Rather than "open sourced" all I see is "a bit open specced". Yes, the "hacker guide" has details of what chips are on the board, and how they are connected:
http://developer.sonymobile.com/services/open-smartwatch-pro...
... and there's a separate page with a guide to putting it in DFU mode to upload a firmware.
Which is cool, but the chip names could have been found by the people who'd already done teardowns and the pinouts could be found by buzzing one out (possibly sacrificially by removing chips.)
The chip datasheets they link were all all already publically available, the Cypress touch sensor one is even a link to alldatasheet.com(!)
Probably the biggest letdown is the Bluetooth/FM chip made by Sony, arguably the most useful and most complex device aside from the MCU. That link is to Sony's marketing specs page with a block diagram and not much technical info that I can see. I can't find any information about the chip made available to the public by Sony.
Ironically enough there is a longer 6 page Sony datasheet leaked on datasheet sites, but even this doesn't have pinouts or begin to explain how the SPI interface to Bluetooth/FM functionality actually works.
I think it's good that a major company like Sony released even this small amount of information, although it's worth noting that reverse engineers have found more information on similar products acting entirely by themselves (take for instance the PS3 Move controller: http://eissq.com/ps3_move/ )
On the other hand I think it's very bad that most people will glance at this and see Sony "open sourcing" something when they appear to be open sourcing nearly nothing. The RTOS they used is probably proprietary property of a third party so they can't open source that, but they could release their application source code for the smartwatch - allowing people to see how they communicate with the Bluetooth/FM chip, for instance. That kind of source could be ported to an open source RTOS.
The optimist in me hopes that detailed technical information will be forthcoming over time, but the pessimist in me thinks this is the feel-good last gasp of an end-of-life product. :/
Which is cool, but the chip names could have been found by the people who'd already done teardowns and the pinouts could be found by buzzing one out (possibly sacrificially by removing chips.)
The chip datasheets they link were all all already publically available, the Cypress touch sensor one is even a link to alldatasheet.com(!)
Probably the biggest letdown is the Bluetooth/FM chip made by Sony, arguably the most useful and most complex device aside from the MCU. That link is to Sony's marketing specs page with a block diagram and not much technical info that I can see. I can't find any information about the chip made available to the public by Sony.
Ironically enough there is a longer 6 page Sony datasheet leaked on datasheet sites, but even this doesn't have pinouts or begin to explain how the SPI interface to Bluetooth/FM functionality actually works.
I think it's good that a major company like Sony released even this small amount of information, although it's worth noting that reverse engineers have found more information on similar products acting entirely by themselves (take for instance the PS3 Move controller: http://eissq.com/ps3_move/ )
On the other hand I think it's very bad that most people will glance at this and see Sony "open sourcing" something when they appear to be open sourcing nearly nothing. The RTOS they used is probably proprietary property of a third party so they can't open source that, but they could release their application source code for the smartwatch - allowing people to see how they communicate with the Bluetooth/FM chip, for instance. That kind of source could be ported to an open source RTOS.
The optimist in me hopes that detailed technical information will be forthcoming over time, but the pessimist in me thinks this is the feel-good last gasp of an end-of-life product. :/