Tearing down some more cheap and nasty smartwatches

In whch yr hmbl svt gets some more sub-$10 smartwatches ($4 and $6.50 respectively) and takes them apart to see what makes them tick. Figuratively.
Turns out these things are based around some pretty decent hardware, much more so than the last LT716. Also, all three watches (these two and the LT716) use different CPUs! The expensive watch -- which was $6.50 when I bought it but is now $5 -- is actually pretty nice and might, with some work, be usable as a watch.
pvvx's PHY6222 firmware and tooling: github.com/pvvx/THB2
Tuya's page on the PHY6222: developer.tuya.com/en/docs/io...
PhyPlus' page on the PHY6222: en.phyplusinc.com/index.php/ha...
YiChip's page on the YC11xx family: www.yichip.com/yc11xx
Affiliate link to the $4 watch: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DFQ...
Affiliate link to the $6 watch: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Ddh...

[@TommyCrosby]

15:24 looks like Bluetooth profiles. One to be for audio only (like to be used the watch as a earpiece?) One probably connect to "smart features" aka notifications And one for remote controls? I don't know, but definitely bluetooth profiles.

[@hjalfi]

Yes! It is! I tried pairing it with my phone (without using FitPro), and it showed up as a headset device. Called "watch" (sic). Of the three audio profiles in the menu, "Portable ..." and "intellige..." (sic) seem to be identical. I successfully played audio through it, although the quality was so bad that it was completely unintelligible. I did not try the microphone but I bet it's hilarious. It _completely_ failed to occur to me that this might work without having to use FitPro. Thank you very much!

[@m3galamaniac144]

Love the intro "These are the expensive ones, these come in BOXES" 😂

[@sinnedcamel]

Your channel is gonna grow in no time .

[@imlassuom]

+1

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

+2

[@teletvbis_]

+3

[@jshacquille]

+4

[@kratobyte]

+5

[@AmirHusainTX]

An amazing amount of hardware (and software) for just $4! So many possibilities, and very little to complain about. Thank you for digging into these and talking us through the hardware.

[@ncot_tech]

These cheap smart watches remind me of the cheap g-shock watches from the 80s that pretended to be expensive dive watches. Except they weren't waterproof and only had a basic watch inside it.

[@ericthecyclist]

I think I had one of those, bought at a garage sale. made the mistake of swimming with it and moisure got in.

[@ncot_tech]

@@ericthecyclist As a kid I got one from a market while on holiday in Spain. Took it in the sea, died immediately.

[@GottaGeek]

That's wierd as heck. I've never had a G Shock die from water or anything else. Other than a battery change needed every 3 to 15 years lol

[@ncot_tech]

@@GottaGeek Yeah I bet you had a real G-Shock watch. Mine was a cheap fake from a market stall. It definitely got a shock when I took it in the sea!

[@GottaGeek]

@@ncot_tech pretty sure because I don't live anywhere near a place that sells fake items or counterfeits. And back in the late 80s we would have had to have driven 4 hours just to get to flea markets in Milwaukee. None of that matters now though since the internet is everywhere. The Upper peninsula of Michigan isn't exactly a shopping hub. LOL

[@xelxen]

This channel is gonna blow up soon! And I am all in for that :P

[@hjalfi]

I, too, expect it to quickly disintegrate in a messy fireball.

[@Lemon_Inspector]

@@hjalfi Now you have to upload another 10 hours of writing yet another assembler to prevent your channel from exploding

[@hjalfi]

@@Lemon_Inspector I do actually have 45 hours of programming in reserve (and counting) in case I need to drive people away...

[@Jasmohan]

@@hjalfi I like it when things release magic smoke. Hopefully you'll learn a magic spell to cast fireball with the electronic devices.

[@cocusar]

I ended up buying two of the previous one you showed (using the affiliate link), and I'm waiting for them to arrive and start playing with them!

[@hjalfi]

I _really_ hope I managed to link to the right watch there. I suppose I'll find out in a month!

[@cocusar]

@@hjalfi I'll let you know!

[@Amir1300aht]

Please do more videos like this❤❤

[@BRY0402]

Your channel is really interesting, I can see it grow from 10k to 100k very easily

[@11danzizzle11]

I check Aliexpress every so often and a little while back bought 7 $1.79 "smart watches" which all were technically different but essentially the same. I tore them all apart and had a great time harvesting the screens from them and just checking out the various boards on each one. Keep up the great videos and hopefully something awesome will come from your findings with these!

[@NielsNL68]

I like the way you show the 3d projects. I hope you will do more of them in the future.

[@LuizCarlos-py7zl]

I would love to see a continuation on the rev eng about the fnirsi scope. I try to paste the link here, but my coments disapears...

