Fitbit Clock Face

JPDev@programming.dev to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 1344 points –
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This is a pinetime it looks like.

You should get one, open source and $30.

Does it support the watch command?

user@watch:~ $ watch now

Otherwise, who knows when "now" was...

/s

Watches should be round IMO. I'm happy with my Samsung Watch 4 Classic.

Yeah, but square screens are way cheaper to procure and to program for, and every little helps in an open source project aiming for $30.

honestly just depends on what kind of watchface you want, square is cheaper and in some ways more convenient so if you don't want an analog clockface there's no reason to bother

it's ugly and sticks out too much when it's square. round is classy

True but it can also look sleek/modern, or at least rectangular can imo.

Thanks for posting! I was looking at the pinephone esrlier but this would be an even better tinker device for me atm!

The pinephone is not really usable now. The pinetime is awesome though.

Interesting! I have read that its not capable of a daily driver at this point which isnt such a surprise given the fact that even the fairphone is 500+ $/€. Smartphones are more like computers than phones i guess.

What was your experience with the pinetime? If you want to share I mean.

I use the pinetime as my daily watch now. I got it so I could control my audio book in my helmet while on my motorcycle but it has proven great all around. I use LineageOS on my phone and the pinetime was super easy to set up and use with gadgetbridge. No bullshit, no bloat, and as far as I can see no spying.

@Schorch@feddit.de do either of you have any particular comparison between the two watches? And maybe how portable the apps can be for each other? For example writing something for the PineTime and porting it to the bangle js2 or vice versa?

I only ask because the former is so cheap and the latter is currently nigh quadruple the price. But my partner and both have been looking for a good smart watch that has the basics from what you want with one but without it being $150 to Samsung and bloated down. And while I'm not a programmer I'm nearly happy enough with the offerings I see on the websites. I do have a couple Pi projects and a home server that I go back and forth on. When I get the motivation I don't usually have any issues and it's at least in a usable state by the end, even if it's not perfect.

Thanks for any input!

The pinetime does not have many apps and you can't simply install any. I think you have to alter Infinitime to implement the app, then deploy infinitime (with app included).

Idk who downvoted this but that's literally what the github page says you need to do.

Ah thanks, I was just reading what was listed for each on their website, I didn't even think to check the git for them.

Sounds great! I‘m using a legacy apple device (sigh) so I‘m not sure my phone will do a lot with it. Do you know what it can do on its own? Tell the time probably. It says you can use it with a pc as well. Turning on lights at home would be great. I could also see reverse engineering the key fob of my old bmw and using it as a key replacement. ;)

There is a lot of stuff people mess with, but with all linux people only some of it is useful or works. Can you side load on old apple stuff?

Its not jailbroken so no, I cant sideload yet. But the EU is currently trying to force apple to allow sideloading. Should be any minute now! :)

I know about linux stuff. Running a daily driver for half a year now and a couple servers for a couple years. The apple thing is just one I bought before all that so I will use it until it breaks. I develop some low effort apps for my linux desktop so the watch should be cool for me.

The dev kit thing scares me a bit though. Says the assembled watch is not for development?

Oh yeah don't get the dev kit, its just the watch bits really. The normal watch is sealed and whatnot, that is the one to get.

I tinker more with my pinephone than my pinetime, which is basically "waiting for an update and then applying it". Out of the 2 the Pinetime is the one I use, the Pinephone is currently substituting as a pihole because I broke the Odroid C1.

There's a lot more to do and play with on the phone compared to the watch, but the watch is reliable to use daily.

Thanks a lot for elaborating. What is an Odroid C1?

It's a raspberry pi clone so to speak, made by hardkernel. Their latest C board is the C4, pretty happy about em. Running Arch Linux for browsing and light gaming.

Gave a quick check, and it costs more than twice the price to buy it in EU, everything from Pine64, for some reason, odd, will look at this in more detail later at some point in case i missed something because the idea of an open, not locked, not tracking your every move smartwatch is appealing, but that doubling the price thing is a minus.

Yeah I had a similar experience getting mine shipped to Canada, $30 but another $30ish for shipping. I hope one day they are available easier and everywhere.

I bought one and wqs quite happy with it until it just randomly got stuck in a bootloop and no amount of resetting or letting it drain helped

If it's been in the drawer for all this time, charge it again, it will ptobably boot. I had a similar issue, but didn't let the thing shut down conpletely (by making sure the battery is completely drained).

u sold me if it has hearthrate and stuff (idk what tracks sleep)

It does not track sleep as that would require too much info to be sent to a third party. The battery is insane on it as well I get 5 plus days on mine.

Why would it require any info to be sent to a third party? My P32 tracks sleep and I keep it entirely offline.

Not enough processing on the watch I think. You can look it up on the pinetime gethub (https://github.com/topics/pinetime) somewhere in the mess of projects it is mentioned.

Couldn't it connect to a phone and have that do the math

They have not made a phone side app yet. That would be the third party I think.

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What is a good OS for a dummy?

IIRC it comes with a firmware called InfiniTime preinstalled. So I guess that one.

What Android software could you use for managing it? Gadgetbridge seems to not have fully-developed support for it, even with their preferred firmware.

I'm using Gadgetbridge with a hacked Amazfit Bip and I'm pretty happy. I like the multicolor TFT LCD w/no default backlight on the Bip, which is very readable in bright light and only requires a quick button press to get the backlight on in the dark, or you can waste more battery life and have it turn on when you turn it towards yourself. It's also got built-in GPS/workout tracking (you have to manually flash the A-GPS data occasionally...), the ability to load little open source apps, sleep tracking, heart rate tracking, notifications, custom watchfaces, etc which I'm sure the Pinetime has most of. The battery also lasts ages since it uses such a low-power LCD.

