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Casio F-B100W-1A

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Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, apps need location permissions if they want to scan for available bluetooth devices rather than having the user pair in the bluetooth settings app. The reason being that advertisers set up bluetooth beacons all over the place and used passive scanning in apps to collect the users location. What's not clear to me is why they really need to be able to scan for bluetooth. Surely requesting locatio…

The lowest common denominator user is more afraid of visiting the settings menu than they are of clicking allow on just about any permissions popup.

[dead]

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew for the imperial units but not this. This country ... let's say it always amaze me.

They use US customary, not imperial, they're slightly different sets of units. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units

> Some advocates of the customary system saw the French Revolutionary, or metric, system as atheistic. The president of an Ohio auxiliary of the Institute wrote that the traditional units were "a just weight and a just measure, which alone are acceptable to the Lord". His organization later went so far as to publish music for a song proclaiming "down with every 'metric' scheme".

Ooh that explains a lot.

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korg did it right - budget off-the-shelf processor, most of the money spent on the UI, wildly optimistic prices, no nostalgic ties. The expensive part of a modern synth isn't the DSP board, it's the industrial design and tooling needed to build the rest of the hardware. The CZ series was workable, but there really aren't many passionate nostalgic buyers waiting to drop a few hundred - minimum - on an expensive reissu…

I don't think I buy that argument (that there aren't enough people interested in it). It's not quite in the ball park of something like the DX 7 or several of the better known analog synths, which have nearly all seen re-issues, mini-versions, software emulations, etc., often several. Damned near every Roland synth from that era has seen a re-issue and official plugin. Yamaha has been more measured in their re-issue…

Hell you can often even find the Korg Volca FM for under 100 bucks and it’s a patch compatible DX7 clone.

I have a Casio CZ-5000, the 61 key version with sequencer. It’s well made but given its age I’m not sure I’d want to take that to a gig either.

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#284

Casio has been leaving a lot of money on the table in terms of nostalgia products. There's been a low rumble of demand for the Casio CZ series of synthesizers for a decade or more, and a bunch of non-Casio companies have cashed in on it (Behringer makes CZ-1 Mini, Arturia has CZ V, several other phase distortion synths exist). It's incredibly cheap to replicate, a simple early digital synthesis algorithm that'll run…

Hmm I wonder what else Casio watches have been a big part of over the past 30 years that may have put a hamper on such things, I wouldn't look into it

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#285
post #199

BIG Warning to anyone thinking about purchasing one of these You cannot connect the watch to Bluetooth without a proprietary app, and that proprietary app will not let you use the Bluetooth feature without some bullshit called a "CASIO Account". Their privacy policy is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser too. The absolute state of things.

While I empathize with your feelings about lock-in, I encourage you to see that we live in an amazingly empowering era. I would wager that with $20 in credits for the LLM flavor of the week and and an equally expensive BLE-to-USB dongle (try the nRF52840 dongle), you will have the protocol reverse-engineered overnight. BLE protocols are often very low-hanging fruit for this type of effort. Yes, it's annoying this stu…

ble is just transport layer, if the actual data is encrypted, you can get nothing.

One of our device FW at first transmit raw data through gatt service, then folk at gadget bridge reverse engineer it, which does not sound good to stakeholder, so we have to encrypt the data between phone-device.

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#286
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those buttons are the menu. The idea of menus on watches is a modern ux extravagance. I don’t have the satisfying answer as to why they dedicated a button to 12/24 hour time but my guess is that it’s simply a cool digital feature and stands out against the limitations of analog watches.

To add to it, I always kept the manuals around, because remembering the key press sequences was akin to doing combos in arcade fighting games. A few months without doing them, and it was hopeless trying to remember how to do them again.

Casio watches all have the same.

The beauty of them is that I can pick up any casio model from any year and I know how it works.

That my friend is peak design.

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really as easy as you say? I have one of these Casio watches and plenty of spare Claude credits. Wouldn’t mind doing this but no idea where to begin.

Responding to you and @thewhitetulip If you ask Claude how to do it, it might already give you some strategy that's reasonable (at least, it's good to see what it thinks) Make sure to use Fable, and preferably have the Max plan (or plenty of credits) LLMs can do very good work when they're unattended and optimize towards a goal that's unambiguous / for which you have a reference. Generally speaking, in hardware, this…

From my experience Fable will reject this request - its pretty trigger-happy with it's safety detector for reverse engineering, even if you push it on right-to-repair. However Opus 4.8 is more than capable of doing it, with a bit of guidance.

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans. The U.S. has a lot of people who are unaccustomed to 24 hour time.

It’s the whole Anglosphere. We do it, as well as imperial measurements, to give the finger to Napoleon and his metric 10 hour long day system.

It’s not the whole Anglosphere.

24 hour time is used extensively in the UK. For example, all public transport uses 24 hour times here.

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#289
post #17

One thing I've never understood (and hopefully some Casio geek can shine a light on): why do almost all old Casio models have a 24/12h time switch taking the premium spot as one of the main 4 buttons, instead of having it buried deep in the (awkward) menus. Seems to me that something like alarm or stopwatch setting or a second menu action button would have been far more useful.

Wearing a Casio as I type this. The "24hr" button switches 12/24 modes on the "watch" mode, when using stopwatch it starts the watch, and when using alarms it turns the alarm on/off. It has pretty critical functionality for those, I think the way its labeled on the watch face just makes it sound a little odd.

Now that I think I can't very fast come up with any feature I would want to have on third button in clock display mode. UI is 3 buttons, light, mode and one mode dependant. So I can't think what you would use it for in clock mode. So better have it work, but do something inconsequential...

Re: Casio F-B100W-1A

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I empathize with your feelings about lock-in, I encourage you to see that we live in an amazingly empowering era. I would wager that with $20 in credits for the LLM flavor of the week and and an equally expensive BLE-to-USB dongle (try the nRF52840 dongle), you will have the protocol reverse-engineered overnight. BLE protocols are often very low-hanging fruit for this type of effort. Yes, it's annoying this stu…

ble is just transport layer, if the actual data is encrypted, you can get nothing. One of our device FW at first transmit raw data through gatt service, then folk at gadget bridge reverse engineer it, which does not sound good to stakeholder, so we have to encrypt the data between phone-device.

Quite possible transport is encrypted, but that can likely be overcome with some RE on the Android app. Given the price of this piece of hardware, it's likely recoverable with moderate effort. At least worth a try.
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