Hacking with Claude on a $27 Smart Watch

(mikekasberg.com)

57 points | by speckx 4 hours ago

17 comments

  • yreg 8 minutes ago
    Any other recommendations for fun and cheap devices with open firmware? (Or easily customized with LLMs in other ways?)
  • wxw 2 hours ago
    > Although I’ve been saying “Claude”, I actually did most of the work in OpenCode with some of my favorite open weights models. Kimi K3 & K2.6, and DeepSeek v4 Pro & Flash.

    Interesting, is Claude becoming the Kleenex of the agent world?

  • kixiQu 1 hour ago
    It's interesting to think how nearly-e-waste level hardware could combine with something [home-cooked](https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/) to be really cool, especially for folks who might have been intimidated by this kind of development before.
    • alexpotato 11 minutes ago
      old iPads are the device I wish more than any other could be recycled via running Linux etc.
  • realo 2 hours ago
    I launched Claude on my pebble watch face software some time ago. It was also great fun to see it rejuvenate a 10-year old obsolete code base and make it work very well on the latest pebble Time 2 watches now available (finally!) today.

    https://apps.repebble.com/bitcoin-and-weather_38d93227474b40...

    https://github.com/yodalf/coincan

  • ashu1461 22 minutes ago
    I just did a side project to show how many calories I consumed on my garmin watch

    https://ashu1461.com/posts/a-calorie-tracker-on-my-garmin-wa...

    Claude really helped in doing the heavy lifting.

  • yjftsjthsd-h 2 hours ago
    > The watch can’t hold this whole image in memory at once; it has to stream it from the file system.

    I really do wish the pinetime had more RAM; it's really really small and a pretty painful bottleneck.

    Edit: Oh, once the "pro" version is out I guess there's an easy answer to that: https://pine64.org/2026/03/28/pinetime_march_2026/

    • dubdbdb 1 hour ago
      The original PineTime has 64 KiB of RAM and execute in place ROM which is plenty for an embedded device
  • mapontosevenths 57 minutes ago
    I did something like this with a lilygo t-watch and Codex. It was a lot of fun. I call it 'kookwatch', because I modeled it after some nonsense from Dirk Gently's Detective agency and frankly it's about as Kooky as things get.

    It uses the built-in hardware RNG to generate random numbers in the background and then trigger I-ching casts randomly when there are clumps in the Poisson distribution. I vaguely recall something about "random sampling of the universe" and a "suffusion of yellow" from when I read the book years ago, so i called the events "suffusions". I scaled it so that it goes off randomly about once per day.

    I added some backgrounds and animations, and some random funny quotes as well, and has no real point other than to make me smile. It's generally the weirdest thing I ever built, but I have so much fun with it and it was fun to build.

  • _def 3 hours ago
    Yay, I wanted to do the same - glad someone did work on it and shared it! Thanks! Although I think what I've learned is that I actually don't like wrist bands, so... yeah.
    • Groxx 2 hours ago
      fwiw I pretty much only like the metal "mesh" bands, if you haven't tried those - all other kinds make me sweat (or get uncomfortably juicy when I sweat) and/or collect crud that eventually irritates my skin if I don't wash it frequently. the mesh breathes extremely well in comparison, and essentially doesn't build up gunk at all.

      also many watches are incredibly thick and I apparently routinely get my wrist within millimeters of darn near everything. a thin one (pebble time round) solved that, and being light also means it doesn't slide around or require a very tight strap.

    • x______________ 3 hours ago
      > <..>I actually don't like wrist bands

      What's stopping you from using the watch piece by itself or as another type of wearable accessory?

    • jareklupinski 3 hours ago
      mine is on a wallet chain like a pocketwatch
      • reaperducer 2 hours ago
        Or pin it upside-down on your breast pocket, like a nurse.

        (It's upside down so you can just lift it slightly to see the display.)

  • mlhpdx 2 hours ago
    Take the fun up a level with the Waveshare ESP32-S3 AMOLED 2.09” watch.

    Power management is absolutely required, but it’s a fun platform. And for about the same price good display, peripherals and CPU.

    I’d like to see one with the C6 variant for the low power core.

    • mkasberg 2 hours ago
      Nice! This looks fun, maybe I'll need to try this next!
  • dallen33 3 hours ago
    Not the point of the article but it did show a Bluesky post... I didn't know you could make the Apple Watch interface look different with a third-party app. I gotta try this out.
  • bravura 3 hours ago
    The PineTime watch unfortunately does not have any microphone, so there is no possibility of voice control.
  • NoboruWataya 3 hours ago
    > Although I’ve been saying “Claude”, I actually did most of the work in OpenCode with some of my favorite open weights models. Kimi K3 & K2.6, and DeepSeek v4 Pro & Flash.

    ... This seems needlessly confusing/misleading? Author continues to use "Claude" throughout the article.

    • HanClinto 3 hours ago
      Maybe "Claude" is the new "Xerox", but for coding agents instead of copiers?
      • hgoel 3 hours ago
        Like older people saying "ChatGPT" for everything AI
        • mlhpdx 2 hours ago
          Not just older people, though they may be more likely to make the “Googling with ChatGPT” joke.
      • NitpickLawyer 3 hours ago
        Or the refs in some american game using "iPads" while visibly holding some MS tablets that they probably paid handsomely to be used and displayed...
  • ck2 1 hour ago
    really hoping someday soon "AI" enables the ability to have an open-source $100 Garmin clone

    Coros and Amazfit especially got close but they are closed development even though they push features and bug-fixes daily to compete in the market

    there has a to be a single or maybe 2,3 chip solution for known desired features, dual-band GPS, AMOLED screen, full five physical buttons, ANT+BLE+WIFI radios, and enough RAM+storage to not worry about hyper-efficiency anymore

  • system2 2 hours ago
    If it is open source, is it still considered hacking?
    • noman-land 2 hours ago
      Hacking is widely considered to historically mean "using a system in a creative and unusual way to get it to behave in ways that were not anticipated or intended by the creator". A hacker is a tinkerer. Some tinkerers do crime. Most don't.
    • yomismoaqui 2 hours ago
      Asking this on a site called Hacker News is gold.
      • system2 2 hours ago
        Heh, true, but when I think about open source, I think of "developing". Hacking indicates a restricted device being unlocked or doing things that it was not meant to do. If this is the definition of hacking, installing Ubuntu on a brand-new machine is hacking.
        • zem 1 hour ago
          it's the difference between "hacking" and "hacking on"
    • mlmonkey 2 hours ago
      Hacking means much more than just breaking into systems ...
      • reaperducer 2 hours ago
        I'm old enough to have lived through at least seven definitions of "hacker."

        Including the one in the late 1970's when a hacker was someone who took public domain software and then sold it commercially with their own name on it.

  • knodi 3 hours ago
    if you used the word "Hacking" anywhere in your project i'm suprised Fable didn't downgrade you.
  • h0tbeef 1 hour ago
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  • LePetitPrince 1 hour ago
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