[HN Gopher] Python client for the $20 Colmi R02 smart ring
___________________________________________________________________
Python client for the $20 Colmi R02 smart ring
Author : tahnok
Score : 316 points
Date : 2024-10-14 01:06 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tahnok.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (tahnok.github.io)
| vosper wrote:
| I couldn't find it on the product page: any idea if this has a
| vibrating alarm? I'm in the market for something to wake me up
| without disturbing my partner
| flax wrote:
| it does not.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| If it doesn't vibrate that's a real shame. Ideally I would
| want it to vibrate as well as be able to detect gestures.
| That would be such a killer combo for so many things from
| golf training to turning on the mood lighting with a swish of
| your hand.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Well, they missed a huge opportunity to break into the
| discrete sex toy market, then.
| fransje26 wrote:
| For small diameter inserts..
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Wouldn't a watch do that? Ex. the
| https://pine64.com/product/pinetime-smartwatch-sealed/ is dirt
| cheap and its alarms just vibrate the watch.
| vosper wrote:
| I would prefer something less bulky (I don't wear a watch)
| but thank you for the link: that is indeed dirt cheap and
| probably worth a go.
| petemir wrote:
| I guess it depends. My partner still gets woken up by my
| (smart)watch at the lowest vibration setting.
| michaelt wrote:
| If your partner gets woken by a watch vibration actuator, I
| doubt it's possible for you to sneak out of bed without
| waking them, as your body weighs about 10,000 times as much
| as that actuator.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| I used the smallest fitbit for that. Work very well for me.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| One of these with a Java card and NFC would be cool.
| cdchn wrote:
| We've had those for 26 years
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/300495374337
| hyperific wrote:
| Only on HN could you find a gem like this. This is a bit of
| internet history.
| detaro wrote:
| I love eBay sellers:
|
| > _JAVA RING: VERY RARE!_
|
| > _More than 10 available - 1,230 sold_
| sgt wrote:
| After HN there won't be anything left.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Thank you for unlocking this core memory
| Always42 wrote:
| At a quick glance this looks cool!
|
| I just have a hard time justifying things like this when the
| apple watch + iphone work so well. But i'm sure at some point the
| apple experience will get worse and push people to other OS like
| windows is
| RamiAwar wrote:
| 20$
|
| 1200$
|
| I have an easier time justifying this
| israrkhan wrote:
| Here are few reasons that justify its existance.
|
| * Different form factor
|
| * Not tied to Apple Ecosystem.
|
| * Price
|
| * You can even use it independently (without phone).
| daghamm wrote:
| I dont understand this attitude.
|
| If this is how you feel about technology why are you not on the
| verge instead of HACKER news?
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Everyone I know that has a smart watch charges it overnight.
| How do you propose using it to track sleep?
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| Your question implies the answer; charge it at different
| times and wear it to bed?
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Remember the context of my quip is in reply to "I don't see
| the value in the ring, just buy a $1200 watch and phone
| combo and make sure you charge your watch while you're out
| living your life, not when you're asleep."
|
| Still seems pretty clear as to why someone would find value
| in the ring. Another poster says he charges his ring while
| he showers. It's that quick. I'm not knocking smart-*, just
| reacting to the dismissive "why would anyone want this"
| attitude of GP.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| Amazing work. But, What would it take to port this work to
| Gadgetbridge to make the access easier
| dingensundso wrote:
| Looks like gadgetbridge already supports it (in nightly):
| https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/pulls/3896
| https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/colmi/
| cdchn wrote:
| Wow I'm more excited to learn about Gadgetbridge than I am
| about this ring.
| Flux159 wrote:
| This looks interesting - is there a comparable ring that also has
| a temperature sensor? It would be interesting to be able to
| determine if you're sick a day or two ahead like an Oura ring or
| Apple's new Vitals app for Apple Watch using an open source app.
|
| Alternatively, does anyone know if it's possible with the sensors
| just in this ring?
| karamanolev wrote:
| From my experience, RHR, sleeping heart rate and HRV are good
| indicators of when I'm getting sick.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| would also be keen to find one with a temperature sensor, looks
| like there's nothing remotely near this price point yet?
| bhaney wrote:
| Cool. Just ordered one (from Temu, $18) even though I already
| wear an Apple Watch. Love the idea of having something I can
| interface with directly and pull realtime data from without
| having to install some middleman phone app.
