{"id":567543,"date":"2026-07-30T21:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T21:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/567543\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T21:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T21:09:10","slug":"chronowatch-x2040-raspberry-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/567543\/","title":{"rendered":"ChronoWatch X2040 – Raspberry Pi"},"content":{"rendered":"

A brand-new issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is out today, and this simple, sleek watch<\/a> stood out from its pages.<\/p>\n

Vishal Soni<\/a> grew up wanting to develop his own smartwatch but, when the time came to put his plan into action, he opted for something a tad simpler. Rather than festoon his device with lots of apps and tracking capabilities, he decided to focus on a watch\u2019s primary task: the ability to tell the time. In doing so, he developed an attractive timepiece that offers a range of watch faces. \u201cI wanted to make the watch clean, steering away from distracting notifications and unnecessary step and health tracking,\u201d he affirms.<\/p>\n

\"\"Vishal isn\u2019t a professional 3D designer, so he kept the look of the watch clean and stylish;
the multiple watch faces have been designed to match different moods, vibes, and environments<\/p>\n

Rather than ape the squared-off look of the Apple Watch, Vishal chose the classic round design of many of its rivals. \u201cThis initially led me toward creating a custom PCB,\u201d he says, \u201cbut that was a big challenge. After doing some research, I found that Waveshare already sells a round display with an RP2040 microcontroller<\/a> integrated and ready to use. I decided to use that module instead so I could focus more on programming and features rather than hardware design.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saving time<\/p>\n

The module in question is a Waveshare Round Touch LCD. It proved perfect for both the project and Vishal\u2019s personal development. \u201cI mostly focus on learning and programming and I wanted to learn the Pico SDK,\u201d he says. It also meant the actual build was quite straightforward.<\/p>\n

\"\"Vishal says the large 950mAh battery makes the watch thicker than he\u2019d like<\/p>\n

Vishal only really needed to connect a 3.7V 950mAh battery using an MX1.25 2P connector and produce a 3D-printed case using Tinkercad. He was then able to add an Apple Watch strap, which has lent both comfort and a modern appearance. It helped that the Waveshare board has USB-C and battery charging support. It also has a built-in accelerometer and gyroscope sensors for motion detection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Putting in the hours\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the physical aspect of the design in hand, Vishal could turn his full attention to programming the device. \u201cThe Pico SDK was completely new to me,\u201d he says. \u201cAfter working with Arduino for years, switching to pure C code with minimal library support was challenging. I found a few basic C libraries and modified them to suit my needs and make development easier. But the touch library was particularly challenging, so I created custom functions that can detect whether a specific area of the screen has been touched, making the user interface much easier to implement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Waveshare\u2019s circular touchscreen display incorporates the RP2040 microcontroller, making development easier<\/p>\n

As development progressed, Vishal felt he could add some extra features. Aside from designing different watch faces and enabling them to switch between the 12-hour and 24-hour format, he included adjustable display brightness, a stopwatch, the ability to rotate the watch orientation, and a sleep time mode.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The latter proved tricky. \u201cEven with the Pico SDK, I haven\u2019t been able to reduce the power consumption as much as I would like because the watch does not have an RTC module,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I put the device into deep sleep, it loses the current time and date.\u201d He\u2019s continuing to work on a solution while also considering adding more features as time goes on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thinking about using a real-time clock module to keep accurate time when the device is off, and I\u2019d like to add an alarm and a step counter,\u201d he says. He\u2019d also like to make the watch thinner and reduce the battery size. \u201cI don\u2019t know how or when I will do that,\u201d he tells us. \u201cBut I believe it can be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Find more projects like this in\u00a0Raspberry Pi Official Magazine<\/p>\n

This article appeared in\u00a0issue 168<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Raspberry Pi Official Magazine, which you can\u00a0access online<\/a>.\u00a0You can also\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to the print version of our magazine. Not only do we deliver worldwide, but those who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription will receive a FREE\u00a0Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You can find\u00a0Raspberry Pi Official Magazine\u00a0on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0X<\/a>,\u00a0Threads<\/a>,\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>, and\u00a0Mastodon<\/a>. You can also contact the team via email:\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A brand-new issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is out today, and this simple, sleek watch stood out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[330,85,46,256810,256811,125],"class_list":["post-567543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-gadgets","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-raspberry-pi-official-magazine","tag-rp2040","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}