[@hjalfi]

Yes, the KZbin automoderator just disappears anything with a link in it. I do actually have a followup planned, but projects seem to arrive more rapidly than I can do them.

[@rarsscal]

this is a great channel with great videos, thanks for doing them!!

[@skips3170]

prolly one of the best channels i found this year

[@Darkstar2342]

15:45 that menu style is actually pretty neat. Rather unusable un that small display, and a little slow, but at least it looks quite impressive (note that I don't have a smart watch so I have no idea what exactly they were copying there)

[@hjalfi]

The style is directly ripped off from the Apple watches. I do have to give them credit for making that style of thing work at all on a device with so little RAM, while at the same point wishing they hadn't tried.

[@SianaGearz]

When you listed the specs, i already had the feeling the screen wouldn't be 240x240 but 128x128. I particularly love how they had space for a big battery but didn't use it, and they had a special compartment for a vibration motor, but just taped it in nearby on an angle as well. What could possibly go wrong? I have not found an incremental encoder currently in production and sold openly which would support the crown dial like that, or fit in a watch case. But it's been a few years since i looked. I think they have a variant of the watch with 2 or 3 buttons. In fact i saw a smartwatch listing which was sort of a Casio homage watch with a colour screen. The watch faces on the nice one are plain amazing. LOVE the horse and the lemon boy ones and they even have lcars. 13:55 FLUX. Also in a pinch tape some sewing needles to your multimeter probes because your probes are kind of being useless here. How is RX and TX connected together a problem? The boot firmware is for sure not full duplex capable anyway, you can just connect a resistor to that, connect RX and TX lines together on your end, and hook to the resistor. You might achieve something. Such a pity that the processor on the nice one is closed.

[@TriniteHoan]

Have you thought about poking around with the pine time watch from pine64? It's already pretty open source but it could a fun thing to mess with

[@daniellosavio5184]

You have tot this with the hello watches 😮 nice work😊

[@MathematicsStudent]

My favorite part was when you said the first watch was supposed to have a "reminder to be sedentary"! I got a good laugh out of that. I'm still trying to figure out what a "sedentary reminder" is supposed to be; the most reasonable thing I can think of is that it notifies you if you've been too sedentary and reminds you to get some exercise, but I would call that an "exercise reminder". I certainly am not in need of being more sedentary!

[@SuchoSK]

14:57 really made my day, thank you! Keep it up, very interesting content in general.

[@AppliedCryogenics]

That first one has the mold quality of 1969 army men.

[@Dinesh-XP]

Hope you can look into the DZ-09 eventually, it has a removable battery, SIM card slot and SD card slot in a smartwatch!

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

Something something "fernly".

[@SianaGearz]

Hold on. Those were a thing about 7 years ago. They had a MTK feature phone chip. Also of course many had a working camera. I was under the impression that they had been sold out and gone long long long ago. I thought they were promising at the time because bunnie or someone released an open SDK for a closely related chip.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

@@SianaGearz MT6260/MT6261

[@c7dmz30]

10:38 looks like the case has a part for vibration motor but... who needs things in right places

[@hjalfi]

I hadn't spotted that, but yeah --- that enclosure on the left is clearly intended to hold something which rotates. There's space for a much bigger battery, too. I'm pretty sure that this has been bodged together from various parts which were available cheap.

[@raw_000]

I assumed it just came out from its position during disassembly, but that would require a 135° rotation...

[@LanceThumping]

These videos are really interesting and I'd be interested to see you go further with them like the previous one (when you are ready of course). The last watch is painfully close to being legitimately interesting and useful. If they had purposely included a little easier access to debugging and GPIO, especially without having to modify the case then it would also serve to work extremely well as a module for giving devices a small touch UI. Hopefully, it turns out to be easier to work with and flash over BLE than it appears because it could still do a bit of work. Could maybe still knock out the fake HR sensor LEDs and their windows and use those as connections on the back and add it as the front panel for a DIY device. I'd love to see how this might continue, it's shocking that just a small jump to $6.50 gets you that much better quality and features. I'm curious what the next devices will be like. Ideally you'll find something super easy to hack in a nice package that could be mounted somewhere reliably and has a reasonably good screen/case and still cheaper than it would cost to buy and make your own. The next displays people use for their custom 3D printers could be "smart" watches.

[@replikvltyoutube3727]

Recently got a Tracer branded smartwatch. Seems to be running a similar system to the last smartwatch you showed

[@Jasmohan]

Keep doing things like these. Just subscribed. Hope to see more reverse engineering and troubleshooting from you.

[@nopcgst]

Wow great Video channel thanks for sharing your great Experiments i love it to see very interesting 😃

[@daniloalmeida6983]

Nice Work 😁

[@DolphLongedgreens]

I've seen this in the wild with a "winding knob" that controlled the UI.

