i.MX8ULP Watch

i.MX8ULP Watch offers a design for Low Power Wearable device. The demo is based on Android OS.

Board display

Board block diagram

Table of Contents

• 1 Software
• 2 Hardware
• 3 Setup
• 4 Results
• 5 FAQs
• 6 Support
• 7 Release Notes

1 Software

i.MX8ULP Watch is based on Android 14.0.0_1.0.0. The supported components are as follows.

Component	Support status
6-axis Sensor (step counter)	✓
Pressure Sensor
Ambient Light Sensor
Oximeter With Heart-Rate Sensor	Heart-Rate only
WIFI/BT	✓
Vibration Motor
Speaker
Microphone
NFC	✓
UWB

2 Hardware

X-8ULP-WATCH-REF

3 Setup

SDK Building and Flashing

• Download SDK source package and the related Documentation .

• Decompress the source package and modify the imx_android_setup.sh as follows

  diff --git a/imx_android_setup.sh b/imx_android_setup.sh
  index 324ec67..4618679 100644
  --- a/imx_android_setup.sh
  +++ b/imx_android_setup.sh
      @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ if [ ! -d "$android_builddir" ]; then
       mkdir "$android_builddir"
       cd "$android_builddir"
  -    repo init -u https://github.com/nxp-imx/imx-manifest -b imx-android-14 -m imx-android-14.0.0_1.0.0.xml
  +    repo init -u https://github.com/nxp-imx/imx-manifest -b imx-android-14 -m imx-android-14.0.0_1.0.0-nfc.xml
  

• Follow the steps of i.MX Android User Guide in Documentation until the chapter of  "Get i.MX Android release source code" is completed. Then MY_ANDROID will be exported.

• Export ARMGCC_DIR and Upgrade cmake.

  • Download the gcc tool chain from arm Developers GNU-RM Downloads page, it is recommended to download the 7-2018-q2-update version.Extract it to your install directory, and export the directory and add this to /etc/profile.

    $ export ARMGCC_DIR=<install_dir>/gcc-arm-none-eabi-7-2018-q2-update
    

  • Upgrade the cmake version to or above 3.13.0. if the cmake version on your machine is not above 3.13.0, you can follow below steps to upgrade it:

    $ wget https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v3.13.2/
    $ cmake-3.13.2.tar.gz
    $ tar -xzvf cmake-3.13.2.tar.gz; cd cmake-3.13.2;
    $ sudo ./bootstrap
    $ sudo make
    $ sudo make install
    

• Download the rest patches and patch them all.

  $ cd $MY_ANDROID/../
  $ git clone https://github.com/nxp-imx-support/imx-smart-watch -b imx-android-14.0.0_1.0.0
  $ chmod +x ./imx-smart-watch/patch_all/patch_all.sh
  $ ./imx-smart-watch/patch_all/patch_all.sh
  

• Continue to build SDK according to i.MX Android User Guide. And lunch the following combination.

  $ lunch watch_8ulp-userdebug
  

• The following images will be used after building finished.

  Images	Descriptions
  boot.img
  dtbo-imx8ulp.img
  init_boot.img
  partition-table.img
  super.img
  u-boot-imx8ulp.imx
  u-boot-imx8ulp-evk-uuu.imx
  uuu_imx_android_flash.bat
  vbmeta-imx8ulp.img
  vendor_boot.img

• Switch S12 to b’10 to make i.MX8ULP enter download mode.

• Flash the board with the following command on Windows CMD console.

  .\uuu_imx_android_flash.bat -f imx8ulp -a -e
  

• Switch S12 to b’01 after flashing done. to make i.MX8ULP enter EMMC boot mode.

• Now i.MX8ULP watch can boot.

Watch-face APK

Please refer to the link to get and build the APK.

4 Results

NFC demonstration

 

• Open Yubico Authenticator APK on phone which acts as NFC reader.

• Open Watch-face APK on iMX8ULP watch which acts as NFC Tag. Switch to NFC page.

• Bring the two closer together and NFC reader will read the Tag information.

5 FAQs

6 Support

For more general technical questions, enter your questions on the NXP Community Forum

7 Release Notes

Version	Description	Date
1.0.0	Initial release	March 6th 2025

Licensing

i.MX8ULP Watch is licensed under the GPL-2.0-only License.