Sports watch / bike computer respecting privacy

General Privacy & Security
1

My wifes and my sports watch / bike computer are slowly breaking: connection for charging doesn’t work reliably anymore, gadgets forget their settings, battery doesn’t hold more than one session.

I looked for something new and found that the situation has gotten worse (no wonder here) than since a few years ago: everything seems to only work when regularly connected to the producers cloud delivering my data to some or more surveillance capitalists.

Is anybody doing sports here regularly and using a sports watch / bike computer that does work with libre software, without sending personal data to any internet site, including updates of the firmware (which would be preferably open source)?

Ideal for us would be a multisport watch (like for triathlon) to use mounted to a bike (cadence sensor) or around the wrist for running and swimming. We do not need nor care about such stuff like sleeping analysis or counting steps during the day. Watch is only used during sport, rarly to just show the time, never to be connected to a mobile to show sms or calls.

2

Not exactly dedicated to sport but: https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/.

3

Thanks, I know pinetime and the esp-pased watch with epaper. I’d like to see them evolve to be usable for sports, but at the moment I guess it is not what is usable, yet.

I’m following those developments, but for know I’d say these projects are not ready to replace even a basic sports watch or bike computer. I’d love to hear the story telling the opposite though!

I’d already be happy if all functions could be used offline in de-googled android or in a vm running an offline windows. Better would be software running in linux, but there seems to be no company offering anything officially.

4

What are you looking for in a sports watch or a bike computer in terms of functionality?

5

The most privacy respecting watch in my opinion is the viita watch. Still not open source but you can use it without a cloud service.

Quite more expensive but more sport options :


If i am not mistaken this watch uses the same software - also not open source but cloud free.

I own a viita watch which works as expected according the description on their webpage. The only downside is the fact that it is cloused source and impossible to sync it with an own server application. You have to stick to their android or iphone app.

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6

Did anybody try it on de-googled LineageOS, yet?

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7

That’s the problem with closed devices. You can use it without a cloud service, but a) what data does the application collect? b) why can’t I use it with my Librem 5? and finally c) what if I want/need functionality they didn’t think of?

2 Likes
8

Theoretically, if you reverse engineer the app then you may be able to

a) emulate their cloud service enough to synch with your own server, or

b) just replace the entire app with code that does the things that you want and does not do the things that you seek to avoid (snooping)

However that could be a lot of work so you would have to be keen.

9

Anyway, I’m curious what people would do if they had an actual device that they could freely reprogram. The possibilities are endless! Depending on the hardware of course.

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10

I think the most open base for such a system would be the card10 Badge by the CCC that can be programmed freely but to use it as a smartwatch it would probably require a complete hardware redesign and a smartwatch style case.

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11

I suggested some time ago using Suunto Ambit 2, as there is openambit to get your data. I’m not sure if Ambit 3 -series is supported (doubt it). Ambit 2s are pretty cheap used (discontinued). Firmware is not open, but at least that would not need to connect anywhere in the cloud.

12

@teaser Curious if you know the answer to @ChriChri’s question; I would be highly tempted to get one if I knew that it worked on a lineageOS or calyxOS phone

13

My degoogled android died a year ago and it happened before I bought that watch. In the meantime waiting for my librem 5 I bought an iphone for basic phone use.

I would guess that you can install the apk on a degoogled android when you are able to get the apk separately. I did it with other apps before and if I am not mistaken it was a desktop app called racoon which helps you to extract apks from the play-store.

You could try it. The viita-apps works in demo-mode, when you don’t have a watch yet.

14

Just installed the app and it works in the demo-mode. It would be a question of whether there could be an issue with the blue tooth connection to the watch.

15

I use an Amazfit GTR 2 (before I used an Amazfit BIP)
It is not opensoure, but there is at least an opensoure software to comunicate with it:

But this is currently not running on a Librem5 or Debian11.
I actually use the watch mostly standalone. And do only synching the time with a Debian10 VM.

I started to try to change the dependency from bluepy to something available in Debian11, but have eben busy with others things.

Even I will make this usable on the Librem5, the firmware of the watch will be closed source.

Regarding degoogled Android, you could give Gadget Bridge a try. I didn’t try it in a degoogled Android yet (only Android with Google).