[@Ivansonraven]

Hey can we install any light weight OS in DVR to playback videos imgs audio like a DVR HKVISION btw love your content keep it up

[@deltacx1059]

The construction of these reminds me of flagship phones, nothing but snaps and glue.

[@vaibhavhayaran]

It’s scary to think that some people will definitely buy these watches and check their vitals using fake sensors!

[@hjalfi]

I have no mercy for people who fake medical equipment.

[@GottaGeek]

The horse face is from the AW Ultra series. As well as the one after it

[@arijeetsarkar1512]

Wow thanks for the video

[@harikrishnanrajendran4032]

I'm looking forward to installing a good, usable, working os on these watches.. if you are doing that.. I'll subscribe!

[@gokayokyay4600]

Hey! Thanks for the video it's really great. I want to create a DIY Smart Glasses (like Rayban Stories). I'm a computer scientist but these things are beyond my knowledge (I create amazing software tho :P) Can you recommend any resources so I can read/watch on my free time to start building the smart glasses?

[@Itsmmkk]

This is the nerd I’ve been looking for on KZbin, but I thought I would never find

[@spyros1_]

You should try the DZ09 watch it's got much more stuff you can investigate

[@DaaDucktator]

+1 for quality casing

[@thesidneychan]

The square one is everywhere, mostly sold as apple watch knockoffs. I think it would be fun if someone made a firmware update that made them safer and usable. Maybe even emulating digimon or Tamagotchi on it.

[@ancienttech4603]

When you are trying to solder something small, try adding flux. I bet you can get that wire soldered!

[@TiagoTiagoT]

Are there any decent fitness watches with full set of real sensors, that work standalone (without online account, proprietary app etc), is water-resistant (my requirements would be at least pool swimming proof; don't need to worry about deep diving), and in general is worth buying for it's official purpose?

[@Doktor_Apokalypse]

subscribed so i can see what you do with these in future. I'd like to see what is inside my Xiaomi mi band 6 and how hackable it is.

[@king_james_official]

you can fix the fpc by scratching off a bit of this plasticky material that has the copper traces sandwiched between and extend the solder lines beyond the crack this way :3

[@hjalfi]

Sadly the screen is in a better place now, by which I mean my ewaste bin and in pieces.

[@burton_bordel]

Please try hello Watch 3+

[@helloworld5186]

Do the square one it's awesome

[@fringeanomaly9284]

i am interested in programming but have never worked with hardware level stuff like firmwares, OS etc where should I start learning and implementing stuff i consider myself good at c++ for competitive programming though

[@hjalfi]

Get a Raspberry Pi Pico with one of the games hardware addons (VGA out or an LCD, gamepad controls). It's a really good chip with an excellent C++ SDK. You can then write old-school games for it. It'll teach you about bare-metal programming without the pain of working on the really constrained devices in a reasonably fun way. Plus there are lots of libraries for it and an active community.

[@fringeanomaly9284]

@@hjalfi thank you sir will get on it

[@chatbotte1838]

you could just search "Mbed OS" and buy some compatible hardware

[@HwrusElyrx]

are these can play doom

[@balajoo7844]

next buy and take apart one of those cheap apple ultra watches to run micropython

[@Random_MantixYT]

This is interesting. On the cheap first watch u show it says its LP715(D)... But thats what mine says, and my watch is totally different with different UI. My version number is v19472 and it says WATCH instead of 716 and the rest of numbers are different. I love these smart watches tho, well, at least mine, cuz my step counter is real, and heart sensor IS real its just not super accurate

[@hjalfi]

Interesting. I have no idea where the software stack comes from. I suspect it's passed around from manufacturer to manufacturer samizdat-style. Possibly the model number doesn't mean much.

[@Random_MantixYT]

@hjalfi yeah ig so, thanks for seeing my comment tho, means alot to me

[@nahkh1]

This feels like reverse Shenzhen I/O

[@-indeed8285]

How beautiful it would be if company starts selling watch with test-pad exposed at rare side and with dev-kits to flash them.

[@rocktechno8655]

I think you can check the sdk available for branding partners who put their names in the boot menu make their own app and they also create there own watch face u should reverse engineer their android apphow they update firmware

[@Udinanon]

I love your stuff but you need to fix the focus on the camera when you handle objects, try to raise the depth of field or better control the focus, perhpas focusing it on your hand and then locking it, cause here your table is perfectly sharp but your hands and watch are so blurry

[@greyship1341]

lol @ the horse watch face

[@randomazzy11]

I WAS SO DISSAPOINTED WHEN I HEARD ITS A SQUARE AND NO TOUCH SCREEN

[@Mizuki-fr3pi]

Yeah 😈

[@MartinClausen]

I don't get the hate for the horse watch face. It is clearly high art.

