PineTime

[...] i've been using my pinetime as my only watch for several years now, and it does everything i need it to do. [...] the battery life on each of mine was awesome, the buttons were handy for things like quick music playback without having to look at my watch, and it had a great little 'app store' with tons of cool watchfaces and stuff from the community. [...]

[...] I've hoped the PineTime would be the new Pebble, but hasn't really materialized (though, it has gotten pretty good! [...] I actually held off from buying a Pebble back in the day because the software wasn't open source and I was worried about getting dependent on a product I had no control over. [...]

[...] Then I tried the PineTime, this one was less of a mess trying to get it to work, but only because it has been effectively abandoned--waspos is dead, infinitime is getting there, and neither offer an easy on ramp for someone to take them over. Really shows that open source hardware vendors are useless if they aren't also open source software vendors.

You should definitely check out the pinetime. [...] It’s pretty solid last I checked with good battery life and support for user apps written in rust

I personally have gotten better stability out of a BangleJS with OSD than I got with a PineTime. OSD isn't perfect but the source is open and it wasn't too difficult to build locally (you mention you are an iOS dev, and OSD is a Java Android app, I bet there are still many similarities). [...]

[...] a Watchy, an Oscilloscope Watch, the PineTime, numerous LilyGo ESP32 thingies, the M5Stick, and so on. [...] its kind of fun to have a database of the last months heart rates ("see honey, I did enjoy our date last week"), step counts, and so on. But I just can't comfortably work with a watch on my wrist, so I don't wear them. For sure, I'm putting "make a custom watchface for the PineTime and Watchy" on my list of things to do next time I open that particular drawer of forgotten things ..

For a while, I had a PineTime watch. [...] The charger stopped reliably charging it and I couldn't get it to sync back up to my phone. [...]

[...] These days I also have a set of watches - from the PineTime to some TTGO vendor-machine clones, an Oscilloscope Watch and a Watchy by SQFMI. [...] Well, except for the Pinetime, which I've lately taken to wearing more often to count steps and track heart rate metrics. That said, this article has lit a fire on the subject of PineTime extensions, and I think I am seeing a future series of watchfaces and smaller apps inspired by the Casio era, on my horizon .. would be fun to have a Casio simulator with a few of their watchfaces on the PineTime - which, for all of its quirks, is a darn cheap way to carry time, even if the current set of watchfaces/apps for it is a bit .. [...] Anyone up for some CASIO inspired PineTime watchfaces, or know of any already? [...] Maybe its time to crack out the devtools ..

What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch? Frankly, I think the combination of price/replaceability and privacy are the only things unique (besides niche FOSS modding) to it among smart watches; and I like the open aspect of essentially every detail. It makes it the only smart watch I've used that feels like it respects my dignity, frankly. [...] I actually got it hoping I'd have the inclination to tinker with it, but my only idea that wasn't already being worked on by the default "OS" is a red flashlight mode, which with the IPS screen is a moot point anyways, since the black pixels when turned on make for a low-light flashlight anyways, heh. [...]

it took me two weeks to get the sealed pinetime working back when it launched. for some reason it would get stuck on the initial boot screen, and it would be in a state to where I couldn't update the firmware. [...] It turned out, even with a firmware update months later applied to it, that whenever it gets rebooted, I have to do the above movement until it finally decides to boot, and it's random. [...] This was the second Pine purchase of mine, the first being the PinePhone Pro, which A) I couldn't get activated on AT&T (not Pine's fault with the 3g phase out and whitelist approach, but I digress), and when I used TMobile, I couldn't make a call with it without having audio problems or etc. Look, I wanted to support them, and the idea of less expensive open hardware/software, even if it meant rough edges, but completely non functional for even the most basic usages... I might as well just build my own and understand all of the reasons why something doesn't work instead of spending days or months getting it to do what it said it would do on the tin out of the box.

I used to use the PineTime with PineTimeOS, but mine eventually broke (corroded inside), but not having WiFi made it annoying to develop for. With WiFi suddenly you don't need to communicate regularly with a phone and the possibilities really open up.

PineTime is nice and cheap and does a little BlueTooth. [...]

[...] The anti-corporate pro-FOSS thing is just disconnected online idealism. FWIW I own a PineTime and enjoy hacking on it quite a bit but a commercial smartwatch it is not. For me that's fine as I don't use a smartwatch as a daily driver, but if I did a PineWatch would be a nonstarter. I do hope that the PineTime can drive an ecosystem of open smart watches that occupy different points in the cost, functionality, customizability, and reusability space than commercial smartwatches do, especially those that may not be profitable to tape out large runs for, but I'm also thankful for commercial product development to drive new innovative products into our hands.

