Hacker News Reader

Comment by SturgeonsLaw | Hacker News Reader

Anyone got a recommendation for fitness wearables where you can opt out of having to sign up with an account, and can export data out of it in open/standard formats?

View on HN

Garmin watches work well with the desktop sports tracking program MyTourBook.

I've never had to activate a Garmin watch or register it online in order to use it. Not connecting it to Garmin Services and apps may limit access to 3rd party apps, or at least make it harder to load them load though. (I haven't researched side loading since base features are fine for me).

MyTourBook supports FIT/GPX/TCX/etc, has maps, calendars, charts and activity classification. It's built with Java so can run at least on Windows and Linux. There may be other good programs now, but as of a couple years ago it appeared to be among the better options.

It's open source (and they were supportive of PRs for improving Garmin import).

https://mytourbook.sourceforge.io/mytourbook/index.php

Edit: It's also not limited to Garmin devices. There is support for formats from Suunto, Polar and some other companies. https://mytourbook.sourceforge.io/mytourbook/index.php/docum...

Edit 2: This is with syncing over USB btw.

> This is with syncing over USB btw.

Nevermind it is not worth the trouble, vs handing in anonymized data with a temp email

Right, anonymized data that shares your vitals 24/7 (which are fairly unique) and location data which totally cannot infer your home and work locations. You’re deluded if you believe this can truly be anonymized and stay anonymized.

Depends on the device I'm guessing. AFAIK, not all Garmin devices log location 24/7, but only when explicit activities have been started.

Don't a lot of people start and/or end their regular fitness runs or bike rides at their doorstep? The thing about these fitness tracking tools is that you start wanting to track all your activities to get the statistical trends. It becomes integrated into your day to day lifestyle.

I currently live in a metropolitan area, so no, I don't. I usually have a brisk walk until I reach the place I consider the starting point, as where I live it's not very comfortable to run, and it's not until then I start tracking the exercise.

Most of my friends who exercise also does it at places at least a couple of hundred meters away from their home. The ones that live outside the city, probably do start their run right outside their doors though.

Yes, that is common practice for some athletes. The Garmin Connect platform has pretty good privacy controls which allow users to hide activities or mask tracks near certain locations. Of course if Garmin gets hacked then all of the raw data could be exposed, but the same concern applies to smartphone platforms as well.

I use ActivityLog2 which also reads FIT files.

https://github.com/alex-hhh/ActivityLog2/releases

I am always using Garmin devices locally as an USB drive. You can access all your workouts, planned structured workouts, routes, calender via the USB drive. This is why I am still with Garmin. I did not find any other manufacturer providing this. In fact I always upload my executed workout .fit files directly from the watch into Tredict. The planning and analysis software I am using.

I'm not aware of any major brands that offer account free service. The problem is that a smart device like this is not worth much without some kind of app ecosystem, app stores generally demand accounts, and browsing app stores from a watch is not exactly ideal.

As far as I know, Tizen smart watches can function well on their own after setting up the account once and I believe cloud synchronization is even optional. However, Tizen for smart watches is a dead end, with Samsung getting back to Android Wearable.

There's PineTime (https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/), which is very barebones but open source. Popular firmware, such as InfiniTime (https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/InfiniTime) can also be flashed onto several smart watches available on your favourite Chinese import stores (for example: https://github.com/StarGate01/p8b-infinitime for the Colmi P8).

PineTime looks like a fantastic product and if it supported GPS it would probably be the one that I purchase.

I've also seen this one mentioned in my research but would love to hear from anyone who's used it: https://banglejs.com/

Thanks for the InfiniTime links, I'll check that out.

I own a BangleJS2. I don't use the fitness features but it works quite well on Android with GadgetBridge, a pricacy-focused smartwatch management app, and the OS and apps are all open-source. It was a bit rough around the edge when it came out, but so far it's been quite stable. I even made some PR fix some annoyances.

