u/Traditional_Fall304

I don’t want another app-heavy smartwatch. I want two physical keys that always do the same thing: one starts a voice memo, one opens the compass. Glove-friendly, no digging through menus. Visible recording indicator, user-triggered — same class of feature as phone voice memos / existing watch notes, not a hidden recorder.

I looked around. Outdoor watches already have a compass. Some Huawei / Apple / Garmin models can record. A few let you remap a button. What I can’t find is that dead-key interaction as the point of the product: two keys, those two jobs, no hunting.

I asked an AI to sanity-check it. Short version of what it said:

- There isn’t a ready-made watch that matches this interaction.

- Compass is almost never on the SoC; you add a magnetometer. Recording needs a mic + firmware. The buttons are just GPIOs.

- Don’t start from loose chips. Buy an already-assembled open-source watch PCB (or its larger development board), 3D-print a case, put two keys over GPIO pads, bind them in firmware to compass / record.

That path is in the ballpark of under $200 for a first sample if I don’t invent a new board.

Then I found that the board is fulfilled from Shenzhen. I live in Shenzhen. Pickup is realistic; local parts (battery, printed case, extra buttons) are cheap. I actually sat up when I realized I wouldn’t be waiting on international shipping.

So the question isn’t “is this a Kickstarter.” I already got talked out of crowdfunding a generic smartwatch. The question is:

Is this worth a weekend of acting on — walk over, grab the board, print a case, map two buttons — or am I about to spend ~$200 proving something I already know?

What I think I might learn: whether a dedicated rec key + compass key feels as good as it does in my head, and whether the magnetometer/mic on a hobby board are good enough to even demo.

What I’m afraid of: ending up with a development-board-in-a-shell that doesn’t wear like a watch, and calling that “the idea is done.”

If you’ve built a wearable from an open PCB + printed case: was the first unit actually informative, or did you need a second, smaller board before you learned anything? Would you spend the $200?

https://reddit.com/link/1uz3wfs/video/vx1cmzmkdtdh1/player

A few months ago, I started making a marble-matching game inspired by classic path-shooter games.

At first, I thought the hardest part would be the code. But pretty quickly, I realized the bigger challenge was actually making levels: drawing the marble paths, testing the chain flow, adjusting the difficulty, and replaying the same small section again and again until it felt right.

The funny thing is, it wasn’t frustrating. It was the opposite. It was the kind of work that quietly eats an entire evening because you keep thinking, “just one more tweak.” But I also wanted to actually finish the game someday.

One day, while I was building levels in a Python editor I had made for myself, I caught myself thinking:

“I wish someone could help me make these levels. Honestly, I’d even pay for that.”

Then another thought followed:

“What if players made them?”

And then:

“But sending people a level editor would be messy…”

And then the idea clicked:

“What if the editor ran in the browser? And what if the game runtime also ran in the browser, so people could immediately test what they made?”

Technically, it seemed possible. And once I realized that, I got way too excited. Because suddenly this was no longer just a level editor. It could become a place where people play, create, share, and maybe slowly build an endless pile of marble levels together.

So, about two weeks later, I had this:

https://magicmarbles.org

It’s not perfect. Some parts are still rough. But it works: you can play community levels in the browser, sign in, create your own level, publish it, and challenge other people’s levels. The WebAssembly runtime is the same core game tech I’m using for PC/mobile, so the levels are not just mockups; they are actually playable.

I’d love to hear what you think, especially about:

• whether the editor feels understandable
• whether the levels feel fun to test
• what would make you want to create or share a level
• what feels confusing or unfinished

Thanks for taking a look. This started as a tool I made because I needed help making levels, and somehow it turned into a small community experiment. I hope you enjoy it.