Anything is hackable.
True, I guess, but with how much effort? I think OP wants something he can jump into, not something he has to basically re-engineer. That said, "Anything is hackable" is a good spirit to have.
Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
11–20 of 122 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#12I'm not sure if this really fulfills your "without proprietary software" criteria, but Polar recently announced that they've opened up their API for developers. I believe you do need to have a Polar Flow account though, so the API access works along the same lines as the Google API, i.e. using OAuth 2.0 authentication that connects to your Polar Flow account, which the watch syncs to via phone/wifi. So there's no LTE, but the watch does sync to the Polar Flow account in the cloud via phone/wifi. Their M600 watch is an Android Wear device though, so it might be possible to write an app for that to access the data directly, but I'm really not sure about that part.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#13Pebble. Someone installed linux on one and they're extraordinarily cheap to pick up now.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#14A few years back, I played around with TI's EZ430-Chronos: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos?DCMP=C... It's not sleek like modern fitness bands/watches but is hackable. TI has more Smart Watch components and reference designs here: http://www.ti.com/solution/smart-watch
Chronos is neat, but it isn't really fitness oriented and notably it doesn't have any of the sensors OP wanted (GPS, heart rate, gyro)
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#15If you can go without GPS maybe have a look at the MI Band 2.. afaik there is sone kind of third party app android that allows you to sync and export the data without the mi software..
Was going to say this; you may be referring to https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge
The devices have the advantage of being very cheap; I've bought two for £15 each. I'm kind of surprised there isn't an open project on them. The chip is Dialog Semi with the usual Cortex M0: https://www.dialog-semiconductor.com/products/connectivity/b...
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#16How about something supported by Gadgetbridge[1]? Or someone looks to be building their own Smartwatch[2] [1] https://gadgetbridge.org/ [2] https://github.com/no-go/UART-Smartwatch/blob/HEAD/README.md
That could be a solution, but I'm a bit wary of this kind of solution because the the support could be dropped any day if the manufacturer closes the device. Of course, I could keep an older firmware.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#17If you can go without GPS maybe have a look at the MI Band 2.. afaik there is sone kind of third party app android that allows you to sync and export the data without the mi software..
GPS is really nice for running, I thought about making drawings with my running trails. I need motivation:P
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#18Don't the Garmin watches still have USB access to the file system? The old ones did, and even the newest Garmin Edge series cycling computers let you do this. They run (mostly) the same firmware as the (high-end) watches, so I'd be surprised if they don't.
That would be interesting to know. As long as the files are not obfuscated too much that could be a solution (I'd like to avoid having to reverse engineer a binary format).
Activities are stored in the FIT format, which is publicly documented and they have a rather easy to use sdk available for it as well[0]. Its fairly trivial to get other daily metrics out of the watch as well using Connect IQ, you can even write out to a plain text log file if you want.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#19Pebble. Someone installed linux on one and they're extraordinarily cheap to pick up now.
I looked at Pebble and I was surprised to see they were out of business.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be interesting to know. As long as the files are not obfuscated too much that could be a solution (I'd like to avoid having to reverse engineer a binary format).
Activities are stored in the FIT format, which is publicly documented and they have a rather easy to use sdk available for it as well[0]. Its fairly trivial to get other daily metrics out of the watch as well using Connect IQ, you can even write out to a plain text log file if you want. [0]: https://www.thisisant.com/resources/fit/
That's great. Filesystem access and open format.