PineTime - Pine64
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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The PineTime has a great feature set, but the build quality is terrible. I guess it’s perfectly justified for the price, but I don’t know; I don’t feel good having to order a new PineTime every six months once the last one I bought dies.
I am planning to buy a Casio B5600. There is a FLOS companion app for it, and it has a G-Shock frame; that thing ought to endure a bit before giving up :P
What do you mean it has a terrible build quality? I have one and I think it is great. They advertise some water resistance but I have full on dunked it in buckets of water with no issues. I can’t comment on the longevity but it seems to be a pretty robust design.
I dont know how much information a SmartWatch can send to thier mother company without the proprietary app. But I'd suggest you use gadgetbridge to syc it to your phone.
https://f-droid.org/packages/nodomain.freeyourgadget.gadgetbridge/
It's open source and I bet there's some way to hook it up to your NAS.
*edit Be sure to check compatibility with your watch before buying they have a list here: https://gadgetbridge.org/
Get a Mi band and use Gadgetbridge instead of the official app
The Smart Band 7 with Gadgetbridge is great! You can track a ton and your data stays on your devices instead of being sent to China. Unless that's your thing. You be you.
That's my setup (Mi Band 7). It works better than I anticipated. I want it to be as little in the way as possible (no notifications and vibrations), which this allows me to do. Can export database for processing elaewhere.
As far as I'm aware, Polar is the most privacy-friendly smart watch company.
However, I don't think you can sync the data to a private server.
There are a few recommendations for the PineTime in this thread. It is a great privacy focused smartwatch, but I don't think you would be happy with it based on your requirements. It is not a device that allows you to go for a run and keep your phone at home.
The storage on the device is extremely limited, which prevents you from playing any audio (eg songs, podcasts, etc) directly. The device does not have any wireless connectivity (outside of Bluetooth) so it cannot stream any audio either. I'm not certain if you can even connect it to wireless headphones. It does not have any speakers either.
The watch has some apps, but there are no apps that are well suited for fitness. It does count steps well, but it does not directly calculate distance, pace, etc. It also does heart rate, but, currently, the watch screen must be on for it to record the heart rate. I think the longest the watch screen will stay on for is 30 minutes without any interaction, which may be too short for long runs or bike rides. Additionally, I'm not aware of any GPS/location tracking functionality.
Lastly, since the apps are limited and there is no advanced wireless functionality, you can't use it for things that you may be used to for on the go activities. For example, you won't be able to use it to pay for a drink half way through a run or call someone if you hurt your ankle a few miles from your destination.
With all that said, I still highly recommend the PineTime as a privacy focused, FLOSS, smartphone companion, smart watch. I don't think you'll find these features in any other device, particularly at this price point. However, you will be extremely disappointed with it if you're getting it so you can take it on runs while leaving your phone at home.
I think the longest the watch screen will stay on for is 30 minutes without any interaction, which may be too short for long runs or bike rides.
It will move enough that it will not be a problem. While biking, I intentionally turn it to "night mode" (not sure if that's the name) so that it doesn't turn on soon after it has just turned off.
But otherwise I agree.
I believe the features you're referring to (Raise Wrist and/or Shake Wake within the Wake Up settings) don't keep the watch screen on. Instead, I think they just trigger the watch screen to turn on and it stays on for however long the Display timeout setting is set to.
The only way I'm aware of to extend the Display timeout is to touch the watch screen while its on, a notification to come through, or certain apps like the stopwatch to be active. I also experienced issues with apps closing due to notifications coming through so relying on an app to keep the screen on may not be reliable.
If the screen turns off (even for a split second to allow one of the Wake Up settings to trigger the display back on), the watch will stop recording the heart rate and take another 5+ seconds to start recording the heart rate again.
The only way to suppress the Wake Up settings is to either manually disable them or turn on the "night mode" you mentioned.
Sorry if I'm wrong in any of this. I'm not certain how it all works. This has just been my experience with it.
Either the PineTime, or buy one that you can flash AsteroidOS onto.
Choose a smartwatch that supports Gadgetbrige, a free, open source and great OS for smartwatches
What kind of phone do you have/ what do you use to keep your phone private. I'm asking genuinely. I've always been a strong advocate of privacy but felt like i was alone and fighting an uphill battle until recently finding this sub. So I'm still very noobish with a lot of it.
There's gadgetbridbge but all of them are ancient crap, Of the viable current things, Garmin is least bad IMO. You can in fact sync to your PC, but you'll need to actually do something with it. They're based in Switzerland and accept a bullshit email to start an account. YMMV but bettr than Samsung or Apple and the battery life is exemplary.
PineTime but I don't think you can sync with your server.
You could use a Garmin and disable the normal syncing. You can plug it in as USB device and access the activity files that way.
You could write your own automation to process the files when the device is detected on the USB hub.
There is this app https://www.gadgetbridge.org/ and it supports quite a lot of smartwatches, which you can pair up with it. Gadgetbridge doesnt send out any data and gives you full control.