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Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#41

Post by aembleton »

dspillett wrote: post #39
aembleton wrote: post #36

Amazfit Pace [1] I just bought one for ~£80 from Gearbest and you can pull the GPX routes from it, and also add routes. You can access all of the files, by plugging a USB lead into the charging dock. It then appears as a USB drive that you can copy files to and from. I've designed my own watch face, as it's just XML and image files and taken GPX data. I'm not sure how or if you can get the heartrate or pedometer data…

What sort of in-use battery life do you get on that? If I were to use it for an ultra run next year, would it be able to last 12 to 18 hours with GPS tracking on for most of that time? I see the "5 day" claim on the site but these tend to be vastly exaggerated (based on absolutely perfect conditions with everything other than just the watch and maybe step counter functions turned off) in my experience.

I've only had it for a week, but I managed to run the GPS for 12 hours and the battery was at 65% afterwards.

From that, I would say >30 hours is do-able.

I last charged mine 3 days, 16 hours ago (the phone app tells me). It is currently at 36% charge. That is with sleep tracking and constant heart rate monitoring as well as getting all of my notifications from my phone. 5 days is legit.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#42

Post by GrinningFool »

I wonder how practical it is to create "thing" with no exposed face, no wireless, no connectivity. It'd provide continual heart rate and respiration monitoring. A few dedicated buttons that just log when they're pressed - when parsing the data you can map that to whatever meaning you want. Offload csv files via USB, and do with it what you wish.

perhaps bluetooth so the would-be hacker could write a phone app to present data

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#43

Post by craftyguy »

aembleton wrote: post #36

Amazfit Pace [1] I just bought one for ~£80 from Gearbest and you can pull the GPX routes from it, and also add routes. You can access all of the files, by plugging a USB lead into the charging dock. It then appears as a USB drive that you can copy files to and from. I've designed my own watch face, as it's just XML and image files and taken GPX data. I'm not sure how or if you can get the heartrate or pedometer data…

OP said:

> but sending my bio metrics to fitbit or garmin servers is not something I want to do.

The device you linked to sends all information to Strava, which isn't really any better than what OP DIDN'T want to do...

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#44

Post by curtpw »

There are a number of Chinese generic activity trackers containing the Nordic nrf52832 MCU and a GPS module which are easily hacked and would meet all your needs. Search for "nrf52832 gps bracelet" or "nordic gps bracelet" on Aliexpress, Banggood, ebay etc. For example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/KINCO-OLED-GPS-Activity-Trac... Components: Nordic nrf52832/ARM Cortex M4 MCU, Kionix KX023 accelerometer, Ublox GPS module, 200mAh battery, 0.96" OLED screen. This can be programmed using the Nordic SDK with Keil, ARM mbed, Sandeep's Arduino Core for nrf5X etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#45

Post by smartt »

piqufoh wrote: post #6

The was the "angel" on indiegogo - but they tanked before delivering any of the "perks" (product). I lost $249 there - still a bit sore!

FWIW, I switched my order to the stripped-down "angel" and did eventually receive it but it was non-working junk. Some sensors didn't work; others produced garbage for data. So disappointing.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#46

Post by aembleton »

craftyguy wrote: post #43
aembleton wrote: post #36

Amazfit Pace [1] I just bought one for ~£80 from Gearbest and you can pull the GPX routes from it, and also add routes. You can access all of the files, by plugging a USB lead into the charging dock. It then appears as a USB drive that you can copy files to and from. I've designed my own watch face, as it's just XML and image files and taken GPX data. I'm not sure how or if you can get the heartrate or pedometer data…

OP said: > but sending my bio metrics to fitbit or garmin servers is not something I want to do. The device you linked to sends all information to Strava, which isn't really any better than what OP DIDN'T want to do...

It only sends it to Strava if you want it to. I haven't connected it to Strava yet, although I probably will eventually.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#47

Post by kybernetikos »

I'm currently using a logitech keyboard and mouse that support their new feature 'flow' that allows your keyboard and mouse to switch which computer they are paired with when the mouse goes to the edge of the screen. Now it seems that to support this feature, they must have the ability for the computer to instruct the keyboard and mouse to switch to one of the other paired computers. I would very much like to have the capability of doing that in my own code, but it seems to only be available through the official logitech app (that rarely works for my setup).

I've got an ereader that requires me to plug in to transfer epubs that I've downloaded onto it. If it were hackable, I'd be able to run a wifi sync program on it and my experience would be much better. It integrates with pocket, but I use pinboard.in and would like it to integrate with that instead. The default software doesn't give me a choice.

I've often wanted to purchase things based on their hackability - wifi routers, keyboard, mouse, sd cards, voip adapters, game controllers, cameras, e-readers, mobile phones, webcams....

But I often find it very difficult to find up to date information about what is user-hackable and what isn't. If this information were easier to find, it would affect my buying decisions more and would create more incentive for manufacturers to consider making their devices hackable.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#48

Post by Xeoncross »

GrinningFool wrote: post #42

I wonder how practical it is to create "thing" with no exposed face, no wireless, no connectivity . It'd provide continual heart rate and respiration monitoring. A few dedicated buttons that just log when they're pressed - when parsing the data you can map that to whatever meaning you want. Offload csv files via USB, and do with it what you wish. perhaps bluetooth so the would-be hacker could write a phone app to pre…

I would by "thing" with nothing more than:

> A few dedicated buttons that just log when they're pressed - when parsing the data you can map that to whatever meaning you want.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#49

Post by JustSomeNobody »

kybernetikos wrote: post #47

I'm currently using a logitech keyboard and mouse that support their new feature 'flow' that allows your keyboard and mouse to switch which computer they are paired with when the mouse goes to the edge of the screen. Now it seems that to support this feature, they must have the ability for the computer to instruct the keyboard and mouse to switch to one of the other paired computers. I would very much like to have th…

Logitech flow looks interesting. From the 30 seconds I scanned the page about it, it seems the computers need to be on the same network. So this could be as "simple" as running tcp client on each machine. When the current active machine notices that the mouse left the edge of the current screen it disables the keyboard and mouse on current machine, sends a notification to the other computer and enables keyboard and mouse there. Custom USB drivers could likely handle disabling and enabling the keyboard and mouse just fine, but I've never written one, so maybe I'm wrong.

Edit: I was speaking more generically here. I doubt one could get the actual Logitech mouse and keyboard protocol and so couldn't implement an open source flow clone.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?

#50

Post by theli0nheart »

Pretty much any Garmin device does exactly what you're looking for. All of the activity data on my fēnix 5 / VA HR is visible when I plug in via USB. The data is encoded in the FIT file format, which has a public SDK [1] (you do need to accept a license agreement to view it, though, if that matters). There are wrappers for most languages and if you want to just translate the data to CSV, there are pre-made tools to do that too.

I don't think you need to enable sync, so keeping the data local wouldn't be an issue. AFAIK, you should just be able to use the Garmin Connect software once to set up the watch, and that's it.

The great thing about the Garmin watches is that pretty much any fitness hardware that uses ANT+ will work with them. ANT+ is also an open protocol so you're not locked in with a specific manufacturer.

[1]: https://www.thisisant.com/resources/fit

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