NASA’s Artemis II lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026, carrying four astronauts on the first human lunar mission in more than 50 years. Canada’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen are currently aboard the Orion spacecraft, preparing for a lunar flight that will take them farther from Earth than any humans have traveled since Apollo 13. way it hasn’t done so in decades, and Circuit 20 is the perfect time to visit NASA. This is a $129 smartwatch that’s fully assembled and ready to use out of the box, inspired by a project currently in development.
Internal equipment includes a basic ESP32 microcontroller, full color LCD screen, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and temperature sensor. It’s compatible with iOS and Android devices over Bluetooth for performance tracking and notifications, and the firmware is completely open source, reprogrammable in Python, CircuitBlocks, or the Arduino IDE. You can design custom watch faces, build interactive apps, and customize sensor behavior as deeply as you want. The age recommendation is 9 and up, which shows a lower barrier to entry compared to CircuitMess’s Perseverance Rover kit we wrote about earlier. No assembly required, no soldering, just charge it and start exploring.
Designer: CircuitMess
Most smartwatches aimed at children treat programming as something that happens elsewhere, if at all. You get your device with pre-set themes, maybe a few watch face options, and locked software that assumes the wearer has no interest in understanding what’s going on underneath. Artemis Watch 2.0 changes all that. CircuitMess ships fully functional, but every part of the software is accessible and customizable. CircuitBlocks’ block-based environment gives beginners a place to start, while support for Python and the Arduino IDE means users can gain full certification without hitting an artificial ceiling. The firmware resides on GitHub as an open source repository, so there’s no lock-in and no feature wall you can’t get past.
The dual-core ESP32 processor works here. It works with Bluetooth networks and smartphones, processes sensor data from the accelerometer and gyroscope in real time, and runs whatever devices you decide to build on top of the system. A compass and thermometer add environmental awareness, which opens up coding projects beyond simple timekeeping. You can program the clock to save daily temperature changes, generate alerts based on the subject of the compass, or build an accelerometer to track movement patterns. The 1.77 x 0.5 x 2.76 inch form factor makes it accessible to smaller users, and the rechargeable Li-Po battery charges via USB-C.
CircuitMess sells the standalone Artemis Watch 2.0 for $129, but it also appears in the Mars Exploration Bundle alongside the Perseverance Rover for $399, a 23% discount when you buy the two separately. That bundle positions the watch as a companion device for tracking vehicle movements and staying connected during the 20-hour build. CircuitMess also offers a Collector’s Bundle that includes the watch and four official cable designs for $149. The company has sold more than 300,000 devices worldwide, and the Artemis name is directly linked to the kind of sustainable content distribution that makes space feel culturally important again.
Artemis Watch 2.0 is available now at circuitmess.com. If you followed the official presentation of Artemis II this week, if you care about wearable technology that does not discourage new users, or if you want a smartwatch that teaches coding by letting you rebuild it from the inside out, this is one of the few products in this category that is worth asking $129.
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