Atomwear - Micro, Modularized, Open source, Nordic based Wearable BLE project, expecting your support on Kickstarter

Atomwear is a micro, modularized, open source, wearable BLE device for DIYers. It makes any BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy) projects easier

Overview - What’s the Atomwear?

Atomwear is a BLE product based on a Nordic BLE chipset. It’s different from other wrist straps available in the market, such as gearfit and jawbone.

Atomwear is designed specifically for DIYers. just like building blocks for kids, Atomwear components allow you to build it into whatever you like, be it a bracelet or otherwise!

Atomwear is fully open source. The aim of Atomwear is to speed up your development cycle. Choose Atomwear to be the development kit for your BLE project..

Making a wrist strap

We have made a FPC and a rubber ring as shown below. If you are neither a programmer nor an electronic engineer, you can alsomake a wrist strap by yourself, just assembling Atomwear modules with FPC and putting them into a rubber ring.

Atomwear features

• It’s modular in design!

We have designed many micro-sized modules, including BLE MCU module, battery charger module, acceleration sensor module, baroceptor module, temperature sensor module, gyroscope module, OLED display module, heart rate sensing module,etc.

Each of module performs one or two functions,which then can be assembled together to create a variety of cool products. The possibilities are endless!

• It has a 24-pin uniform interface!

definition of 24-pin connector

All the modules have an uniform 24-pin interface as shown below. Atomwear’s interface board has six 24-pin sockets, connected in parallel, for your different modules. you can then place the modules in any of the six positions in the direction of the arrows!

In addition,the 24-pin module contains 1SPI, 1UART, 1I2C, 1SWD, 6ADC/GPIO + 2GPIO, so it is flexible to extend more modules. For conenvience, we call the board with six 24-pin sockets “base board”.

• It’s completely customizable!

Of the six sockets, two of them will default to be a power supply module and a BLE MCU module, as they are essential to any BLE projects.

The remaining four sockets can be used to add any other functions. The only thing need to do is to design a new module with Atomwear’s uniform interface. We currently have a bunch of other designs available, such as GPS module, wireless charger module, bar code reader module, NFC module, etc.

If you have a good idea, feel free to contact and share with us!

• It’s tiny!

Battery : 20mm10mm3.0mm with 40mAh.

MCU board: 10mm*21mm.

Other boards: 10mm*10mm.

• It’s totally Open source!

Atomwear aims to create an easy-to-use, micro-sized, expandable development kit for anyone who want to start a BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy) project.

We will provide samples for backers, and will open all our source code to them.

We will also provide the demo android app and API of Atomwear. This app allows for exchanging of data with BLE devices through a Bluetooth connection, whereas the typical BLE project will need you to develop the BLE firmware and phone app yourself.BLE device firmware is usually written in C language and assemble language, while the phone apps are almost written in java, Hence, you will derive a lot of benefit from the source code which we have released.

We've benefitted from the open source communityand Atomwear is our way of giving back!

Atomwear is a completely open source hardware product!

All our hardware design files (schematic, board design) and firmware can be found on the Atomwear WIKI. and the source code can be found at github.

Spec of Atomwear

• USB battery charge control module.

Atomwear-CHG size:10x13mm

The USB connector is Micro USB type and only support charge function. It can be connected to PC USB port or generic USB charger. There are two LEDs on this board, one is green, another is red. When connected to charger, the green LED will turn on and if the charge module detects battery the red LED will turn on to indicate charging. The red LED will turn off when charging finished.

• 3-axis digital accelerometer and barometric pressure sensor.

Atomwear-BAC 10x10mm

The two sensors are connected on the same I2C bus with different device address. We can get acceleration, barometric pressure, temperature and Altitude from the sensors.

• Versatile 9DoF sensor module.

Atomwear-MAG Size: 10x10mm

This board contains a 3-axis gyro & 3-axis accelerometer (BMI055) and a 3-axis magnetometer (AK8963). They are all using a single I2C bus and some interrupt signals. With this highly integrated sensor module, you can design a motion track application.

BLE MCU board.

Atomwear-MCU Size: 1021mm*

This board is the control center of other modules. It mainly contains a BLE MCU (nRF51822), a button and two LEDs. The button is designed to switch working mode and two LEDs indicate working status. They can be defined by users.

• OLED display module.

Atomwear-OLED Size: 14x14mm

This module contain a low power OLED module with 64x32 resolution. MCU communicates with it through I2C interface. You can use it to display some text or graph.

