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

Posted by dariosalvi78 on Friday January 10, 2020 @10:38AM
from the ask-hn dept.

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

( 13 comments | 12 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by dsalzman on Friday January 10, 2020 @02:13PM (#22014208)

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

High quality sensors. Data is encrypted e2e

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by dariosalvi78 on Friday January 10, 2020 @04:24PM (#22015706)

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

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Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by jamarls on Thursday January 16, 2020 @12:57PM (#22067045)

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

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Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by sho_nuff on Friday January 10, 2020 @03:36PM (#22015241)

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

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Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by dariosalvi78 on Friday January 10, 2020 @04:25PM (#22015715)

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

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Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by sho_nuff on Monday January 13, 2020 @06:34PM (#22040007)

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

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

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Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by animesh on Saturday January 11, 2020 @04:16AM (#22019028)

Does it ship internationally?

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Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by sho_nuff on Monday January 13, 2020 @06:32PM (#22039989)

Alas, I am not sure about that.

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Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by animesh on Thursday January 23, 2020 @11:14AM (#22128690)

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

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Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by G4E on Friday January 10, 2020 @02:53PM (#22014699)

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/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by m-p-3 on Sunday January 12, 2020 @09:34AM (#22026414)

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-...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by dariosalvi78 on Friday January 10, 2020 @04:27PM (#22015736)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: A smartwatch that does not send your data God kno... by runjake on Friday January 10, 2020 @01:07PM (#22013175)

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

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