Bangle.js - Creating a Smart Watch With JavaScript

What is the work you’re doing today?

I'm mainly working on tweaking and improving the software for the Bangle.js smart watch - the interpreter's C firmware, the JS code, the toolchain, and the desktop/mobile UI for uploading apps. It's an interesting challenge trying to make sure everything works together reliably even when using older versions of firmware or even completely different devices.

What are your goals for the talk?

I think for a lot of people, computers have progressed to the point where they're just magic. If it's even possible to open up something like a smart watch you'll see a bunch of nondescript squares with random numbers on (if you're lucky!), and it seems completely out of reach. I'll show how hardware is often made out of commodity parts that are freely documented online, and how with a bit of trial and error you can understand them and make them do what you want. I'll also be diving into the internals of the Espruino JavaScript interpreter and showing some of the tricks it uses to provide a powerful JavaScript environment in only 64k of RAM.

What do you want people to leave the talk with?

A new interest in their smart devices, and hopefully an urge to get some microcontrollers and have a play around with them!

What do you think is the next big disruption in software?

When there is finally a standard, low power IPv6 networking standard in every WiFi router sold. It doesn't sound like a software disruption, but having a common platform for all smart devices might finally mean the end of the many incompatible (and often insecure) hardware ecosystems that are dependent on short-lived third party services. I'm hopeful that when it starts to be truly easy to make things happen in the real world in a secure way, software will start to be able to do new things that really help people in their daily lives.