On device only, no play store, with GrapheneOS.

I am thinking about a Garmin watch and using it with Pulse. My cardio is really bad and it has been starting to cause all sorts of health issues, so I need something to track my heart rate while I go on walks to build my stamina back up so I can start actually working out.

  • Oooo interesting, I never heard of pulse before.

    I have a garmin watch and also use graphene, I have tried to switch over to gadgetbridge to keep my data on my device alone but for some reason my model of watch (forerunner 245) stops syncing with gadgetbridge after between 1 and 6 activities resulting in me having to basically delete everything and start again to force it to sync which means it may as well not work with gadgetbridge.

    I’d recommend checking out the list of supported devices and maybe try going for one that is fully supported in gadgetbridge, I believe mine is listed as mostly functioning as all the functions do work. Just not for long.

    I think I may try out this pulse though and see if it works any better!

    If you only want to monitor your stats in real time though you could choose any garmin watch really but equally garmin lock a lot of the customisation behind a shitty play store app these days so what you get out of the box is what you are stuck with in terms of data screen and stuff if you dont want to touch the play store

    • Try different combinations of these settings in the device settings in Gadgetbridge:

      There’s a chance that certain combination will make it work for you.

      In terms of customization, you can download .prg files with watchfaces directly (some opensource watchfaces on Github publish them as releases, while others can be compiled from source using Garmin SDK), and then upload them directly to the watch via Gadgetbridge. This will work without Garmin store.

  • I got a new Motorola phone when they were giving away the moto369 along with a couple of tags.

    I gave the watch to my kid. I got two phones, one for me and one for my lady. The second watch sits unused at my desk. Why? Because the 360 is compatible with basically nothing and has no open-source version of the software that I can install on it. I don’t want to share any of my data with them. So here we are. New phone and a couple of paperweights.