[@hjalfi]

Only when the watch is on a plane.

[@SianaGearz]

And you can say "Look at my horse, my horse is amazing!"

[@hjalfi]

It's more like a shetland pony: you shouldn't ride on it.

[@robinbrowne5419]

Interestingly the Apple watch has much better features but if you ever take it apart you will never get it back together because of the twenty or so tiny screws. Sometimes cheap and nasty has its advantages. 🙂👍

[@ALFrix0]

i don't understand the ui decisions of most of this watches, menus that lead into nothing (fb and twitter), hidden stuff like to change watchfaces you have to long press it should not be assumed to be there it should be additional as a shortcut to a config menu, i wouldn't even add long press to a watch it's too easy to trigger unwillingly, icons with terrible contrast for viewing on the outside, etc from a watch i expect the main extra features to be stopwatch and timer, then as secondary the other stuff like notifications, fitness,etc it would be a lot better if you could just turn features on/off and those get completely hidden in the watch ui, and would be even better to be able to reorder some menus. i would like a FOSS implementation in a watch, we could do so much better, sadly i don't think that will ever happen.

[@hjalfi]

The non-functional menus are most likely not working because it's not paired with a phone, so that's semi-reasonable --- but I should at least expect an error message (and not 'Null...'). I agree, the UI is total junk. Looking at the quick menu on the better watch, one of the options is the menu style selector? But why? It's something most people would only ever set once. I got a comment elsewhere suggesting that this are repurposed pulse oximeter boards from the... er... recent kerfuffle, and if so I suspect that there's a semi-standard smartwatch stack somewhere that's been slapped onto the boards haphazardly. You're right that no concern for quality, usability or anything has been done. There are some open source smartwatch stacks; e.g. WaspOS runs on the PineTime, which has similar specs to these. Theoretically it should be easy to port. Practically the hard bit will be getting a hardware debugger working on a development device so that they can be reflashed when a botched update bricks them.

[@H2Oredfirefox]

The screen looks terrible on that watched with the green surround I can't imagine what quality of screen they use but it's horrendous😮😮😮

[@PedroBorgesNH]

man these are sad. There's no other way to explain, i look at these and they make me sad that they even exist.

[@robinbrowne5419]

I would get the 2nd one just because it has Facebook and Twitter that do nothing. 🙂👍

[@paranoiia8]

You immediately know that device is better than typical crap as it used actual connectors for screen 😅 and anyone who gutted cheap crap know that they hate using connectors as they are expensive, even more than chips...

[@shoumikahmed6373]

Now take out the LT716 display and solder it to LP715 and see if it works😊

[@bzuidgeest]

These things are basically ewaste from the start. If only they ran micro python from factory or at least came with documentation they could serve a far more useful life.

[@randomazzy11]

yay more watch fucking arounf

[@TheyCallMeAdhesive]

Nah wait till he finds hk watchs

[@TomboRectify]

Waiting for DOOM

[@Amir1300aht]

Bro Why you dont Crack the xiaomi mi band 6 it self? It's cheap and very good watch

[@hjalfi]

Because for that price I could buy ten of one of these!

[@Amir1300aht]

@hjalfi that right but it give you more features, anyway, can you help me to write custom firmware to it? I just wanna know which pins are swdio and swclk

[@Amir1300aht]

@hjalfi this guy did it already but not shared project and pins, I wanna put custom firmware into it but I don't know which pins are swdio and swclk, and this guy didn't answer comments : kzbin.info/www/bejne/oHOniJmXgd-Nqq8si=uqQRf_3VCm1yZqDs

[@negaaa5080]

​@@Amir1300aht I'd love that too.

[@Angel_the_Bunny]

Thanks, I hate this.

[@BigRedWood]

I wanted to watch this, it's very interesting, but I cannot stand the sound of the constant lip smacking.

[@luislanga]

Whoever sells this green monstrosity should go to jail

[@edwardfletcher7790]

I hate these watches with fake HR monitor ! PLEASE don't use tweezers for levering things apart. You could very easily snap off components, tear ribbon cables or worse puncture the battery !! Use one of those cheap plastic phone repair levers....👺

[@EnyawYorlig]

Why 'dollars'? Are you British? Then use pounds. I was going to watch your channel till you said dollars then I turned off.

[@-indeed8285]

Reverse engineer LY737

[@iCQ_www.SPCL.tk_]

Weird how we call that cheap, imagine the salary of the people's in the factory. Nice share chef, thanks!💓

[@SianaGearz]

Doesn't even figure. With the amount of "care" put into them, a handful people can slap together hundreds of these an hour.

[@luizcarlosf2]

I would love to see a continuation on the rev eng about the fnirsi scope. I try to paste the link here, but my coments disapears...