Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God knows where? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God knows where?

12 pointsdariosalvi7813 comments

I do medical research involving wearables / smartwatches and I don't want patients to have to use an app that sends their data to some random, probably foreign, company's server. This is especially problematic within Europe and GDPR because fitness data can be seen as health-related information [1], especially in a medical context.

I am interested in the typical stuff: step counts, (24h) heart rate and possibly sleep detection. Nothing exotic. To conduct my research, I would need to access the data, either because the user sends it to me, or (better) I can build myself an app that retrieve the data via Bluetooth or a local file or a database of some sort (e.g. HealthKit).

So I am looking for a wearable that either a) has its own app, but keeps the data locally (and makes it accessible) or b) has a known Bluetooth protocol I can access with my app or c) is programmable. The device must be compatible with both Android and iOS, because we want to use patients' phones.

I am really struggling to find one.

[1] https://edps.europa.eu/sites/edp/files/publication/15-05-21_mhealth_en_0.pdf

Apple Watch. Leverage HealthKit/ResearchKit. https://www.apple.com/researchkit/

High quality sensors. Data is encrypted e2e

I need compatibility with Android, so the Apple watch is a no go

You can check here some great watch perfectly compatibility with Android https://www.smartwatchpicks.com/best-standalone-smartwatch/

Have you considered the Bangle.js from Espruino (https://www.espruino.com/Bangle.js)?

yes, I have pre-ordered one in fact. I hope it will be of enough quality for my research!

I did encounter another but as I understand it, it is intended for developers only [1].

[1] https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/

Does it ship internationally?

Alas, I am not sure about that.

I got a reply from the maker that it does. So that's that.

You should check the project gadgetbridge[1]. Its aim is close to what you want to achieve : an opensource app to retrieve data and monitor without sending it god know where. I have used it for 2 years now with an amazfit bip, which was never sync with the official app, not even once. The project is really active, with roughtly a new release every month.

[1]https://gadgetbridge.org/

good suggestion, thanks. The only issue is that it's Android only, and many patients have iPhones. One thing I could do though is extracting the implementation of one (or more) of the Bluetooth protocols and make an iOS version of it.

I considered to Amazfit Bip and while shopping I saw the Amazfit Bip Lite. One thing I've read is that Amazfit/Huami/Xiaomi started putting a server-side activation on their newer devices, so I'm not sure I want to passively reward that kind of behaviour by buying their hardware..

https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/wiki/Huami-...

A Garmin running watch with non-default settings should be able to meet your requirements.

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