AsteroidOS 2.0 is here with a massive load of new features and support for many more watches.

Thank you to all contributors who made it possible!

Watch the visual demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6FiQz0yACc

Read the announcement: https://asteroidos.org/news/2-0-release/

Enjoy the wrist-sized Linux ride!

If it doesn’t support .beat time, I don’t care!

(Just kidding, always happy to see Linux in more places. But I do want my metric time.)

I seem to have a tendency, a skill, a knack to choose and buy that specific hardware model that is not supported by these cool open source projects.

Same thing happened with PostmarketOS, I have a box full of old phones that are specifically not supported.

It's a really shitty superpower.

Excellent! I think I still have my fossil Gen 5.

Nah, it is pretty much if you didn't buy one of 2 trendy models of the year, then nothing else has ever or will ever be supported (of course you can always write your own drivers but it is a ton of work, especially for non-coders)

I have a thought that a lot of the enthusiasts that go through the pain and effoet of writing all of these drivers for old phones they have were usually the kind of people to buy the best/most popular device of the year

I would think Linux would be way too heavy for these watches. A lot of them use pretty lean MCUs, a far cry from the beefy Qualcomm phone chips that Post market runs on.

Even running zephyr on the NRF52840 can get heavy with adding a bunch of apps to it.

Nah, it's not "too heavy" the linux kernel is running on all kinds of tiny processors.

My limited understanding is, that usually the problem is a lack of support and assistance from the hardware manufacturer to optimise the OS for their hardware.

This is why GrapheneOS and similar have poorer performance on phones et cetera.

Looking at the list of supported watches, there are only 2 with 5 star support and they seem quite old / obscure. I couldn't find any to buy second hand anyway.

I mean, look at the specs of a smart TV or smart fridge. The specs on them are shit and they run Linux.

Hell there are whole distros designed to run on minimal as fuck hardware.

Generally correct, but,

GrapheneOS and similar have poorer performance on phones

FWIW my gOS gets 40-50% more battery, likely due to lack of parasitic (see what I did there?) google services.

Bro, god damn. I have two Samsung watches and neither is supported 🤦🏽. They’re both older, too.

I wish these guys luck.

I like the idea of a smartwatch, but I'm not accepting the Faustian bargain required to wear them. I can see my heart rate as long as Google can see my hearrate? No thanks, pass.

I only want Garmin support T.T

If I'm not mistaken, some of the higher-end models from Polar and (maybe?) Garmin work independently of a smartphone.

Let me first congratulate the devs on this milestone. Not many niche projects with small appeal last this long but this is impressive. Now, if they can get this working on Garmin and Polar watches the ball will really start rolling.

AsteroidOS mostly supports watches that come stock with Wear OS, which is a modified version of Android, which, guess what, runs a Linux kernel. These watches are on the more powerful end of the computing spectrum. As you say, there are a lot of smart watches that use pretty lean MCUs, but those aren't running AsteroidOS or Wear OS, as noted in this FAQ entry.

we share the same superpower.

point it however, that is the nature of open source projects, just up to yourself willing to sacrifice time and hardware to test and integrate on your device.

I fully agree with you in wanting to keep your health telemetry private. I too baulked at smart watches for the same reasons. I hate the idea of such info being collected by any company.

I've found GadgetBridge paired with a cheap smartwatch to be a good solution for me. It let's you keep your telemetry local and provides a GUI for the info I want: steps, heart rate, activity, sleep, etc.

It sounds like they have some support for AsteroidOS already too. They also claim "As of the next Gadgetbridge release, it should have full support for AsteroidOS, and feature-parity with AsteroidOSSync."

Maybe not a good example because all TVs and Smart fridges run MCUs (or SBUs) that are 10x-20x more powerful than what is in any smart watch besides the apple watch (where the watch is mostly one gigantic custom IC).

They usually run NXP I.MX Arm M7 processors at the bare bare bare minimum, much more common is an ARM A7 or higher which is a completely different world than the tiny nrf52840 with 192KB of RAM and 1MB of flash that is standard across lower-end smart watches (and doesn't go upuch with higher end) That is why I was confused. But I guess people get down voted to hell for asking a question lol

lol no, these smart watches are powerful as older smartphones, their stock os is already android/linux based.

Can attest: Gadget Bridge with my PineTime is LEGIT.

Really curious if there's an upgraded watch experience though. This AsteroidOS sounds pretty neat. I miss those "pebble" watches.

I miss those "pebble" watches.

Great news for ya.

Oh that's so COO-(FLASHBANG LIGHT AND PINGING SOUND) - why'd it have to be a white webpage lmao. X_X A sign I should be sleeping lol.

Seriously this is awesome though, thanks for sharing this! Sounds like it could be a great upgrade from the PineTime some time. That was unexpectedly exciting!

Yup. I use a Garmin Fenix 6 Pro and I did not connect it to Garmin Connnect (which is basically just a frontend for all the data that i collected on Garmin’s servers).

You don’t get as much history on your watch but it still works perfectly fine. I don’t have notifications on my watch because I don’t want to so can’t attest to that. But otherwise works great.

👀👀 uh? Do tell me more!

Wonder if they could work with an OEM to release a smartwatch with the OS. Chinese manufacturers have shown willingness to release open source based printers. Why not a smartwatch?

Maybe you should add a small sentence what AsteroidOS is about. I can guess it from the pic, but not everyone sees that.

Can it track my sleep?

OK, looked at the questions, wondered myself.

Limited support, you can track health/sleep if you tie in gadgetbridge, no voice commands.

base features:

Agenda
Alarm clock
Calculator
Music controller
Settings
Stopwatch
Timer
Weather app
Up to 48 hours of battery

AsteroidOS 2.0 features:

Always‑on display
Tilt‑to‑Wake
Customizable QuickPanel
Multiple launcher styles
Nightstand mode
Performance improvements
Support for ~30 devices

https://asteroidos.org/
https://gadgetbridge.org/ (with active development for asteroid)

Not yet it seems. Also looks like it doesn't have a pedometer function. Hopefully a future version will add those, along with some way of downloading that data

I'd love to, but I have committed all my free time (all 120 minutes per week, it feels) to a project I started years ago and I need to finish.

Just stare unblinking at a clock. When it suddenly jumps forwards several hours subtract the difference. Easy.

Doesn't work when crossing time zones or during daylight savings transitions.

Very interesting. I would love a way to use contactless payment.

Garmin vivo would be a great line to crack too.

This is all magic to me, but I getting contactleee payments on this and some form of music maps car projection from a linux phone and I would be all it.

Is there a collection of these projects? I have the world of old devices I woulf love to see if there are projects associated with them.

Thanks for the tip, but I do need daylight savings and timezone crossing to work. I did already consider dedicating a room in my house to nothing but a chair, a wall clock and a calculator.

I’d also love to see activity tracking too.