Hacker Watch
Tosha Dickason
Military issued field watches of the 20th century are not only abundant in their own right, but 21st century recreations are everywhere to be found. In my estimation, this popularity comes down to field watches being the very archetype of the wrist watch itself, a tool sorted out for no-nonsense legibility and durability during WWI. They make as much sense today as they did then.
When the lineage is direct, the watch seems more authentic. I define authenticity as closeness to origins, so it helps that Bulova, which has never gone out of business and remains in America, provided the US military with these watches. I think we feel that authenticity when we wear these watches.
The Hack I chose saw production from around 1959 into the early 1970s as the Bulova MIL-W-3818A or the Bulova A17A, the difference being the movement in the originals. The big difference over the 1940s A11 mil-spec is the inner 24-hour time scale of the A17A.
Whatever variety of nostalgia we get into as individuals, I submit that a mechanical field watch lacking nostalgia has failed in its mission to awaken in us 21st century folks a sense of 20th century adventure.
When the youth of 2065 gather around my knees and ask what life was like in the Bay Area back during the Snowden years, I will simply warm up my Sony Playstation 4 emulator and make them watch me replay Watch Dogs 2. The game so precisely encapsulates the zeitgeist of the mid-twenty-teens, I would tell them, that I filed a lawsuit in 2018 to learn more about how it was made.
More than a year passed since I filed my request with OPD, which blamed the delay on the IT department. The law requires it to provide an estimate when records will be identified and produced, and even though OPD was advised by city officials to do, it had continued to leave me in limbo.
Just had this happen to me on my Ultra 2! Watch was on my wrist and unlocked. Various apps were opening and I was having trouble controlling the watch at all. Held both buttons down and powered off. Noticed that WatchOS 10.3 is available and has 2 fixes for security issues with the Apple Neural Engine and the kernel. Updating now and will monitor closely.
Same on my S9 just now. I noticed there was a weird text message on my phone that I had not opened. I finally got the watch to shut down and am now applying the latest update. I would really like to know if any of my info has been compromised.
This just happened to me too. all of a sudden i could see someone randomly trying passwords on my iwatch and then my watch would lock them out. Tech support was literally no help. The first guy sent me a link to find my watch. I was like it is on my wrist. and then strangely today there is an update for iPhone with a prompt to help secure your iPhone. anyway it was as if a person was remotely trying to access my iwatch. so on my iPhone i mediately unpaired it. which then seemed to reset it. then did the iPhone security update. and repaired my watch and didnt go from backup but instead said it was a new watch and set it up brand new with a LONG password.
Had constant offensive phone calls, firstly from number withheld and then calls from 07594339832 and 07443352310. About 20 minutes later my watch started acting bizarrely, it was trying to reply to the last message I'd received (fortunately it was a no reply number), it also sent a message to the second text asking them to call. It then started trying passcodes. I couldn't get control of my watch even when I turned off the router and put my phone in Airplane mode. I've managed to unpair the watch and on re-pairing it there is a software update. It's been incredibly worrying and I felt incredibly vulnerable as it looked impossible to get control of the watch. I was worried about communicating with it through the phone as I was concerned that whatever was controlling the watch could infect all of my systems. The only way I could get control back is by unpairing the watch through my iPhone. Just gone through the process of re-pairing and updating software. Apple says the software update resolves an issue 'false touches'. This isn't quite as accurate as it should be as 'false touches' don't send texts to people asking them to call. I'm hoping that all of the actions I've taken have divorced my watch and my systems from whatever it is that's been taking control. I'm going to start diversifying my technology as the safety I felt with Apple security is shattered.
Recently, Pine64 announced development of their PineTime smartwatch. Eagle-eyed spectators quickly identified that early photos seemed to be of an existing product from AliExpress, though Pine64 have said that their device simply takes advantage of an existing chassis and body to cut down on production costs.
Other projects consist of larger communities coming together with a common goal. AsteroidOS aims to create an open-source software ecosystem for Wear OS-based smartwatches. OpenWatch aims to do much the same thing. These projects promise to unlock the features of top-of-the-range commercial smartwatches for eager hackers to play with. However, much development lies ahead before full support is reached for most hardware.