I'm not saying the Pinetime isn't good, but decent alternatives exist. I would love a truly open-source smart watch, but maybe when the project is slightly more mature. I guess I could always get one and contribute to it... $30 is really not much. I'll definitely try it if my Bip breaks.

I have found nothing that worked, was not spying on you, was not some hipster pipedream, and has lots of people working on it. Oh and gadgetbridge seems to work good, what do you mean not supported?

Also the Bip cannot spy on you unless you install the official app. It's limited to its interactions with apps over bluetooth, and I just use Gadgetbridge.

Glad you worked around the spying. I just wanted to give my money to a company that did not start by spying on me.

According to the wiki, only one firmware is supported, and it's early support with missing features. The wiki may be outdated, though.

Yeah, I have updated my firmware and its just fine. Like a lot of this type of development there is not great oversight or up to date documents.

First I've heard of it, is it a worthy successor to the Pebble?

If you want a successor to the Pebble, also consider Bangle.js 2. It's a little more expensive compared with the PineTime but I got one and I'm very happy!

Ultimately the Pebble is still working fine though I know it will pack in eventually. All I need is something I can use to read notifications and control music, always-listening health stuff and fancy battery-depleting screens are a negative!

Never owned a Pebble, But I think as they still make the pinetime it bodes well.

Or a Bangle.JS 2 if you like GPS :-)

But the pinetime uses the phones navigation/gps. I am not sure what that would do?

It doesn't rely on phone navigation for starters :)

I find it to be especially useful for running, or really sports in general where it's not practical to carry a phone. Accelerometer step counting alone isn't very accurate. Having GNSS on the watch is very helpful in a lot of ways.

Ah, that explains it then. I have not run in 10 years and would not have thought of that.

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That’s something I think I’d like to use, but I don’t know if could get over the fact that neither the date nor the time are in ISO 8601 format.

They should put it as Unix epoch instead!

I once worked in a software shop where all release packages had the Unix epoch timestamp in the filename. Yes, these sorted brilliantly making it trivial to find the last one. But good luck finding a build from a specific date/time.

The date format isn't even human readable (at least in American). It should be Sun, Jan 14th

Considering it uses day then month, 24hr clock, and distance in km, I'm guessing the reason why it's not "human readable in American" is because it's intended to be "human readable for pretty much everybody else"

The date format isn't incorrect at all

I still think YYYY-MM-DD should be more apt for an international release.

IMO, that format is best for all releases.

You want to talk about sorting releases, ISO 8601 works with sorting and it's still human readable.

My homies all start their date time stamped files with ISO 8601.

I always start my files with iso8601, except on s3 it doesn't like the colon. Gotta replace the colons lol

I prefer YAML please

Please, dont joke with things like this. Someone might take you seriously...

XML it is!

Let's go back to binary blobs. Everything being xml and json is boring.

who needs backwards compatibility anyway?

no but binary formats are really cool when applicable

XML has a bad rap because people went a bit (ok a lot) overboard with it in the early years, pretty much like what happens with a lot of other technologies, but as far as structured and human-readable data formats with good schema and tooling support go, it's pretty much unbeatable. Now that JSON is the New Good Tech and XML is the Old Bad Tech, too many developers use JSON where XML would absolutely make more sense, and then we end up with unholy abominations like Portable Text, which is JSON pretending to be XML, and is so incredibly verbose and monumentally stupid that it feels like some sort of joke esolang data format rather than something being used in a production system. But no, here we are, god is dead and JSON is XML.

XML is terrific for building eg. structured markup languages with more complex markup than what something like Markdown can provide, and have the resulting files be comparatively readable, at least in comparison to the JSON-based alternatives – compare HTML to Portable Text, for example. XML has such a bad reputation – partially deservedly – that people just automatically assume it's not a valid tool for anything modern, even when the modern "NoSQL", "structured and typed data is for nerds, suck it" JSON solution is a giant pile of shit compared to the XML alternative

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I've seen too many android devices with corrupt memory showing something like that to want it as a my watchface...

You can connect to a vscode server on a Galaxy Watch, just sayin'

You've got the hour hand and the minute hand… they're right there. What's wrong? /s

what does the last 4 mean under stats?

distance: how far you've traveled if you put all the steps in a line (may also be gps tracked too)

azm: active zone minutes or how many minutes you've spent with your heart rate in the "active zone" where you burn more calories

floors: how many flights of stairs you've climbed

calories: estimate of how many calories you've burnt based on all the other stats

im confused as to why it doesn't use variables? this is pretty interesting to see though

Guess this is a printout for humans, not to feed to the watch.

In JSON the value on the left would be the variable name the value in the right of the pair is the value.

But a json file is used for storing settings and the like, not for providing real-time data, yeah?

I think:

  1. that's the joke
  2. this is just a watchface template, not an actual file being updated constantly

/sys/: am I some kind of joke to you?

To be fair you won't find Jason there. But plenty of files that provide real time information about the system!

No it's used for all types of data transfer and real time data as well.

I mean, I've never used JSONs before but I imagine you could still write to them in realtime at least, as inefficient as that sounds lol. So you could probably get the same results on an actual text editor if you could modify it to update the text automatically when it detects a change instead of prompting the user

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