• Battery module.

Atomwear-BAT Size: 10x20mm

This module provides power supply for the whole system and provides a battery level detect signal to MCU. The module is consisted of a board and a battery pack. The capacity of one battery pack is 40mAh. The board with a socket can be connected to the header on the base board. You can place more than one battery module on the base board if you want a longer power endurance.

• Debug port module.

Atomwear-DBG Size:10X12mm

This module simply connect the SWD port and UART port from the 24pin socket to 2.54mm pitch header. You can easily connect Atomwear with JLink and serial port to debug the program.

• Base board

Atomwear-BASE Size: 10X70mm

This base board contain six 24pin headers. The headers are parallelly interconnected with each other. The header insert to the socket of the module. The arrows on the base board and modules to indicate the correct connection orientation. While you don’t need to worry if connect to wrong direction will damage the modules, we have considered it. Wrong connection will not damage the modules but the module will not work.

So why we need your support?

We need your support to help us fund the production of Atomwear!

With your support, we will be able to buy components in bulk quantities at much lower prices, as well as be able to have the Atomwear boards assembled professionally. This has a direct benefit to you, as you will get a more powerful Atomwear at a lower price.

We've completed six modules so far, but have lots of ideas on extensionssuch as a Wireless charger module, GPS module, NFC module, and many more. If the Kickstarter campaign is be successful, we will deliver powerful Atomwear to backers on time. Moreover, we will spend more effort on Atomwear to make it popular .

Our hope is that our talented friends in open source community will be able to take Atomwear to a whole new level by creating and sharing all their cool extensions!

Atomwear, like tis name suggests, is the building block for and endless number of different products!

Currently, We have the the design for a mould and the first trial sample as shown below. But with your support , they can become an actual wearable device.

The design of Atomwear rubber mould

The T1 prototype

What can we do with the atomwear?

1. Pedometer and Motion tracker

Using acceleration sensor, combined with our pedometer algorithm, can easily realize step counting function, connect with your mobile phone via Bluetooth, check your movement data any time, share them with your friend via APP.

2. Temperature and Humidity detection

By using a Temperature & Humidity sensor, you can easily get the real-time information and display on OLED screen, you can also synchronize the data onto mobile APP via Bluetooth

3. Bluetooth intelligent anti-lost locator

Through the distance changes to determine whether the items are controlled in your safe range, can be applied to the anti lost of mobile phone, anti lost wallet, keys, luggage and other valuables, also can be used to prevent children or pets lost.

4. Pressure & Altitudedetection You can measure the atmospheric pressure through the pressure sensor, calculate altitude value via pressure and temperature, provides a great convenience for travel or outdoor sports.

5. E-Compass With a high sensitivity magnetic field sensor and related algorithm, you can development the e-compass application easily.

6. Gesture recognition

Gyroscope technology is becoming a new and high-profile somatosensory control technology, which can provide accurate inertial, reaction force, position, velocity and acceleration signal, using these data and accurate motion detection algorithm, bring new motion and gaming experience.

7. HID Input Human interface device (HID) application mode in Bluetooth Technology can make you easily connect and control their computer, joystick, remote monitoring equipment etc..

8. Bluetooth Smart Beacon Atomwear can be used as a Beacon Kit. The Beacon application lets you explore the full range of possibilities for beacons using Bluetooth Smart technology. The application allows you register actions that will be triggered when specified event occur. Currently a beacon may silent the phone, open an application, open a website in a browser, show predefined information about an objector play an alarm on one of the 4 events: beacon region has been entered or exited, a beacon is near or very close. …… Use your imagination, you can do more than you can expected!

Project Timeline

We have been working for seven months on this project. Our mass production work will start immediately after the financing is completed. With your support, we can prepare 1000 sets of Atomwear in the following two months.

We have finished 80% of the Atomwear firmware, and almost 70% of the android app, within the following two months, we will complete all the software work and release to backers.

Risks and challenges

Atomwear provide a new development mode for BLE project, just like children playing with building blocks. Atomwear is an adventruous design for DIYers, we all wonder whether it can gain acceptance among BLE developers.

In addition, we want to create an open source community for talent BLE developers. They use Atomwear to create more fantastic modules, or to speed up their development cycles. More and more people communicate with each other, sharing their intelligence and wisdom, asking and answering questions about Atomwear. It is a real challenge for us .

We expect your support on Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/343910040/2087609356?token=7c52c71e