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:author:
mcgillij
:category:
Linux
:date:
2021-09-22 23:33
:tags:
Linux, Opensource, Pine64, Pinetime, SmartWatch, #100DaysToOffload
:slug:
pinetime-initial-impression
:summary:
I got a Pinetime, it was sweet for about 10 minutes. Hopefully it’s sweet again in a couple weeks.
:cover_image:
pinetime.png
So I was pretty pumped earlier today, I got my
.
The delivery was during work hours, so I didn’t get to muck around with it for a bit.
I just opened the package which contained the charger and the watch. I plugged in the charger and placed the watch onto it into it’s nice little magnetic cradle and went back to work.
So now it’s got a full charge (this becomes important later)!
Works done, right on! Time to set the time on it. Which requires **sync**’ing it to a device (computer or phone). OK this is fine I guess, given that it’s only got one button on it, probably makes it a bit weird to set the time on it.
Anyways, so I search around to find what will allow me to **sync** my phone to it. Finding
, it’s not actually in the Google play store but instead in the
repositories. So I snag the F-Droid APK and install it on my phone, and then use that to snag GadgetBridge.
Everything’s fine at this point, I pair my Pinetime to my Pixel2 in hopes to have the time set on it.
Now wanting to check if the time has been sync’ed properly on the watch, I press the 1 button on it in hopes to turn on the screen and … *nothing*.
OK, mash it a couple other times to see if anything happens… nope. I can see I faint grey outline / backlight shining through, so maybe it crashed or something in the process of syncing. One short google after, and I find out how to reset it (holding “the” button down for 10 seconds should reset the device).
However there seems to be a bug where if you reset the phone while it’s in sleep mode, it’s basically **fubared**, till the battery runs out (or you open it up by damaging it to manually reset the CPU, since I didn’t get a devkit version just the regular sealed version).
So it takes approximately 2 weeks for the battery to kill itself… So now we wait.
Seems great for 30$ you can’t go wrong, the straps are kinda cheap, but I’ll snag a replacement assuming the watch eventually powers up again.
I’m not sure I haven’t actually gotten it to do anything yet other than power on initially with the wrong time, and then brick itself.
Hopefully I have some more positive things to say in a couple weeks. I’ll make sure to update here, since it’s a product I’d like to like… Cheap and open source watch, are my wheelhouse but I just wish it worked lol…