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| I just did the same. I'd love to try augmenting the sleep
| tracking data from my Apple Watch with the sleep tracking data
| from this ring. A couple of months ago, I learnt from this YT
| video[1] that sleep tracking gadgets are all quite inaccurate
| compared to a proper polysomnography study. But they're all
| inaccurate in different ways.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjOYhxLJP90
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Right but if it's the same sensor you are wearing each night
| you can still learn something from the trends instead of
| relying on the raw numbers.
|
| E.g there's a definite motivation kick to drink less when I
| see what it does to my hrv and sleep trends for days
| afterwards, while I don't particularly care about the numbers
| being all that accurate.
|
| Edit: Oh and turning on afib history in your Apple Watch will
| make it record like 10x data points which also helps with
| that. Maybe
| croes wrote:
| How accurate can the data of such a smart ring be or do other
| smart ring have so high margins?
| bhaney wrote:
| From the little bit of research I just did before buying one,
| most people are reporting that compared to their more expensive
| trackers, the heart rate, accelerometer, and sleep tracking
| functionality are all pretty accurate (good sleep tracking
| being dependent on a high sampling rate, which decreases
| battery life), but the blood oxygen and "stress" reporting is
| uselessly inaccurate.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| That has also been my experience with this model. I've been
| using it for about a month now. I originally planned on
| trying to use the accelerometer data over Bluetooth to build
| a custom control input for Frame smart glasses, but I got
| busy and never got around to that. But I've been wearing it
| as a health tracker and the heart rate and sleep tracking
| seem pretty accurate relative to my Apple Watch, and the
| blood oxygen measurement is generally a couple percentage
| lower than my Apple Watch. I have no idea what the stress
| thing is even supposed to measure, it's just a random number
| that doesn't seem to have any correlation with real life and
| there's no units or explanation.
|
| I get about four days of battery life with all of the sensors
| turned up to maximum frequency, which is every 5 minutes at
| least for the heart rate. Surprisingly good for such a small
| lightweight device. I imagine it could go a lot longer if you
| turned down the sensors to a lower frequency. I found a good
| rhythm is to charge it when I take showers, that seems to be
| a good balance and it never comes close to dying. My Apple
| Watch on the other hand regularly dies before I go to bed,
| and I can't wear it for sleep tracking because it can't last
| that long.
|
| I will never understand people that pay a monthly
| subscription to access basic local sensor information like
| this. Yet I see people wearing subscription-based smart rings
| all the time. I don't get it.
| updatedprocess wrote:
| Some reviews say it's a little bulky to wear. It's that
| your experience?
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| It's a bit thicker than my normal wedding ring, but its
| also a lot lighter weight. I don't really notice the
| difference enough to mind. I suppose if you're not
| already used to wearing a ring it might take more effort
| to get used to.
|
| They come in different sizes and they don't necessarily
| correspond to standard USA ring sizes, so it takes some
| effort to measure and make sure you get the right one.
| But the effort is worth it to get a comfortable fit. And
| they are cheap enough that you can always buy multiple
| different sizes. I think I paid like $11 for mine on
| Taobao with free shipping (part of that may have been a
| discount since I was a new customer).
