What is the most neatest Open Source smartwatch?

Psyhackological@lemmy.ml to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 287 points –
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I'm looking for any suggestions for smartwatch that it similar like Google Pixel Phones with GrapheneOS. Is there such a thing?

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The Bangle.js 2 is pretty cool

That's what I use. It's way more stripped down than a modern smart watch, but it has good battery life, a transflexive LCD, can discretely give me notifications so I can keep my phone on silent, and can show me the weather at a glance.

There are more things it can do, I just find my phone is better for the majority of them.

That covers all my smart watch use cases tho.

Are the notifications actionable? (Snoozing alarms, canned replies to messages, etc)

I couldn't find that important detail on the website easily.

You can snooze alarms, play/pause/ff/rw media, and mark messages as read

what do you mean by "good battery life"?

Disclaimer I don’t have one, but seems like 2-4 weeks between charges.

transflexive LCD

LMGTFM (Me). Oh its easy to read (almost) regardless of light conditions. I too like my notification to be separated and discreetly delivered.

Sorry 8), thanks for the heads up. I'm filling in shipping info now.

That looks like the closest successor to the pebble I think I've ever seen.

I may need to order one and test it out.

And priced for the average human! Wow.

Damn, if I didn't need the fitness tracking support of my Garmin watch, I'd be all over that!

Same here. Looks really cool, but I use a lot of sport features of my Garmin watch.

So frustrating that their logo is a nice looking round watch, but their product is an ugly rectangular one.

I think I've just found my next watch. It looks more useful than my current Fitbit Versa. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Now I miss my Pebble and Pebble 2 :(

I held onto my Pebble for so long, wearing it from launch until about a year ago, where I got a Garmin Smartwatch.

So many things I loved about it, especially its simplicity and legendary battery life (at that time).

Samesies! The Garmin battery is starting to deteriorate after about 3 years use though. That said I don't regret buying it, it's been great.

Garmin watches have screws everywhere, I would assume they're easy to repair and to replace the battery.

Big fan of the PineTime for minimalism and extraordinary battery life, but the Bangle looks compelling. Maybe once the PineTime dies.

PineTime

Bangle.js 2

TIL

I would reall love to have an open source watch, but unfortunately both the pinetime and bangle.js 2 lack severely in the activity tracking, which is the primary reason for me to have a smart watch.

I'm not sure how the screen is on the pinetime, but on the bangle.js 2 it's surprisingly bad. Not a deal breaker by itself, but combined with a sort of limping experience on other parts, it's not a good product (yet).

I'm looking for a 3atm waterproof os smartwatch. Banglejs Is supposed to be 3atm like the amazfit bip If you close the hole for the barometer but I won't risk it. Any 3atm os smartwatch available?

PineTime is nice, wearing it right now.

What all can it do?

Notifications, media control, minor navigation aids, some heart rate stuff (they've linked some papers for their algorithm which I think is cool cause now we can discuss the validity of said algorithm for heart rate monitoring) and most importantly 1024 (the game)

And 1 week (approx) of battery life

Nice. Guess I will get one after all.

I'm a PineTime-user too, but be advised, that there is no sleep tracking, and the heartrate measurement is not passive, nor does it work in the background.

But if you want a simple watch for notifications, weather, time, step count, and a handy flashlight, with up to three weeks uptime with one charge, the pinetime is for you!

Also, you might want to consider joining the PineTime-Community, bring some life there! <3

Similar to what most smartwatches can: measure heartbeat, show notifications and answer calls from your smartphone, flashlight (by showing white write screen), show weather, etc.

You can't actually take calls on the PT, you can use it to pick up your phone.

It's pretty barebones, but I like it for the price that it costs and the freedom it gives.

PineTime is everything Foss but is only for simple stuff (notifications, time, media control, pedometer, stop watch.) Had mine for a couple of years now and it still gets updated πŸ‘

Gatgetbridge (your link) has a breakdown of devices they support https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/ . You can click through the vendors to find devices which are both "highly supported" and "no vendor-pair". Meaning most/all the features work without any reliance on the vendor app.

As for the similarity you are asking about with pixel->GrapheneOS, there are very few watches that can run an alternative open source firmware or operating systems apart from the ones that are already open source, like bangle.js, pinetime, etc. Wearables are even more specialized than phones, they require specialized code designed specifically for them and would likely require pretty extreme effort to reverse-engineer.

I use a pebble 2 HR with gadgetbridge but the watch it self runs the old pebble firmware which gadgetbridge talks to. This is fine for me, but if you are looking for a more modern watch you may have to make some compromises.

There's AsteroidOS but I couldn't find any of the supported watches (all quite old IIRC) at a reasonable price.

