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BIG Warning to anyone thinking about purchasing one of these You cannot connect the watch to Bluetooth without a proprietary app, and that proprietary app will

by wpm 2mo ago

BIG Warning to anyone thinking about purchasing one of these You cannot connect the watch to Bluetooth without a proprietary app, and that proprietary app will not let you use the Bluetooth feature without some bullshit called a "CASIO Account". Their privacy policy is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser too. The absolute state of things.

jp0d 2mo ago
Isn't that common across all watches that connect to your phone these days? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Edit: Also, not saying it's a good thing.
- diydsp 2mo ago
  My bathroom scale requires gps access via my phone if I want to log data to it...
  - jp0d 2mo ago
    yeah that's not good! That's why I don't want to buy a "smart" fridge or any of these appliances that require Wifi access.
  - Gigachad 2mo ago
    From my understanding, apps need location permissions if they want to scan for available bluetooth devices rather than having the user pair in the bluetooth settings app. The reason being that advertisers set up bluetooth beacons all over the place and used passive scanning in apps to collect the users location. What's not clear to me is why they really need to be able to scan for bluetooth. Surely requesting location permissions is worse UX than having the user go to the settings app to pair.
    - kube-system 2mo ago
      The lowest common denominator user is more afraid of visiting the settings menu than they are of clicking allow on just about any permissions popup.
      - Gigachad 2mo ago
        [dead]
- Bud 2mo ago
  [dead]
00deadbeef 2mo ago
ffs all it needed to do was talk to Apple Health and I’d have bought it.
- compounding_it 2mo ago
  from a financial perspective they would assume one persons data is worth maybe 50$ a year (a random number) on top of maybe another 50$ in subscriptions they can sell. Assuming most such products service the business for up to 3 years, you are looking at an additional 300$ upfront that the business loses giving the data away to someone like Apple. Also the value gain from purely having such a business of subscriptions and data collection is probably another 100$ per customer. Thats close to 500$ for that thing. Someone like Casio could just sell it for 500$ and collect their future cashflows right away. However, the customer turnout might be significantly less than 55$ they are selling it for. So the only way to sell it for profit is to keep the data and make a subscription (which may or may not exist yet for Casio).
  - 00deadbeef 2mo ago
    They could just sell it at an honest price with an honest profit. It’s an upsell from cheap F91Ws so they could have made more money just by selling me a thing that reads from Apple Health. It doesn’t even need to track steps itself. I also disagree my email address and step data is worth $450 to them. Let’s be honest. This thing is not innovative. It’s going to be using cheap commodity chips. Its selling point is nostalgia. I find it hard to believe it’s not already profitable at $55.
Ductapemaster 2mo ago
While I empathize with your feelings about lock-in, I encourage you to see that we live in an amazingly empowering era. I would wager that with $20 in credits for the LLM flavor of the week and and an equally expensive BLE-to-USB dongle (try the nRF52840 dongle), you will have the protocol reverse-engineered overnight. BLE protocols are often very low-hanging fruit for this type of effort. Yes, it's annoying this stuff isn't open source from the get-go, but it has never been easier to open hardware up for yourself and others.
- richstokes 2mo ago
  Having the LLM run the proprietary app through ghidra (which I think even has an MCP now), would likely give it some useful clues too
- gregsadetsky 2mo ago
  +1000. There should be bounties for open sourcing drivers/apps like these and generally making 'clean'/better interfaces to hardware devices, now that it's so much easier. Claude Code reverse engineered cheap (Android only) usb and wifi endoscopes here, wrote/flashed/hardware-in-the-loop developed python+arduino libraries, etc. It's a completely new world. @wpm, happy to fund the nRF52840 dongle if you want to try this + release code!
  - jbit 2mo ago
    Have you released your reverse engineered endoscope camera work? It's something I've been thinking about doing myself, since the vendor apps leave a lot to be desired.
    - gregsadetsky 2mo ago
      Yes! https://pypi.org/project/supercamera/ https://pypi.org/project/supercamera/ Feel free to contribute [0], let me know if it works with the cameras you have or not, etc.! Cheers [0] https://github.com/Revise-Robotics/supercamera-endoscope https://github.com/Revise-Robotics/supercamera-endoscope
  - 2mo ago
ff00 2mo ago
There is an Fdroid app "Casio G-Shock Smart Sync" Not sure if it supports now but most likely may support in future. This is an unofficial app for Casio G-Shock, Edifice, and Pro Trek watches. It allows you to control your watch, sync data, and configure settings without a Casio ID. It offers a faster, privacy-focused, and more powerful alternative to the official Casio app. Key Features check ------------------ - No Account Required: Skip the Casio ID login entirely. From https://fdroid.gitlab.io/jekyll-fdroid/packages/org.avmedia.gshockGoogleSync/ https://fdroid.gitlab.io/jekyll-fdroid/packages/org.avmedia....
buccal 2mo ago
While Casio app may be despicable, in Android world have a look at https://gadgetbridge.org/ https://gadgetbridge.org/. Gadgetbridge is open source provides a lot of "drivers" for different BT devices from Casio, Sony, Pebble, Garmin to Xiaomi and allows to live without monstrous in size and tracking proprietary apps.
nout 2mo ago
If the watch gets any popular, it will take at most weeks for someone to vibecode open source app for this.
bux93 2mo ago
I complained to the relevant GDPR authority (German) and never heard back. It's blatantly illegal - overprocessing of PII - to require registration for connecting two devices owned by the same person, in the same room. There's no fathomable necessary or legitimate use.

