Choose Clockstar 2.0 if you want to build the watch yourself. Choose the NASA Artemis Watch 2.0 if you want a finished watch you can wear and code the same day.
Clockstar 2.0
Arrives as a kit. Assembly takes around an hour and needs no previous experience, though it involves small parts and detailed instructions.
In the box: acrylic casings, watch strap, Li-Po battery, main circuit board and screws.
Onboard: gyroscope, accelerometer, display and Bluetooth module.
Before you code anything it shows the time and date, has an alarm and a stopwatch, and connects to your phone over Bluetooth.
Coding is optional. In CircuitBlocks you can write watch faces, animations, a timer, custom button functions and simple games that use the gyroscope.
NASA Artemis Watch 2.0
Ships fully assembled. Charge it with the included cable and start using it. There is nothing to build.
Onboard: accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, temperature sensor, display and Bluetooth module.
Pairs with a smartphone over Bluetooth and tracks daily activity, and can also control the NASA Perseverance Mars Rover kit.
Fully programmable: your own watch faces, animations and simple apps.
Which gives you more to code against. The Artemis Watch. It carries a compass and a temperature sensor on top of the accelerometer and gyroscope, and it can control the Perseverance Rover kit, so there are more inputs to build projects around. Clockstar is the better pick if the build itself is part of what you want, and its gyroscope still covers motion-controlled games.
Age. Clockstar 2.0 is recommended for ages 9 and up. That figure is about the build: small parts and detailed instructions, so it suits someone with a little experience of putting things together, with an adult on hand for younger builders. The Artemis Watch is recommended for ages 9 and up, and since there is nothing to assemble, that guidance is about wearing and coding it rather than a build. No prior electronics experience is needed either way.
Coding works the same way on both. Both watches are programmed in CircuitBlocks, which writes MicroPython regardless of the firmware the watch shipped with. It puts a MicroPython image over the watch's original firmware and runs your code from memory, so a program is not stored on the device: it clears on a reset or a power cycle, and you run it again from your saved sketch each time. CircuitBlocks also needs a desktop Chromium browser: Chrome, Edge or Opera.
If you want to go past CircuitBlocks. The stock firmware of both watches is C++ built with the ESP-IDF environment, and that is the advanced route for either one. The CircuitMess Arduino IDE board list includes the original Clockstar but not Clockstar 2.0 or the Artemis Watch 2.0.
If you are still unsure which suits you, message us here, or email [email protected], and tell us what you want to build.