Good news! I've mostly assembled the rev. 4 board, and it seems to work. The biggest change is a boost regulator that drives the LCD at 5V, instead of the previous VIN (which could be as low as the 3V cutoff voltage of the battery). This means that the screen will continue to work even when the battery voltage starts to sag. It comes at a cost -- the TPS60151 is rated at 90uA quiescent current -- but on the whole I think this makes the usable life on a single charge substantially longer (since the whole voltage curve of the battery is usable now). One future optimization might be to use VIN until it sags too low, then enable the boost regulator, but that gain probably isn't worth the complexity.

I say "mostly assembled" because, somehow, I've misplaced my nrf52840 modules. The power systems seem to work, but without disassembling my rev3 prototype (which I've been wearing for the past few days), I don't have brains to test the I2C devices. Hopefully those will be delivered this weekend, and I'll be able to have a working rev. 4 watch next week.

In mechanical news: in the months since my last serious work on this project, I bought some differently-sized nozzles for my 3D printer. This means that I can print the case with an 0.2mm nozzle rather than the 0.4mm stock nozzle and get some much finer details. This lets me cut a little bit of thickness out of the watch! The prototype I'm wearing is 13.00mm thick, and I may be able to cut most of another millimeter off if I figure out a safe way to press the LCD directly against the protective acrylic. 13mm definitely doesn't feel too big, though.

More updates soon. I'm glad to be back at work on the watch!