by wpm 2mo ago

jp0d 2mo ago

Isn't that common across all watches that connect to your phone these days? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Edit: Also, not saying it's a good thing.

diydsp 2mo ago
My bathroom scale requires gps access via my phone if I want to log data to it...
- jp0d 2mo ago
  yeah that's not good! That's why I don't want to buy a "smart" fridge or any of these appliances that require Wifi access.
- Gigachad 2mo ago
  From my understanding, apps need location permissions if they want to scan for available bluetooth devices rather than having the user pair in the bluetooth settings app. The reason being that advertisers set up bluetooth beacons all over the place and used passive scanning in apps to collect the users location. What's not clear to me is why they really need to be able to scan for bluetooth. Surely requesting location permissions is worse UX than having the user go to the settings app to pair.
  - kube-system 2mo ago
    The lowest common denominator user is more afraid of visiting the settings menu than they are of clicking allow on just about any permissions popup.
    - Gigachad 2mo ago
      [dead]
Bud 2mo ago
[dead]

00deadbeef 2mo ago

ffs all it needed to do was talk to Apple Health and I’d have bought it.

compounding_it 2mo ago
from a financial perspective they would assume one persons data is worth maybe 50$ a year (a random number) on top of maybe another 50$ in subscriptions they can sell. Assuming most such products service the business for up to 3 years, you are looking at an additional 300$ upfront that the business loses giving the data away to someone like Apple. Also the value gain from purely having such a business of subscriptions and data collection is probably another 100$ per customer. Thats close to 500$ for that thing. Someone like Casio could just sell it for 500$ and collect their future cashflows right away. However, the customer turnout might be significantly less than 55$ they are selling it for. So the only way to sell it for profit is to keep the data and make a subscription (which may or may not exist yet for Casio).
- 00deadbeef 2mo ago
  They could just sell it at an honest price with an honest profit. It’s an upsell from cheap F91Ws so they could have made more money just by selling me a thing that reads from Apple Health. It doesn’t even need to track steps itself. I also disagree my email address and step data is worth $450 to them. Let’s be honest. This thing is not innovative. It’s going to be using cheap commodity chips. Its selling point is nostalgia. I find it hard to believe it’s not already profitable at $55.

Ductapemaster 2mo ago

While I empathize with your feelings about lock-in, I encourage you to see that we live in an amazingly empowering era. I would wager that with $20 in credits for the LLM flavor of the week and and an equally expensive BLE-to-USB dongle (try the nRF52840 dongle), you will have the protocol reverse-engineered overnight. BLE protocols are often very low-hanging fruit for this type of effort. Yes, it's annoying this stuff isn't open source from the get-go, but it has never been easier to open hardware up for yourself and others.

richstokes 2mo ago
Having the LLM run the proprietary app through ghidra (which I think even has an MCP now), would likely give it some useful clues too
gregsadetsky 2mo ago
+1000. There should be bounties for open sourcing drivers/apps like these and generally making 'clean'/better interfaces to hardware devices, now that it's so much easier. Claude Code reverse engineered cheap (Android only) usb and wifi endoscopes here, wrote/flashed/hardware-in-the-loop developed python+arduino libraries, etc. It's a completely new world. @wpm, happy to fund the nRF52840 dongle if you want to try this + release code!
- jbit 2mo ago
  Have you released your reverse engineered endoscope camera work? It's something I've been thinking about doing myself, since the vendor apps leave a lot to be desired.
  - gregsadetsky 2mo ago
    Yes! https://pypi.org/project/supercamera/ https://pypi.org/project/supercamera/ Feel free to contribute [0], let me know if it works with the cameras you have or not, etc.! Cheers [0] https://github.com/Revise-Robotics/supercamera-endoscope https://github.com/Revise-Robotics/supercamera-endoscope
- 2mo ago

ff00 2mo ago

There is an Fdroid app "Casio G-Shock Smart Sync" Not sure if it supports now but most likely may support in future. This is an unofficial app for Casio G-Shock, Edifice, and Pro Trek watches. It allows you to control your watch, sync data, and configure settings without a Casio ID. It offers a faster, privacy-focused, and more powerful alternative to the official Casio app. Key Features check ------------------ - No Account Required: Skip the Casio ID login entirely. From https://fdroid.gitlab.io/jekyll-fdroid/packages/org.avmedia.gshockGoogleSync/ https://fdroid.gitlab.io/jekyll-fdroid/packages/org.avmedia....

buccal 2mo ago

While Casio app may be despicable, in Android world have a look at https://gadgetbridge.org/ https://gadgetbridge.org/. Gadgetbridge is open source provides a lot of "drivers" for different BT devices from Casio, Sony, Pebble, Garmin to Xiaomi and allows to live without monstrous in size and tracking proprietary apps.

nout 2mo ago

If the watch gets any popular, it will take at most weeks for someone to vibecode open source app for this.

bux93 2mo ago

I complained to the relevant GDPR authority (German) and never heard back. It's blatantly illegal - overprocessing of PII - to require registration for connecting two devices owned by the same person, in the same room. There's no fathomable necessary or legitimate use.