by one brick to make the structure stable.

pro: neat
con: it’s impossible in practical



We find our idea in our daily life. The connector of the loose-leaf binder inspired us, this is relatively traditional design. The following design is also so common: the zipper! It’s too much beyond our imagination, isn’t it?



There are 3 designs in this one. The left one comes from the average watch design. The middle upper one is fastened to a surface where is connected. The right one cleverly uses a silicone parts connecting them.



After several iterations, The “工” like connector is replaced with a “I” like, which makes more space for flexible uses.



What we learn from the wearable design iteration? What is our next step? Just keep an eye on our series next time.

[vgrubert]

Please, keep in mind that pebble is water resistant (5atm) and that many people ,at least me , uses it as a swim/sports watch, much cheaper than garmin,suuntos and the like. So, it would be very nice that the xadow modules for Pebble Time were also water resistant.

Good luck. Thank you.

[nosk]

Please, keep in mind that pebble is water resistant (5atm) and that many people ,at least me , uses it as a swim/sports watch, much cheaper than garmin,suuntos and the like. So, it would be very nice that the xadow modules for Pebble Time were also water resistant.

Good luck. Thank you.

Yes! There are many scenarios require waterproof, thank you for your suggestions! We will seriously consider how to waterproof~

[Jacket Chen]

Process Updating...Thu Apr 2

During the last week, we choose our initial design and further our journey into wearable modules to be place with #pebble.

We leave two questions with us:

What we learn from the wearable design iterations
What is our next step
For the first one, we learned that “make” is much different from “design”, we are not satisfied with the printed structures.

For the second one, we are still seeking the improvements over “design” and “manufacture”.

The following rendered picture are our imagination, full of simple and smooth details. Looks like a chain of Apple Watch?




3D printing is one of our fav tools to build prototype. The original wrist is built cover with concealed press studs, which keeps the xadow inside. We are frustrated to find out the imprecision made on small structures by 3D printing, the upper and lower can’t match! We print a unibody shell instead so the boards can’t be placed in the shell now.

The following picture shows how the modules are connected with each other.




Our next idea is to change a better shell design, a better design within the specified tolerance.

Not only did we try to make it using the traditional industry way, we made some handcraft with leather – the royal edition!






We have to say it’s just for fun edition.

OK, let’s talk about the “matrix” design, the cascade connection is not limited to one direction, both vertical and horizontal are accepted.






What happened with this one? See you next time.

[tacampbell]

The new Alcatel Onetouch watch / health monitor has incorporated an interesting twist - a standard USB-A plug in the clasp.

Although the Pebble Time will come with a quick-disconnect charge cord, it sure would be nifty to be able to simply plug the clasp end of your wrist band in to your laptop for a quick charge if you were on the road and forgot to bring your Pebble charge cord.

Granted, this might be covered by a patent that prevents replication, but it would be a neat way to terminate the Xadow strap as part of the buckle or clasp.

[nosk]

The new Alcatel Onetouch watch / health monitor has incorporated an interesting twist - a standard USB-A plug in the clasp.

Although the Pebble Time will come with a quick-disconnect charge cord, it sure would be nifty to be able to simply plug the clasp end of your wrist band in to your laptop for a quick charge if you were on the road and forgot to bring your Pebble charge cord.

Granted, this might be covered by a patent that prevents replication, but it would be a neat way to terminate the Xadow strap as part of the buckle or clasp.

I must thank you! Your idea inspired me! In fact, we are also considering the development of the power module, but we did not think of using USB-A, USB-A will directly enhance the experience of the charging process, thanks again! This is really a good idea!

[tacampbell]

Keep me in mind when you're looking for beta testers (I think I'm in wave 2 of the Pebble Steel runs though, so that might be too far out on your development scale).

Tom C.

[nosk]

Keep me in mind when you're looking for beta testers (I think I'm in wave 2 of the Pebble Steel runs though, so that might be too far out on your development scale).

Tom C.

OK~ We will~