The Problem

I love smartwatches.
That being said, I also hate smartwatches.

Despite the convenience they offer, they simply aren’t “useful” enough to me, their screens being too small to type on, their I/O being next to nonexistent, the fact that you can’t program on them.

You know, if I made a smartwatch…

The Solution

I set out to build the WristCom (Wrist Computer) to fix all these “problems”, a feature-complete “wearable” computer.

Researching Compute

I knew that I wanted something capable, and whilst it would be easy to just slap a screen on a Pi and call it a day, that would lead to uneccesary bulk, and I also wanted this to be a simple project, so no custom PCBs.

In the end I settled on a phone, it offers a bunch of peripherals (cameras, sensors, etc) and with USB-C I can greatly expand upon that.
For software, Ubuntu Touch was considered but lacking featured I just used Android.

Designing The Chassis

I opted to design the chassis in FreeCAD because… it was free.

The main chassis was designed to house the phone and addiitonal electronics, note the angled sections which are for the cameras to be reflected by a mirror.
Additionally, the section which sticks out at the bottom is so that the WristCom can be attached to a Zebra personal computer strap.

I opted to use a Zebra wrist strap because it gave a simple and easy way to attach the WristCom to my arm without needing to design my own method so it simplified things greatly.

A holder for a Raspberry Pi Pico.

End Result

Yeah there isn’t really too much to this silly project, moreso just a glorified case for a phone isn’t it?
At some point I do plan on revisiting this as an actual proper wearable though.

That’s not to say this didn’t work (to an extent)