You can check all the available apps here, there should be something that will monitor which fitness activities you want, and the data can easily be exported from Gadgetbridge

https://banglejs.com/apps/

I own a Bangle.js 2 and really wanted to like it. I have a pretty high tolerance for awkward workarounds to maintain a moral high ground, but it just was no fun. The touchscreen tended not to respond as expected - it seemed to regularly, but not always, have an input offset of around 20% of the screen. My first one's button broke despite minimal use due to the above - only really wore it as a novelty (it was replaced to be fair). The app ecosystem requires attention to stop different apps intefering with each other. The Gadgetbridge connection wasn't especially reliable for me. Etc.

I finally gave up when I found the tiny magnets which hold the charger on to the watch had fallen out and were lost when I went to charge it one day.

I am pretty sure you can use the sports tracking functions in garmin without an account, if not, at least without connecting the watch to a phone. You just need to connect with usb to copy the activity file (.fit) which can be converted to tsv.

regarding the passive tracking I dont have a clue

Really? I recently got a forerunner 265 and it definitely didn’t give the impression that was possible.

The battery life is also nowhere near the advertised length (13 days). Most disappointing is that their support people say to expect about 60% of that, which is what I’m getting.

That said, this will likely be the replacement for my Pebble. Battery life over 6 days, buttons to control music playback, and an English-first UI (amazfit falls down here).

I have an older model but I definitely can download the fit files over usb and using the garmin provided information/sdk to write programs to read the files. or just convert to tsv/csv using their provided utilities. if you can't use usb, you may be able to use bluetooth.

Your 265 can be mounted as a usb drive, as can pretty any Garmin device for maybe 10+ years.

On a Mac, it requires some utility made for reading Android devices. It doesn't pop up as a drive when plugged in.

Can the device receive notifications from my iPhone without an account? That's one of the main reasons I use the device.

Yeah, because Apple doesn't support MTP at all. On OSs that do they just pop up.

I think to get notifications it has to use the app.

Are you doing something special with the watch? I've gotten several weeks out of all my Garmin models except the first one I bought around 2005. Battery life is one of their main selling points and the only reason I have one over a proper smartwatch. Maybe have a second look at optimising the settings for battery life. There are quite a few recommendations on how to do that.

That model plays music and uses an OLED display. Playing music off the watch burns through battery IME and I'm betting how you've configured the OLED display matters. It's "Up to 13 days" and I'm guessing those 13 days don't involve using GPS, don't involve playing music and don't involve using always on display. Misleading maybe.

Yeah, and I don't do any of these things. I just get notifications from my watch and use it as a remote control for podcast playback/ffwd (from my phone to my AirPods). And I have AOD turned off.

The "up to 13 days" number is based on a specific set of behaviors/usage, [1] and the Garmin support people have not been able to explain why I'm not getting it. They have looked at logs for my device and have been content to say that 60% of the "up to" number is normal for their devices.

I was hoping for much better, especially considering the Verge's reviewer [2] said she was getting 6.5 days with AOD turned on, and was on track for 15 with it turned off. I wonder if she was given a bespoke unit by Garmin, which is better than the ones that we get in retail stores.

1: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=daNp4hnaAZ9Fg1XdFcZez5

2: https://www.theverge.com/23632332/garmin-forerunner-265s-rev...

My 2S uses up 10–11% per 24h in watch mode (using the gps uses more battery). But I had to disable the O2 measurement altogether because that chewed through the battery and isn’t that useful to me.

The SpO2 sensor uses significant battery life. This is why is princely only enabled during workouts and sleep, but it can be set to run nonstop or not at all. Double check that setting.

My 945 is pretty close to advertised when I’m not too active.

Yeah I have this disabled. I’ve chatted with their support team several times and they’ve confirmed my settings are about as low-energy as possible (aside from disconnecting from my phone, which would defeat the purpose).