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It only samples heart rate every 5min? While I can't get
| disappointed over a $20 device, that really limits the
| utility of the heart rate data.
| stavros wrote:
| I tried blood oxygen and the readings were the same as my
| pulse oximeter (though it always shows 98%, so I haven't
| managed to test any other value), but my sleep reporting with
| the ring would regularly be three or four hours longer than I
| actually slept, making it useless.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| > test any other value
|
| Try this:
|
| Hyperventilate for a minute or two. Then, make a full
| exhale and hold it. You should be able to hold your breath
| for longer than you normally can and during this time you
| should see the value drop a bit. Be sure to inhale before
| you start getting dizzy or faint. (Note: do not do this
| under water)
| stavros wrote:
| Oh interesting, thank you, I'll try that.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > (Note: do not do this under water)
|
| Or while operating heavy machinery.
| Galanwe wrote:
| Is there a similar ring with NFC?
|
| I have no use for the smart health thingies, which really look
| like a data driven health gimmicks to me.
|
| NFC on the other hand I could find hundreds of applications, from
| payment to access and transport cards.
| m463 wrote:
| I think you're onto something.
|
| I would be ok with a watch too.
| hotfixguru wrote:
| A friend of a friend mods Casio watches[0] to have NFC, and
| sells them on his website.
|
| [0] https://delaveris.com/collections/nfc
| gorbypark wrote:
| They do exist, I believe. I don't have one but came across many
| for sale on AliExpress when looking for a writer to clone my
| RFID apartment door entry thingy. Seems like they even have
| some that are dual NFC/RFID that would work as regular NFC as
| well as for my apartment door (125khz).
| franga2000 wrote:
| The problem with that idea is that all secure implementations
| of RFID lock the user out, meaning you can't just buy an NFC
| ring/fob/implant and copy your bank card or transit card onto
| it. The only implementations where the user can do that are
| terribly insecure and, while still commonly used, are slowly
| getting phased out.
|
| So for anything other than systems you control or are good
| friends with the IT guy for, you're out of luck.
| Galanwe wrote:
| Right I agree with you on theory. But in practice, I already
| do clone most of my smart cards on small NFC stickers on the
| back of my phone case.
|
| The things is 99.9% of access cards (where I leave at least)
| are default-encrypted mifare classic, making cloning trivial.
| Transport cards are an other beast since they have their own
| backlog and proper encryption, but there are ways.
|
| So all in all, dumping the card is not the issue for me, it's
| the medium on which to put the clones that is still a
| question mark.
|
| The "NFC sticker on the back of the phone" is cool because
| it's almost as if your phone opens the door (stock android
| won't let me easily swap NFC SC ID), but NFC is fidgety when
| multiple chips are in close proximity, leading to frequent
| misses.
|
| I have found multi-chips NFC cards on Ali Express. These are
| basically a single antenna wired to an array of chips
| directed by a keypad. That seems viable on paper but you
| still get to carry the card and press the right switch.
|
| The ideal solution would be a smart ring with a reflashable
| NFC chip, along with a programmable MCU to implement the
| rolling logic between cards.
| stavros wrote:
| Reflashing the NFC chip on the ring is a bit of a pain (it
| takes a second, but if I have to spend a second doing it
| every day, I might as well get my keys out). Since every
| phone has an NFC chip nowadays, though, can't we use that
| to emulate all our Mifare cards?
| Galanwe wrote:
| > can't we use that to emulate all our Mifare cards?
|
| Unfortunately, no.
|
| From my experience at least, most access cards are simple
| mifare classic cards, and they have no payload: the
| reader just got a list of allowed card IDs, maintained by
| the building IT.
|
| While you can freely rewrite mifare data from Android, it
| won't let you change your ID unless you root your phone.
| I guess this is similar to the old days where you weren't
| supposed to change your MAC addresses.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Sounds interesting, which sticker are you using?
| edent wrote:
| Yes. I have the Z1 Ring.
|
| Getting secure tokens (like payment, door unlock, etc) is
| possible but can be complicated. The ring is a small target, so
| not always easy to find the received if you're using it with a
| phone.
|
| Oh, and the software is low level and finickity. I managed to
| accidentally set mine to read only mode permanently.
|
| Review at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/giving-the-finger-
| to-mfa-a-...
| stavros wrote:
| I have a suspicion this is a whitelabeled NFC ring I got from
| AliExpress for $12. That one includes a T5577 chip and a
| Mifare tag. You can read and write the Mifare tag with your
| phone, as normal, and the T5577 with a Flipper Zero or a
| Proxmark (also from Ali, $40).