Gadgetbridge with some proprietary watch is fine privacy-wise (I had an Amazfit GTR3 pro, I needed to register an account with the Zapp app and use it once, but then uninstalled it once I got the required password and used Gadgetbridge exclusively).

Bangle and the Pine Watch are low-res and IMHO quite ugly compared to alternatives from big brands.

Old Pebble if you can find a working one that someone will part with.

How about something more recent? :)

if it existed I would be using it. Garmin is the next closest not total crap "smart" watch.

Worth a look at Coros. I find their battery life and product support to be much better than the garmin watches I've owned. They even added maps as an update for existing watches when they could have forced people to buy a new watch for that feature. Not FOSS though.

If there was an open source GPS watch that could last long enough with enough accuracy for my workouts, I'd be all over it!

Heh, I’ve got one banging around in a drawer somewhere - I should play with that a bit and see how modern devices interact with it

I just picked up a banglejs 2 and I love it. I was using a galaxy smart watch 5 but didn't work without gapps on my lineage phone. Its obviously not as good as the Samsung smart watch but I've been super happy with it. No creating accounts, getting tokens etc. Just pair it via Bluetooth and gadget bridge and you are good to go. Its a little pricey but for open source watch its awesome, I've heard good things about pinetime as well.

Idk if it can be called a smartwatch, but I just found out about the sensor watch, and now I really want one. Basically a hackable Casio f-91w

I have a PineTime, but I'd have to go with the Bangle.js.

I have a pinetime and I basically just stopped using it. I thought it being open source would mean I could add my own features, but development for it sucks and it's massively limited.

Can you expand more, why it is limited?

It has 512kb of flash, and Over 400kb is already taken by the base firmware. Also, you have to flash a new firmware every time you want to try a new feature.

64kb of ram, too. So you have to be extremely cautious and careful about how you code any features.

It's just not worth it.

I only know of the Pine Time, however they warn that their watch OS is community driven and under active development.

In the open source world, I take that as a highlight, not a warning.

Agreed! However I don't want to set unrealistic expectations

Is it mature enough or it is better to wait now?

I don't have one myself as I don't like jewelry.

However you can gather a lot based on the release history in the Infinitime wiki

I use the AmazFit Band 7, the last sensibly sized watch that exists it often feels like.

Weather fails to sync, but then it's probably the least important feature on a watch. The only feature I really wish Gadgetbridge could do that even the official stack can't is "nap mode"

As a narcoleptic person still recovering from major depression, I wish I could either press a button to silence the watch and set a "smart alarm" for 30 minutes. Even better if it would turn on automatically if it detects me sleeping during the day!

The only other thing GB can't do is stand in for the phone-side ZeppOS API functionality, but who needs that, let's be honest!

Fantastic battery life to boot. I have gone two weeks after forgetting to charge it while wearing it almost 24Γ—7!

Weather works on my Zepp OS watch. Breezy Weather syncs it to gadgetbrige

I'll try it out immediately (he said, after claiming weather is unimportant πŸ˜…)!

Do you also happen to know any way to get navigation instructions to show up on the watch? ...Asking for a friend, ofc!

In the Gadgetbridge settings it says it only works with OsmAnd and Google Maps, neither of which I use. But it should work with those two

Also can't push navigation to the watch, but tracking a route for a walk whole you have the phone with you works just fine. (Neither feature I need)

Lilygo T-Watch. Sorry, I know I'm late to the party but no one mentioned these. They're a little closer to a development platform, but basic enough for anyone to pick up and learn. They're similar to the PineTime in terms of being low-power, more simple options. But this uses a more powerful ESP32-S3 SoC and is a lot more responsive.

I'm using an Amazfit bip watch. Is full supported from gadgetbridge.

Have an amazifit too, just found out about this, spent the last hour configuring everything. Looks very promising.

Also, amazifit tools is complaining a bit about not finding zepp anymore but seems that everything still works, including Tasker integration

If you want something feature rich, I have the Amazfit Balance Watch and its just as nice as the Pixel Watch hardware wise. It runs a closed source Chinese Zepp OS but if you pair it with GadgetBridge, none of your data can go anywhere except your phone local storage, and 95% of the features work well.

Wow thanks for sharing resource, had no idea this exists! πŸ™Œ

No problem, that was the first thing that interested me into this topic.

Really wish we'd get some nice, fast RISC-V base boards with a nice amount of flash memory paired with a cool round LCD display..keep patrolling CNX for the parts but they don't seem to be quite there yet.

I'm presently using the huawei watch fit 3 on gadgetbridge nightly, which I am enjoying but it definitely has its quirks.

They're also adding the Garmin watches, which are well known for their activity tracking.