Product Development Case Study

MetaWatch

MetaWatch is a design and technology development company focused on reinventing the watch as a relevant mobile companion. Integrating trend-right fashion design with state-of-the-art technology, Meta Watch allows people to stay connected and stay in style while truly mobile and on the go. The company's founders, Bill Geiser and David Rosales, formerly led the Watch Technology Division for Fossil and have been developing smart & connected watches since 2002. MetaWatch is sold as a software development kit (SDK). It enables designers to quickly create 'wearable' applications or to extend the user experience of existing smart phone apps and web services to the wrist.The MetaWatch team chose LS Research to help develop critical elements of the embedded firmware. And, LS Research continues building on this long-standing partnership by providing customization services for Meta Watch clients.

"While there are many embedded systems houses from which to choose, very few bring the wealth of expertise and value that comes hand-in-hand with LS Research. LS Research is more than an outsourced supplier; they are our partner."

-Bill Geiser, CEO MetaWatch

The Technical Challenge

To support the hardware requirements for a low power, connectable wireless solution, the Texas Instruments MSP430 ultra low-power processor and CC2560 Bluetooth radio were selected. LS Research, a TI Platinum Design Partner, provided the hardware design, CAD and custom antenna design. Certain elements of the software solution were implemented by LS Research and leveraged the Stonestreet One Bluetopia™ Bluetooth stack.

The Solution

The finished watches consists of two functional solutions: the AU-1000 Analog Digital with dual 16x80 OLED displays and the AU-2000 Digital with a 96x96 reflective display. Both serve to help users manage the regular flow of time, date, email, weather, stock and social media messages by alerting and displaying the information simply on the watch unit.

The SDK has proven popular in the development community with designers already working on additional solutions using the open source platform. The message-based protocol over Bluetooth Serial Port Profile (SPP) has shown to encourage rapid custom development.