What do you get
- eZ430-Chronos watch
- USB Emulator
- USB RF Access Point
- Screwdriver and spare screws
- CD including software and documentation
First Impressions
The whole kit looks very professional (and it would coming from TI). In fact the words “Demonstration Tool” seem out of place on a box and watch that shouts sporting gear. They really have done well to make this kit feel like an off the shelf sports watch. It's sleek, sporty, of high build quality, and works out of the box. You could throw away the emulator and USB RF access dongle, and you'd still have a perfectly good watch! One thing that is noticeable is that the watch is a bit bulky. With a depth if around 1cm, it can get in the way of shirt cuffs and look a bit awkward. Overall, an impessive collection of quality products.
Documentation and Software
Tested on Vista and Ubuntu – both installed from CD without a glitch. Good to see solid cross comparability. All software and documentation is of course available online as well. The USB RF dongle exhibited flawless plug and play in both cases.
Being a development kit from TI the documentation available is extensive. The eZ430-Chronos user manual is very thorough. Of course, the whole point of this watch is to demonstrate the low power RF CC430 chip, so there is a beefy 640 pages of comprehensive documentation available for this MSP430-based SoC as well.
Features on the Watch
The watch comes pre-loaded with a set of functions as a demonstration of what it has to offer. Of course (being a dev-kit) if you want to write your own functions – you can! The watch displays two different functions on a split screen, and these can be changed independently. Here they are:
Main function (Top):
- Time
- Alarm
- Temperature – Accurate (once calibrated) and a nice feature to have.
- Altimeter – Fancy, but dependant on ambient pressure and temp. Can be a bit erratic, and needs calibration (assuming you know your altitude to begin with)
- Heart-rate Monitor – Works great with the computer generated signal.
- Speed Monitor – Also works fine with the generated signal
- Accelerometer – 3-axis measurement. Perhaps a gimmick when values displayed on the watch. Again, if you can think of a useful application, the tools are there to access the accelerometer and program functions as you see fit.
Sub function (Bottom):
- Date
- Stop-watch
- Battery Voltage – A useful feature. Also demonstrates the good low power operation of the CC430 Soc.
- Accelerometer Transmit – Here, the accelerometer makes more sense. The values can be transmitted wirelessly or logged for later analysis. This can have many applications for example, gesture control and as an activity monitor.
- Power Point – Yes, you can flip (wirelessly) through slides using the watch buttons. A neat feature.
- PC Synchronization
- Distance
At any time, the watch can be programmed with the included emulator. Programming is supported by both IAR and CSS programming environments. There are even code examples included in order to get started. It must be noted that code size is limited in both these packages.
Running the Demo Software
The software bundled with the watch includes the “eZ430-Chronos Control Centre”, which demonstrates various features of the watch by interfacing through the RF dongle. Connecting to the watch is instant, and hassle-free. You are then able to take readings from the on-board accelerometer, set time, calibrate sensors, send generated heart-rate and speed data to the watch, and even update the firmware. You can even use the accelerometer to move the mouse pointer, and define buttons on the watch as computer keys. The video, controlling the mouse, speaks for itself(which I'll add soon, promise) – geek heaven.
(temporary image - pending video - showing accelerometer output. Wave a bit distorted from image compression - original was fine)
Conclusion
This is a very impressive piece of kit, for a very good price. The features on this watch are easily comparable to a high-end sports watch. Now I wouldn't recommend anyone get this as their primary watch. It's a bit chunky, slightly uncomfortable, a tad bit geeky, and the general online consensus is that it isn't particularly waterproof.
That said, there is not an engineer, hobbyist or geek-at-heart out there who won't enjoy messing around with this watch.
Finally, I'll go as far to say that although this is a development kit, I see it more as a demonstration kit. It's already fully featured, and unless you're an actual designer, you won't have any need to reprogram the watch itself. It's wirelessly interfacing to the watch where the most fun will be had. Don't hesitate, if you want to get one.
Any questions, I'll be glad to answer. If you'd like to suggest a project using the TI Chronos, I'm interested in your ideas. (I'm thinking home-made heart-rate monitor using small signal op-amps) I'm pretty busy now, but I'd like to do a follow-up project at some stage 
Rob