The main thing that I miss from connecting to Garmin Connect is downloading the EPO/CPE files which speedup acquiring the GPS data a lot. see https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=6IbaJEHc1i9gydzQomXzyA

To avoid waiting up to several minutes to get the GPS data when I start my workout, I'll switch to an exercise mode to start acquiring the GPS data while I change into my workout gear and leave the watch near a window.

By the time I've finished changing, the GPS data is available and the watch will behave almost like I had downloaded the EPO/CPE files from Garmin Connect.

I think you can download the EPO file manually.

https://github.com/StevenMaude/armstrong

https://github.com/StevenMaude/epo-bin

Checkout GadgetBridge and their list of supported devices. It runs completely offline. There is differing level of support so make sure to read the details. The mi bands are cheap option that works pretty well. I've got a Skagen (really a fossil) hybrid that works with GadgetBridge, but doesn't support sleep tracking unless you use Skagen's app. But I disabled network access for their app and it works perfectly fine. Would be nice if someone wrote a sleep analysis plugin for GadgetBridge for devices like this that don't do the analysis on the hardware. Pretty happy with the device nonetheless.

Garmin I’m fairly certain you can do everything ‘locally’ over usb and a laptop. I think Connect requires an account though

We had one. It was called Pebble. And then they kickstarted a watch for 3 million and decided to sell themselves to fitbit instead.

They never shipped out my Pebble Time 2 before the project (and company, for that matter) got shelved. Something I'm still sad about even today.

No other smartwatch released before or since has even come close to Pebble's Pebbles.

Kickstarter page is still up: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time...

Look at the supported wearables for GadgetBridge

https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge

FOSS, doesn't have network permissions, can export data or interface with other apps

+1 for this. It makes my Amazfit watch from a privacy nightmare into a great cheap privacy conscious watch.

I just wish it could export SpO2 values and update the AGPS almanac. Because of this a GPS lock takes very long.

Late Amazfit watches require online signup in a quite cumbersome way in order to pair.

I can also vouch for Gadgetbridge being a great option.

I use it with a MiBand 6.

Only tangentially related, but let me plug my new project https://cubetrek.com, a Strava alternative for viewing and managing your GPS tracks.

As discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35671245

you can download the files from the garmin using usb and the format of the activity files is documented publicly. There's an SDK and some utilities to convert to csv/tsv too.

I used to buy Garmin fitness bands, but they seem to have been discontinued. Among other things, I wore them overnight and use them as an alarm clock. Having a charge that lasts 7+ days is such a huge benefit imho. Does anyone have any other recommendations? I currently have a Fitbit, but I would also prefer a model that didn’t have an associated cloud account.

Most current Garmin watches have 7+ days of battery life depending on how much you use the GPS.

I would prefer wearing a lightweight band overnight. I wish Garmin still made the Vivo* models

I wear a Forerunner 735xt, time for anecdata!

It may be bigger than a band but it's surprisingly small and very light to the feel, I barely notice the difference with the Fitbit Charge HR 2 I owned before. Major reason why I'm not upgrading to a Fenix of something like that.

Plus up to 15 days on battery when not using GPS, much more if I disable continuous HR.

Personal preference but I find the Venu so light that it does not bother me for sleep the way my Fossil Explorist did (which also never had enough battery to do overnight tracking!)

You may check also goldencheetah https://www.goldencheetah.org/. It is open source app for offline use.Have tons of features.

I haven't tried one as I am currently happy with my Garmin vívoactive 3, but the BangleJS 2 looks very interesting: https://banglejs.com/

I know my COROS Pace allows for data export, but you probably need an account.

Yeah I have the same watch. The app isn't in the Google Play store, you have to download it straight from the company. Given that its half Chinese company it really isn't going to be better than Garmin.

You need an account for that. As a bonus you download your files from the Alibaba Cloud fronted by Cloudfare. Garmin gives you local usb drive access to their devices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com