Top Watch TW061 - Smartwatch - Good simple, not perfect, but useless without the instructions

As a good father, I worry about the well being of my precious young daughter.
So, in Christmas, I gave her a TOPWatch TW061.

Making a long story short, the watch if nice and it is exactly what I wanted:

• cute pink silicon enclosure (other colours are available)
• analogue watch (doesn't give it away and makes you kid think when checking for time).
• Water resistant
• 3 dial buttons + 1 sos (runs all numbers till one accepts the call)
• Induction charge mode (no plugs, no plugs to get dirty, moisture and/or to fail in time)
• Excellent price
• White-list. Bye bye salesman calling your kid trying to sell... whatever they what to sell.

 

Not so good:

• no instructions. It does have a set of papers but calling that a quick reference guide is insulting.
• poor autonomy (4 hours- 6 if you tweak the GPS and GPRS send interval)
• Stability... every now and then a reboot is good to keep it running perfectly.

So this GPS-watch allows you to call your kids, see where they are at a specific point in time,  allows your kid to call you and even call any one of the 3 numbers automatically once the SOS is triggered.

Simple and straight right?Why oh why did I write this article then? Well the lack of instructions makes it particularly difficult to run.
Lucky me that I was the IT and Project Manager behind Localiser S.A. (a GPS positioning for safety purpose company we had in Portugal in the years 2005 to 2007). That allowed me to, together with a small help from the HTCmania forum (http://www.htcmania.com/showthread.php?t=1075947), quickly understand the messaging format and probe the watch's system with SMS's until I managed to understand how to configure it.

You can configure everything with SMS's, but the mobile app is a much better interface... as long as you manage to configure the 2/3g apn... and that is the miracle setting no one seems to find.
So how do you configure it:

1. unbox let it charge for a couple of hours. Then use the supplied screwdriver tool to open the watch, take note of the IMEI number on the sticker, you will need that latter on.
2. Add a gprs/2g/3g enabled SIM card to the phone and close the cover. PLEASE MAKE SURE THE cover is nicely placed, screwed and the rubber seal makes a perfect insulation... fail to do this and kiss the "water resistant" feature good bye.
3. Turn on the "smart core" by pressing the on button. The watch will play a song while booting up.
4. Use a mobile phone to send the configuration setting for the APN. The watch will play another sound and reply via SMS with a "Data account set OK" message. Fail to do this and the phone will forever be Geolocated in "Shenzeng factory".
5. Use googleplay to download the app "Kids Care"
6. Create an account and add a device by entering the IMEI on the phone as the app requests. If you failled to do so, just send an sms to the watch with the command *6* and it will reply with the IMEI.
7. The use the app settings panels to setup the button numbers and whitelist
8. Very important... reboot the phone when it stops replying "setting OK" and when you finish configuring the phone

You can also do all the configuration and grab the positions by SMS.
here are the entire command set to configure the phone (the 5 is by far the most important NOT TO MISS):


*1* -> GET GPS position from watch via SMS

*2#N1#N2#N3* -> SET the 1, 2 and 3 button dialling numbers

*3* -> GET the configures numbers for the 1,2 and 3 dial buttons 

*4* -> CALL BACK (the phone calls you and enters "spy mode" so you can hear what is happening

*5#apn.mobileoperator.country#username#password* -> SET APN so the phone gets internet connection. in my case this was: *5#net2.vodafone.pt#vodafone#vodafone*

*6* -> GET IMEI

*7#N1#N2#Nx* -> SET the white-list numbers

*8* -> GET the white-list numbers
 

This is it... after the APN setting everything works from the mobile app, so I guess that the lack of the documentation is what is generating so much negative feedback on Amazon.

If you have any questions, post them and I will try to help.

***UPDATE***

I decided to write this article as the Amazon community keeps sending me emails about people having trouble with this watch and asking for my help... then I started replying with the link to this blog and Amazon started cutting the posts as it includes URLs!
Not commenting on amazon safety policy regarding people posting URLs... they make sense... but if you are going to send me emails asking for my help, then at least try to review the reply before censoring it.... or stop counting me on for helping YOU TO SELL THE PRODUCTS and the SUPPORT THEM FOR FREE, amazon!