|
| The NFC tag is a small target, probably because of the size
| of the antenna, but the RFID one has pretty good range. I got
| five of those rings, very much recommended if you have stuff
| to auth to.
| edent wrote:
| I think your suspicions are wrong. Those $12 rings will
| allow you to serve NDEF messages or similar. They won't do
| U2F, payment, car unlock etc.
| stavros wrote:
| It doesn't look like the Z1 does payment either, though.
| I don't know how they do U2F, but it looks like it comes
| with a custom reader, which is non-standard. I don't know
| how Tesla unlock works, so I can't say there.
| edent wrote:
| There is no custom reader. It works with standard NFC
| readers on Linux and Android.
| stavros wrote:
| Ahh interesting, thank you.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Dangerous Things (popular RFID/NFC implant makers) sell dual
| 125khz+13.56mhz clonable rings, but they're way overpriced
| ($130). I bought my "V1" back when they were still $60, and
| FWIW, if you know what you're doing, it _does_ work.
|
| I've also seen some rings on Aliexpress that purport to support
| the same capabilites, but havent personally tried them out yet.
| stavros wrote:
| I've tried the Aliexpress ones, they work fine. I have like
| five of them.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Which vendor did you buy from?
|
| When aquiantances ask me for recommendations I always tell
| them to look into Aliexpress over Dangerous Things as
| they're significantly cheaper, but I've also heard really
| mixed things about the various offerings on the site.
| stavros wrote:
| The only time I've been scammed was when I bought a 16 TB
| USB drive for $3, or a $10 mosquito bite thing that
| didn't work. Basically, if the thing sells for much
| cheaper than anywhere else, it's a scam, otherwise you're
| OK.
|
| I've bought from Ali hundreds of times, maybe thousands
| of items. The quality isn't always great (what can you
| expect for the price?), but it's very rarely scams.
|
| Stay away from microSD cards, though.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I have no use for the smart health thingies too, but instead of
| NFC I want to use it as a controller and display.
|
| Is there a ring with touch or physical buttons. A clicky wheel
| would even be better. As display I image multiple discreet RGB-
| leds, but other option could work as well.
| dsign wrote:
| The hardware is getting so cheap! But the software...
|
| I bought for $20 a bed lamp that comes with led lights, bluetooth
| receiver, clock and alarm clock, and wireless charging for my
| iphone. It has a microphone to stream all my conversations god
| knows where, though its purported purpose is to listen me sing
| and pulse the lights according to the pitch.
|
| It comes with a convenient app to set the clock and the lights.
| But due to a glitch in the software, the alarm goes off every
| night at 01:00 AM. I haven't been able to disable that via their
| official app; no real programmers were used making that thing.
| But there probably is a bug in their bluetooth stack that would
| allow me to become root of the lamp and fix it myself...if I had
| the time.
|
| I wish hardware makers for off-brand products would include a
| minimal hacking kit in their boxes.
| trojan13 wrote:
| You could try to open it (carefully, you might damage your
| precious lamp. Also please plug it out beforhand). Often times
| smart devices like these have debugging ports left on the board
| you can easily access with some clamps.
| Yenrabbit wrote:
| Or failing that, desolder the offending speaker to keep the
| rest of the functionality intact.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > its purported purpose is to listen me sing and pulse the
| lights according to the pitch
|
| I'm stunned there are enough customers with good enough pitch
| control to make that a viable market
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Hell ya, thanks for this!
