My goal is to create a TODO/Pomodoro watch app (as I had on my good, old Pebble) that is always on.
https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/wiki/Amazfi...
The following link takes you to a Wiki page about BipOS. In the wiki is all you might need to know: https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/wiki/Amazfi...
If you dont like how they implemented it you could easily write your own, the api is fairly straightforward: https://developer.garmin.com/downloads/connect-iq/monkey-c/d...
There really isn't anything else that I've found to fill the gap. Good battery life, well supported by an open source community, and it really just continues to work very well for my uses.
I've heard good things about the Amazfit models, but they aren't as "open" as Pebble as far as I'm aware. Keep an eye on PineTime [0], it looks promising.
I've been working on a DIY smartwatch firmware that uses the OLED version of the DSTIKE ESP32 watch development kit. This kit is less than $40 and is basically a small ESP32 dev board with a few LEDs and a mono OLED screen.
It has the following features of use for a developer: 2.4ghz wifi, BLE, 2 cores and an interesting ULP core that can actually do a fair amount of logic (such as detect buttons) while still drawing microamps, A modestly accurate RTC that survives deepsleep, An internal white LED, which as packaged can be used as a reading light, A neopixel on the front, a square wave driven buzzer on the front, and a 600mah LIPO battery, and power management with discharge protection and .
It is not by ANY means waterproof, but with some work (3d printing an enclosure and using a sealing spray) it can be modestly water resistant. At its price, you can actually buy more than 1 as backup in the event of serious water damage though.
The predecessor to this was an ESP8266-based system (a much less capable chip) for mass wifi deauth attacks.
It's a very interesting project writing a smartwatch firmwatch from scratch. Currently I'm trying to get to where I can use Rust (which I don't really know yet, so: learning opportunity) to write the core event loops I need. I won't be able to use Rust for the ULP cores (that has to be done in assembler) or OLED drivers, but I'm fairly sure the normal Rust binding generators will work fine.
I highly recommend trying something like this if you have the time and inclination. It's very fun to incrementally add features to the watch.
https://dev.fitbit.com/blog/2019-12-19-announcing-fitbit-os-...
(Disclosure: I work at Fitbit but not on any of the SDK or device stuff. This is my own personal opinion and should not be considered the official position of my employer.)
I got a replacement pebble of ebay, works great with the "solanum" app (pomodoro) and GoogleTasks for pebble as a todo list that syncs to a google account.
I have the rebble subscription as a support for the maintanance team although I rarely use the voice to text capability.
I wear my pebble everyday. Just because the company doesnt exist doesnt mean the products are useless.
you may have to track down the apk file if you are on android and dont want to use gadgetbridge from F-droid
EDIT: I extracted my pebble apk with apk extractor [1]:
size 26589168 md5 3edeeffdca616336adc27eaf6189e85e sha1 b3b3642ceaf125049eb241fee2e28f573bf2a04f
correspondingly the one on apkmirror is slightly smaller [2]:
size 26589160 md5 eb057a463e688b0f51c2820227fb0520 sha1 41ad7557920e94ab05081e7bab07f0accd759e50
I am actually surprised that the version I have is 8 bytes larger.
[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/axp.tool.apkextractor/ [2] https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/pebble-technology-corp/pebble/...
Just need a nice case. No, I haven't tried it myself.
There's a version on Aliexpress but it is preconfigured to be a WiFi Deauther rather than a watch.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000522565001.html?spm=a2g0o...
Edit: this one looks like a good version https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000302271246.html?spm=a2g0o...
The most interesting thing I've noticed is that because it doesn't look like a smartwatch, when I look at my wrist to check a notification, people ask if I'm OK on time. They assume it's a regular watch, and therefore the only thing I could be checking is what time it is. Kind of a funny side-effect of having a well-camouflaged hybrid smartwatch.
Xiamoi also makes the aforementioned Amazfit series watches