Normally, hackers are the first to set about bringing new functionality to the fore. The smartwatch formfactor poses some difficulties, though. Many watches come with cases that are near-impossible to open without damage, and even those that do get in are unlikely to find space for additional hardware. Regardless, there will always be those that try.
I never bothered to actually code anything for it because i thought it conventional segmented lcd display (no pretty pictures). however, i had it apart yesterday to look at changing the battery, and it looked like it could have been a regular lcd or oled or (something that could be addressed by pixel). could be wrong though.
i had no issues buying mine, though i ordered a non-standard frequency model. the 433 mhz model ran out during their 2 week special offer. i have no idea what model i have because i lost the usb xmit/recv unit.
I think I still have a few of them (868 and 433 mhz), laying around somewhere. Was a quite nice watch, and did some VERY SMALL tests with coding for it, however it was quite limited what sort of uses I could figure out for it.
They can get any cheap nrf52 based smartwatch and just order it from manufacturer with their custom firmware.No custom HW design needed, there are hundreds of cheap models. I guess that is exactly what they will do.
Basically, the pebble was the only watch that I ever saw to get it right. I got an old-stock pebble time and am running it on rebble, but whenever that dies, the hacking will probably have to be on the hardware side, to make a decent usable watch.
I pour one for the metawatch hybrid.
Flawed in many ways but still the best idea for a SmartWatch in my eyes.
Meanwhile a Casio Casio 5110 is back on my wrist because all software except pebble sucked so far.
Rebble recently got timeline support working, which was one of the few old features that was yet to be seen. We also are seeing the beginning of new apps appearing in the Rebble store for the first time since the shutdown: a RSS Reader and a timeline token generator. (Both great tools for developers!) This has been aided, in part, by the return of publicly accessible Cloudpebble instances and the brand-new port of the development tools into Xcode.
I m still wearing a Garmin watch, or several, but I m unhappy with it. My favorite option would be to have a live-stream of Ant+ sensor data to Matlab running on a mini PC stick, where I can do almost anything with my data:
A training tracker can record data directly to csv. The csv data structure of a training tracker is much more clearer than the data structure of fit files from Garmin which were converted to csv. There is a clear time- stamp, there are not so many columns which are cryptic, strides are there, the colums are labeled meaningful, etc.
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For me personally, the new Amazfit Verge 2 ECG is also interesting. As far as I know, Amazfit watches can more easily be hacked than for instance Polar watches. There a threads about it in the xda developers forum.
I miss a fitness watch which can log data in an easy accessible format, and which can also easily live-stream for instance to a PC application. Amazfit is a potential candidate for this. And Amazfit Verge 2 ECG could eventually be used for respiration rate estimation. Looking forward to this watch coming out, to high-quality tests of this watch and to it s development.
The reviewer recommended to use an external heard rate monitor. When Amazfit would replace the optical heart rate monitor by a sensor with a higher quality, then I would rather buy an Amazfit Verge than a Garmin or Polar watch in the future.
Matlab is not necessary for a sports watch. The same code in Python would be fine, to run on the new Linux Pinephone first, and then on a Linux watch, which I don t know if it already exists. But a Linux watch to run the sportswatch code on would be great.
Since I love the new Linux Pinephone, although I don t have it yet and it is still sold as a device for developer, I also love the idea of the Pinetime, which is called a companion for Linux smartphones. But the information about it are a bit spare, and a wish there was a more powerful watch as a companion for Linux smartphones.
It seems that I am one of the view persons which is interested in this topic. I am, since there are troubles accessing sensor data from Garmin watches independently from Garmin software. And Garmin watches allow only very limited control by the user over the watch.
I m interested also in the PineTime. But the Tickwatch pro is more interesting for me personally. It should be possible to run Ubuntu Touch on the Tichwatch pro as a Linux on Android project. The Tickwatch Pro has a touch display, and the new version 1 GB of RAM. With this the Tickwatch comes close to a Linux PinePhone, which I have choosen for sports watch project. The Tickwatch would be better, since a watch is more comfortable to wear than a smartphone for sporting activities. The PineTime has a user interface wich is interesting. But to use it for BLuetooth low engergy sensors the watch appears to be not the right platform. The only theoretical obstacle is how to access the watch buttons in Ubuntu touch.
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