Awesome work building it all from scratch! Hate to be that guy, but was using something hackable like a PineTime ( and doing a direct BLE connection to the device using the Blood Glucose Profile ( not an option? Another approach could be to hack one of those cheap fitness trackers ( I got a few off AliExpress a few years ago for $9 each. Again, not to take away anything from the amazing accomplishment to build a device from scratch, but if anyone else wants to try making one, maybe they could start with less of a steep learning curve.

Can confirm, I regularly get about 9 days of charge on my PineTime, running the latest PineTimeOS release. Its gotten better and better over the years, and the functionality keeps coming ..

[...] As much as I love my PineTime watch, its getting a little long in the tooth and I'd love to see some upgrades to it, hardware-wise.. That said, there are a lot of other open-source watches in the pipeline that could use a bit of motivation to update their designs .. [...]

[...] Before the Pebbles came back and PebbleOS open-sourced, the only real open smartwatch option we had around that I'm aware of is the PineTime, which I currently wear every day rocking Infinitime. Will be fun to pick up one of these again and be able to hop back and forth between it and the PineTime! [...]

I get some of this (have an unused Pinephone), but I'm still thankful they tried (built up a stir) and, FWIW, the PineTime is OK and the Pinecil is the best soldering iron I've seen anyone use

I got a PineTime and it's the second best smartwatch I've ever used lol. It's like wearing a microcontroller on your wrist

The watch can’t hold this whole image in memory at once; it has to stream it from the file system. I really do wish the pinetime had more RAM; it's really really small and a pretty painful bottleneck. Edit: Oh, once the "pro" version is out I guess there's an easy answer to that:

[...] I've only ever used it for upgrading Pinetime firmware iirc That makes this a seriously good option, I was looking for this a while ago but didn't find anything besides Pinetime, so I ordered a Pinetime and found out the heartbeat sensor is about as accurate on my wrist as tarot cards (I know it works for a few people, but most seemed to have the same issue). [...]

I really would love a way to connect the PineTime open source smartwatch, through bluetooth, to AI models running from my phone. That would be EPIC. PineTime AI Smartwatch Tech

[...] I bought a PineTime as a sort of replacement for my Pebble Time about 18 months ago. [...]

Watches are cool, I wish I was a watch person but I am not. Pinetime for example seemed neat. edit: there is one use case I'm considering it's for sleep tracking since my ideal life I sleep whenever and it seems my ideal operating mode is to be slightly sleep deprived (about 5 hours each night) so it knows when I fell asleep and sets a 5hr timer from there.

If you dislike both Apple and Google, then I wonder, with your skills, why you didn't consider using and improving PineTime with a GNU/Linux phone (Pinephone or Librem 5).

Battery size and battery time are the primary constraints for a wrist watch. The power efficiency of a SoC that runs full blown Debian, as well as Debian itself is much worse than the NRF52 used in PineTime. [...] With corresponding increase in battery size or decrease in battery time. [...]

All I want is a simple watch with simple features that doesn't require charging every day. Have a look at Pinetime. It won't be discontinued, since it's an open-source smart watch.

Recent WearOS watches fail the first point. Pebble Time and PineTime fail the 3rd, but otherwise seeem okay Garmin fails 1. Apple fails 1, won't even talk to my phone, and is ugly as shit

[...] I learned a lot reading your article and I don't think that using a PineTime as a base would have been nearly as cool

I get some of this (have an unused Pinephone), but I'm still thankful they tried (built up a stir) and, FWIW, the PineTime is OK and the Pinecil is the best soldering iron I've seen anyone use Surprised to see someone else echo my thoughts exactly, this is exactly what I've been saying for some years now whenever someone asks about buying Pine products. The PineTime is pretty decent (though the strap included OOTB is atrocious) and the pinecil is honestly awesome. The PinePhone is of course a disappointment, though that's par for the course for most of Pine64's stuff.

There's a reason wrist watches largely displaced pocket watches, and as far as telling the time goes, a phone is basically a pocket watch. I would like a fitness monitoring watch, and used a PineTime for it for a while. But having a completely bulletproof timepiece is more important, and a retro Casio fulfills that need in spades.