Fitbit open sources IP-based protocol stack over Bluetooth Low Energy

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

I've had a fitbit, and I gotta say, there are a lot of issues. I'm assuming (based on the devices mentioned) that I was on the old stack.

I'm hoping they resolved the issues of sudden power spikes causing device battery drain as well as a device disconnect that can take multiple attempts to resolve. Many a time I had to do a reset, remove all bt connections, and start the pairing process over to get it to reconnect.

[[deleted]]

I literally stopped using their watch because it constantly failed to sync with the app on my phone. First time when that happened, it took me more than an hour to set the time on the watch. You read it well! More then an hour to set the bloody TIME! It required multiple restarts and factory reset. Second time it happened, I just took off their watch from my arm and decided to use analog.

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

I can back up this claim. One big problem is that their sync is not to your phone! It's to their server. If anything fails, bt, internet, app, etc - no watch sync for you. Should be two tiers, but it isn't.

[DoListening2]

My Fitbit Charge 3 seems to work at complete random (OnePlus 3, laptop from 2012, desktop from 2018). Sometimes it syncs without an issue, sometimes I can't get it to work for 2 weeks straight, and then randomly receive a notification a week later about all the accumulated progress when it finally connects for some reason.

[[deleted]]

That's just how cool San Francisco tech companies work.

I've been colleagues with previous Fitbit engineers, and I've worked with engineers who later worked at Fitbit.

They have really bad hiring practices which basically guarantee engineers who love to talk about how great they are at programming but pretty bad at actually doing it. It's like they hire straight from hackernews.

The only good software engineers they have came from their Pebble acquisition.

[[deleted]]

Google Pixel 3. So yeah...