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| I'm so excited to play with this. I just ordered one. I've gone
| through two Oura rings (I do not reccomend). I'm not sure this
| will be reliable but it cost me $14.00 not $300 and doesn't
| charge me monthly to access a mediocre api.
| pydry wrote:
| Oura rings do seem to have accurate tracking (unlike most smart
| watches). The data it collects and the subscription model look
| awful though.
|
| Im eagerly awaiting a ring sleep tracker like it which can be
| used offline with gadgetbridge or something.
| danielbln wrote:
| Support for this ring (Colmi R02) was added to Gadgetbridge,
| so I suppose your wait is over:
| https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/pulls/3896
| pydry wrote:
| The sleep tracker seems to be quite poor - e.g.
| misrecognizing time spent in bed as time asleep. This was
| the same problem I had before with a xiaomi. It was so
| inaccurate on all fronts I just ditched the thing.
|
| I wasnt _expecting_ the colmi to be accurate for this low
| price, but still.
|
| For gadgetbridge I dont think there are any good sleep
| trackers and the only two I know of that are genuinely
| accurate are the apple watch and oura (theres a guy who
| tests them all on youtube - this is what he found).
|
| Id happily pay extra for a decent non-apple local storage
| only fitness tracker which integrates with OSS and doesnt
| upload every heartbeat to the cloud but it does not seem to
| exist.
| tahnok wrote:
| Nice, I hadn't seen the gadgetbridge support PR before,
| will be good for a lot of people I think
| runjake wrote:
| _> Oura rings do seem to have accurate tracking (unlike most
| smart watches)._
|
| Accurate tracking of what? And which smart watches?
|
| The Apple Watch seems to generally have the most accurate
| tracking according to most studies, which surprises me.
|
| When I was looking at buying an Oura and browsing user
| subreddits, it was full of complaints about inaccurate
| readings and the slow intervals between readings.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Oura is terrible. Without their paid influencers they'd be
| in the graveyard with Pebble and other past wearable
| companies.
|
| Your Oura ring will likely get bricked by their updates
| (they'll replace it, but come on). Or you could simply have
| a busy week, forget to charge it and ban. Bricked.
|
| They of course were first to market with this form factor,
| so they of course are going to be the ones to take most of
| the flack for all the growing pains that come with that.
| This is typical with any new platform. However, they still
| leave a ton to be desired and I can't really see how
| they'll survive the next few years with all the competition
| in the space.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Rings are not a mature form factor for these
| sensors/platforms.The $50.00 huawei band 8 is much more
| accurate than the $3-400 Oura ring. Check out the Quantified
| Scientist on YouTube[0].
|
| [0]: https://m.youtube.com/@TheQuantifiedScientist
|
| While I still love the ring form factor. As tacky as it
| sounds, I still wear my bricked Oura rings sometimes just
| because I like the feel lol. However, I would never trust
| Oura ((or any other device outside of Apple(unfortunately))
| to gauge you health off their data. While Oura is
| directionally correct (like most of them), it never once
| detected low oxygen levels in my sleep and I have some of the
| worst central sleep apnea my doctor has seen.
| bg0 wrote:
| The comments referencing quantified scientists do so in a
| somewhat negative light. But it should be noted that in his
| research, he points out that the oura is one of the top
| trackers for sleep[0]. This is not the only video that he
| praises the oura for being pretty damn good based on other
| devices.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niLuR68YleI 2min41sec
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| For sleep phases and mediocre oxygen levels and bad HRV
| readings. And on his blog he says he does use it for his
| sleep tracking, so yeah. I'm not saying it's terrible but
| for sp02 I can confidently say it's terrible. I use
| actual nighttime pulse oximeters from Wellue which is
| also a (larger) ring form factor[0]. and I can see the
| large dips in O2 for example, the Oura will not detect
| this despite going into the low 80%s (very low) when my
| mask falls off.
|
| What bothers me about these sleep tracking devices is
| they are often "on the low" reccomended as ways to detect
| sleep problems like sleep apnea. This might not be done
| by the companies themselves but it is certainly done by
| influencers who are hired to promote these products. If
| someone were to buy an Oura ring because they snore (one
| of their marketing tactics) to try and see if they have
| sleep apnea there is a high chance that the app would
| tell them their oxygen levels are fine and then they'd
| never go get a sleep study (which cost less than an Oura
| ring with home kits now). Assuming this caused them to
| never follow up on that snoring again, Oura's (and other
| companies) marketing and mediocre tech would quite
| literally shaved years off this persons life.
