PineTime Development

Reprogramming

Wire it up and then flash something.

Available firmware and projects

	Project Homepage	Project Source	PineTime Implementations
FreeRTOS	https://www.freertos.org	https://sourceforge.net/projects/freertos/	InfiniTime (GitHub: JF002/Pinetime) kaythe/pinetime-os
Zephyr	https://www.zephyrproject.org	https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr	najnesnaj/pinetime-zephyr SuperPrower/pinetime_zephyr_sample_fw Dejvino/pinetime-hermes-firmware endian-albin/pinetime-hypnos
mynewt	https://mynewt.apache.org/about/	https://github.com/apache/mynewt-core	lupyuen/pinetime-rust-mynewt caspermeijn/klok
MbedOS	https://os.mbed.com	https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os	sethitow/mbed-pinetime geoffrey.vl/mbed-pinetime
RIOT	http://riot-os.org/	https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/	bosmoment/PineTime-apps
TinyGo	https://tinygo.org	https://github.com/tinygo-org/tinygo	aykevl/go-smartwatch
wasp-os (MicroPython)	https://wasp-os.readthedocs.io/	https://github.com/daniel-thompson/wasp-os	WaspOS PineTime install guide
Rust + RTFM	https://rtfm.rs/	rtfm-rs/cortex-m-rtfm	https://github.com/dbrgn/pinetime-rtfm/
Bare Metal		https://github.com/xriss/timecake https://github.com/Arc13/Pyrus	xriss/timecake Arc13/Pyrus
AdaFruit bootloader		https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader	daniel-thompson/wasp-bootloader
Useful drivers		https://github.com/sethitow/mbed-pinetime	https://github.com/sethitow/mbed-pinetime

	Project Homepage	Project Source	PineTime Implementations
Gadgetbridge (Android companion app)	https://gadgetbridge.org/	https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge	InfiniTime support in mainline
Arduino	https://youtu.be/4aFDjymXjOw	https://github.com/atc1441/ATCwatch	https://github.com/atc1441/ATCwatch
OTA Update Flasher / DaFlasher	https://youtu.be/gUVEz-pxhgg	https://github.com/atc1441/DaFlasherFiles	https://github.com/atc1441/DaFlasherFiles
InfiniTime companion app for Linux	alexr4535/siglo
Wasp-os companion app for Linux	arteeh/wasp-companion
UI design proposal	arteeh/pinetime
Flashing app for Linux	arteeh/pinetime-flasher
Flashing app for Windows	ZephyrLabs/PinetimeFlasher

Manuals

• InfiniTime installation
• Zephyr installation Beginner manual which explains how to install Zephyr (by najnesnaj).
• Wasp-OS installation Full manual with install instructions and an application writer's guide.

How to write battery friendly software?

The key to save battery is to enable only what you need when you need it. nRF52832 has a lot of functionalities allowing you to draw as little current as possible. Here are some tips and tricks:

• Disable / shutdown / put in sleep mode all devices around the MCU (display controller, touch controller, external memory,...).
• Disable all peripheral inside the MCU when you don't need them (SPI, TWI(I²C),...). The power management of the NRF52832 is very smart and will completely shut down (power off and disable the clock) the peripheral when the software disables it.
• Put the MCU to sleep as soon and as often as possible. If you are not using a RTOS, this is done by calling WFE (wait for event) instruction. Most of the time, RTOS implement this functionality. For example, FreeRTOS calls it the tickless mode : it puts the CPU in sleep mode when no task is planned for execution for more than a specified time, and wakes up as soon as an event is detected or when a task is ready to run.
• Do not use logging (JLink RTT, SWO, semihosting,...), it uses a lot of power.
• Ensure that the debug circuitry of the MCU is not enabled when you measuring the battery life. The debug peripheral is enabled as soon as you connect a debugger to the device, and is not automatically disabled, even if you disconnect the debugger you will have to wait for the battery to go flat to disable to port. The software running in the NRF52832 cannot disable the debug peripheral. How to disable the debug circuitry:

 - using nrfjprog --reset
 - using JLinkExe : issue the command writeDP 1 0

 or with OpenOCD
 - issue the command halt
 - issue the command flash fillw 0x10001208 0xFFFFFF00 0x01
 - issue the command reset

 you can check if the debug port is enabled using the following code
 DWT->CYCCNT ? "NO":"YES"

• Read the errata sheet of the MCU and apply workarounds if they apply to your software.

Wishlist

In order to keep track of features and changes to the hardware people would like to see, check out this article: PineTime Hardware Wishlist

Compatibility with other projects

Different firmware running using different bootloaders and Bluetooth stacks on the nRF52832 have different requirements on how they should be initialised and what should be placed where in the internal flash.

To keep track of what, how and why things work like they do across the different projects, check out the PineTime SoftDevice and MCUBoot compatibility article.

Compatibility with companions apps and Bluetooth communication

There are a lot of different firmware running on the Pinetime that implement different BLE APIs (time synchronization, notifications, ...). Companion apps must be able to differentiate between different firmware and forks of the same firmware. See PineTime Bluetooth.

PineTime equivalents and jailbreaking

This page contains a list of PineTime-like smartwatches that might be "jailbreakable" or a good source for ideas for the PineTime: PineTime Equivalents