14 DAY TRIAL // Don’t think smartwatch screens are small enough and you’d like something that’s more cramped? Sure, this might be an odd thing to desire, as most people have the tendency to go bigger, screen-wise, and not the other way around; but a lot of folks out there have strange desires, don’t they?.
Well, serial tinkerer Ken Burns wants you to forget all about products as the fancy Apple Watch or Samsung Gear S or Fitbit Surge. Why pay a lot of money on these big-screened smartwatches, when you could be looking at TinyScreen instead?
TinyScreen is, you guessed it, a super small, colored display (thumb-sized, actually) that plugs into a TinyDuino platform. From there you can configure it into all sorts of stuff, most notably a smartwatch, smart glasses, a teeny-weeny gaming console and more.
TinyScreen measures only 25.8 x 25 mm / 1.02 x 0.98 inches and features four separate integrated buttons and a 96 x 64 pixel OLED screen that can display 16-bit color depth and even takes advantage of a controllable backlight.
Possible uses of TinyScreen
Those of you with a passion for tinkering will surely be able to come up with some wacky applications for TinyScreen because it does offer a lot of possibilities. However, some default applications are offered out of the box and the most appealing might be the smartwatch.
TinyScreen can interface with an Android or iOS device via Bluetooth LE and an app, in order to display notifications including phone calls, texts and tweets. A 3D-printed watch enclosure will be available for download or purchase.
An unusual way of using TinyScreen is transforming it into a mini gaming console.
The gizmo ships out with a bunch of games similar to Flappy Bird and Asteroids, with more being in the pipeline. The games are controlled via two very small joy sticks that can be attached with appropriate shield or adapter.
But the question is who will want to play games on such a small display? Apparently, lots of people do. TinyScreen has already successfully completed a Kickstarter campaign, with shipping scheduled to start next year.
TinyScreen ships out next year
The Basic Kit, which will cost you $55 / €44, comes including a TinyScreen, a TinyDuino processor, USB TinyShield and Lithium Polymer battery pack.
The Kickstarter page teases some alternate uses for TinyScreen like using it as a part of a smart glass project, for creating jewelry or to provide server load info.
TinyScreen is programmed via web-based Arduino platform Codebender, so it’s pretty newbie-friendly too, considering it only requires plugging to a computer via USB in order to transfer existing programs to the device.