|
| When I asked my doc if sleep apnea could kill me if left
| untreated, he responded, "It WILL kill you if we leave it
| untreated."
|
| [0]:https://getwellue.com/pages/o2ring-oxygen-monitor
|
| Edit: I do believe in 5 years Oura and other similar
| products will have figures this out. Just not yet.
| noname120 wrote:
| The Wellue is a great find, thanks a lot.
| pards wrote:
| IMHO companies should not be permitted to "sell" devices that
| require a subscription to function - that's a rental model -
| especially when there's only one service provider.
|
| Either sell the ring and include lifetime membership for free
| like Garmin [0], or _lease/rent_ the device on contract and
| charge a monthly fee. Don't do both
|
| The Oura starts at $469 CAD [1] plus $7.99 CAD per month [2].
|
| [0]: https://connect.garmin.com/
|
| [1]: https://ouraring.com/product/rings/oura-ring-4/silver
|
| [2]: https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360052018753-...
| kmlx wrote:
| oura ring does function without a subscription, but the data
| is obviously poorer.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Yeah I specifically referred to the API. Without the
| subscription their app is pretty whack and outside of that
| you can only download .csv from a link.
| RunningDroid wrote:
| > Either sell the ring and include lifetime membership for
| free like Garmin [0], or _lease/rent_ the device on contract
| and charge a monthly fee. Don't do both
|
| An example of something similar is quip1's subscription, you
| buy the toothbrush and subscribing to the refill plan gets
| you a "lifetime"2 warranty
|
| 1: getquip.com
|
| 2: lifetime of the subscription
| wjnc wrote:
| What are your thought on risk / reward (more precise:
| cashflow matching) with regards to physical products with a
| software component? I think buy (hardware) + fee (software)
| is the natural way of looking at things. Just as you pay
| separately for car maintenance.
|
| The buy-once, upgrade-years model puts too much risk on the
| developer. Which in turn results in lousy experiences for
| customers (dropped support for software, loss in value of
| hardware on the second hand market). I actually bought an
| iOS app twice because I found it crazy to be able to use
| the same EUR5-app as a baby monitor for over a decade. That
| is probably a single developer churning out features at a
| low pace, but continuously for a big part of a career.
| crusty wrote:
| Buying a car and paying for maintenance is not analogous.
| You buy the car - it works. Paying for maintenance is
| just meant to keep it working for longer. You could buy a
| car, not pay for maintenance and drive it until it
| breaks. That's very different than buying something that
| is completely non-functional without the subscription.
|
| Also, aside from some very specific and new instances,
| car maintenance has not been provided solely by the
| manufacturer or authorized dealers.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| And there's more than a 50/50 chance that if you forget to
| charge that $469 ring for a few days that it will brick.
|
| Also Oura isn't all that accurate. For anyone who is
| interested in the wearable space I HIGHLY reccomend The
| Quantified Scientist[0] on Youtube. He does his best to
| compare wearable accuracy with real medical devices or other
| proven devices.
|
| [0]: https://m.youtube.com/thequantifiedscientist
| renewiltord wrote:
| IMHO companies should not be allowed to sell anything unless
| they will provide open hardware and open software and an
| irrevocable license to use their tooling to construct more.
| stavros wrote:
| This is great! I tried to do this because I wanted to add an
| indicator of my heart rate to Slack, so people would see if I'm
| pissed off, but I could never get the data from the ring. I'm
| very curious to see how the author does it.
| daghamm wrote:
| This has the unintentional effect of people knowing when you
| fall asleep in meetings.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| Hope it stops updating after business hours!
| blutack wrote:
| From the GadgetBridge pull request[0] mentioned by dingensundso:
|
| There's a nice site with a lot of the BLE API documented
| (including commands) at https://colmi.puxtril.com/
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41834048
| fulafel wrote:
| So you just scan for devices and then read? There's no
| authorization involved, these just publish the readings
| wirelessly for all interested?
