Smart watches, Fitness tracker options

General Computing
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Techlore health and fitness tracker video from 2020 which I watched when it came out, wow 3 years ago almost to the day, is around the time I stopped wearing a Garmin Watch.

We have had some good conversations about smart watches: The PineTime and GadgetBridge watches.

Today Casio G-Shock Smart Sync made an update which made me think about my next watch.

I researched a few Gadgetbridge watches but I didn’t actually make a purchase.

This Casio G-Shock Smart Sync supports the G-Shock Square Bluetooth 5600 and 5000, as well as the 2100 series watches.

What I have been happy with is just a Casio F105W-1A the F-91W-1 would work but I like the better back light of the F105W-1. I got the itch last month to get a new watch and I purchased the Casio A700W-1A which I planned to change out the band. The A700W-1A is 6 mm thin. You can also say I am frugal… The basic alarm and settings just have worked.

My phone notifications are minimum by settings, so I can handle poor performance with notifications but as you can see in my working list below notifications on the watch are of interest. I usually have my Wi-Fi and blue tooth turned off. Listening to music is one activity where I often put my phone down and my blue tooth is turned on.

  • There are functions that I enjoyed or missed with a smart watch.
  1. Messages on the watch face.
  2. Music controls, volume.
  3. Sleep tracking
  4. Steps

Watches are very personal even if you have the most minimalist watch. Thanks for letting me share a few thoughts on a watch. I think it would be cool to see an updated video on fitness and health trackers from Techlore. Has enough changed to warrant an update? As always any suggestions are appreciated.

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Wow, okay so I own one of these watches already and was unaware that it was supported by GadgetBridge. Definitely going to test this out over the next couple of days!

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My daily driver is GWB5600BC, it’s a great watch, I wouldn’t call the G-Shocks with BT for smartwatches.

You can get an app that allows you to communicate with the watch, but it didn’t have any useful features when I tried it. You can read the battery, sync time, set the alarm, use the “find my phone” function, and you can use a map function in the phone to save your current GPS cords.

There are none of the features you could expect to find in a smartwatch that allows it to extend the functions of a smartphone.

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I have never successfully paired a device to Gadgetbridge. It either won’t detect the device, or if it does, it crashes. I’ve tried both a Nexus 5S and Pebble 2HR back in the day, and more recently with a Pixel 7 and Amazfit something something.

I thought 7ish years between the two would help it be more stable, but nope.

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It would be cool to hear how it goes for you.

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The feature I find on that model that I would be interested in is the apps ability to change the alarms.
For the cost, I looked at the other models.

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I never use the alarm on the watch, I also use my phone.

The only feature I found remotely useful was the ability to check the battery status, you can’t do that on the watch, but I have never had any issues with the battery running low.

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There is also asteroidos, linux based OS for smartwatches.

I am currently using ticwatch pro 2018 watch with it, pretty satisfied.

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After I found out about this app a few days back, I managed to connect my Fossil Hybrid HR to the app today :tada: They provided a python script to retrieve the secret of the watch. And after some fiddling around, it was connected.

The fossil app is garbage. Not just from a privacy standpoint but also from a functionality standpoint. It is heavy, slow and the UI is just not nice. Glad I found this app. If the app holds in the coming days, I see it as success