| wongarsu wrote:
| The ring has a very minimal interface. Apart from the sensors -
| an accelerometer to count steps and two LEDs with photodiode to
| get heart rate and blood oxygen - there is one status LED on
| the inside to indicating charging. That's it. The ring is a
| pure data collection device that basically can't be interacted
| with without the app.
|
| Maybe they could have required you to hit the ring on a surface
| to initiate pairing mode. But as it stands the ring will pair
| with any device that asks for it.
|
| I'm looking forward to someone making a custom firmware for
| these rings. There is some work in the linked ATC_RF03 project,
| but I'm not sure if anyone is still working on it
| tahnok wrote:
| I started looking at this last night [1] since there's an
| open SDK available (called SDK3) [2] but it seems like keil
| is involved in compiling it and I'm out of my depth when it
| comes to embedded stuff at the moment
|
| 1. https://notes.tahnok.ca/blog/Smart+Ring+Reversing/2024-10-
| 13... 2. https://gitee.com/BXMicro/SDK3
| michaelt wrote:
| The basically-no-authorisation arrangement is somewhat common
| for modern bluetooth devices.
|
| It's problematic for things like keyboards used for entering
| passwords - but if my next door neighbour wants to snoop on my
| living room thermometer or someone wants to snoop on my heart
| rate strap as I jog past their house? It doesn't seem to be
| much of a problem, in practice.
|
| In the bad old days of bluetooth, loads of devices without
| screens would just hard code the pairing code to 000000 anyway.
| So it wasn't adding much security anyway. Unlike internet-
| connected devices, it's not exposed to a billion griefers from
| around the globe at any given moment.
| fulafel wrote:
| Ongoing read of your neighbours, roommates, co-workers etc
| health data from a distance including recent history is
| getting your hands on sensitive personal data in addition to
| health data. You can tell what they are doing, getting drunk
| or having sex etc.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| ... doesn't the app set an encryption key after they pair?
|
| The most similar device I've worked on is the various Oculus
| devices. Which will also accept bluetooth connections from
| absolutely everyone, but the first time you connect you store
| an encryption key that is used to secure all subsequent
| comms.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If it did that then losing your phone, deleting the app's
| storage or moving to a different phone without transferring
| the app's storage would brick the smart ring.
|
| Oculus decides are pretty big, I assume they have buttons
| that allow you to recover from that. This ring doesn't.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I mean, they have at least one button to trigger a
| factory reset, yeah.
|
| Even most input-less smart devices have a way to do that
| though - like those ridiculous smartlight bulbs where you
| have to flick the light switch on and off in morse code
| to trigger the factory reset
| anotheryou wrote:
| It doesn't support raw accelerometer data yet, right? That would
| be the only deliberate input method, which would be fun.
| ModernMech wrote:
| How is battery life with Python compared to C?
| rkwz wrote:
| How safe are these cheap devices? Should one be concerned about
| battery exploding? Found some threads about this happening to
| Oura rings:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ouraring/comments/s1fave/ring_batte...
| tahnok wrote:
| I'm not very concerned, the battery is extremely small and I
| think it's potted in resin so it's not likely to get damaged
| ck2 wrote:
| imagine showing a tiny ring with 200k of ram and half a meg of
| flash, bluetooth and all those sensors for $20 to someone just 10
| years ago
|
| https://hackaday.com/2024/06/16/new-part-day-a-hackable-smar...
| dyeje wrote:
| Is there an official client?
| navanchauhan wrote:
| QRing
| vitorbaptistaa wrote:
| Does anyone know if any of these rings' accelerometers are
| precise enough to detect falls? I am thinking of elderly patients
| who refuse to use smartwatches or any "old-person-looking"
| devices.
| z3ugma wrote:
| Lots of good additional hacking at
| https://github.com/atc1441/ATC_RF03_Ring/issues/13
|
| for what it's worth @tahnok I do this kind of (reverse)
| engineering of BLE for medical-grade devices for my day job, I'm
| keen to hack on this with y'all!
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