Last year, we’ve featured a super cheap smart ring – BLE, accelerometer, heart sensor, and a battery, all in a tiny package that fits on your finger. Back when we covered it, we expected either reverse-engineering of stock firmware, or development of a custom firmware outright. Now, you might be overjoyed to learn that [Wesley Ellis] has written a Python client for the ring’s stock firmware.
Thanks to lack of any encryption whatsoever, you can simply collect the data from your ring, no pairing necessary, and [Wesley]’s work takes care of the tricky bits. So, if you want to start collecting data from this ring right now, integrate it into anything you want, such as your smart home or exoskeleton project, this client is enough. A few firmware secrets remain – for instance, the specific way that the ring keep track of day phases, or SPO2 intricacies. But there’s certainly enough here for you to get started with.
This program will work as long as your ring uses the QRing app – should be easy to check right in the store listing. Want to pick up the mantle and crack open the few remaining secrets? Everything is open-source, and there’s a notepad that follows the OG reverse-engineering journey, too. If you need a reminder on what this ring is cool for, here’s our original article on it.
Interested. The ring is a good form factor for something like this for someone who already wears a watch pretty much 24/7
What we need now is someone to write a simple customizable open source app so we don’t have to use a questionable and buggy chinese app that could, at any time, be updated to spy on you.
A big thank you to everyone who’s worked on reverse engineering these rings! It’s much appreciated!
You will be happy to learn about gadgetbridge (which partially support this ring !)
https://gadgetbridge.org/
Hey Chris! I am using the nightly version of Gadgetbridge and it works out of the box! Feel free to test it (https://gadgetbridge.org/)
Thanks everyone! I’ll check it out!
Bumped into one today. Already tested with my cheap colmi ring. works well so far. https://gadgetbridge.org/
And what makes you think this open source app is Russian? The fact that Codeberg is German? Not that it matters in the slightest, ’cause, you know, open source.
Nice to see it being further Reversed!
Make sure to also check out the newer Ring with an LED Segment display inside for just a little more money
https://youtu.be/xOw-6uMfOjc
That looks like it has some much more potential… although I still can’t think of anything genuinely useful to do with it.
Autopost to social media whenever the user flips someone off.
e.g. HaHa flipped off a tourdefrog LARPing cyclist on Watt Ave near PitStop BBQ at 12.52.12.55 local time.
Needs camera.
OK not useful per se.
air enough.
The flipoff cam though.
Always ready to go.
Instinctual way to capture vid.
Use on alt finger in Germany and other nations without freedom of speech…I digress.
While I think the work done on this is plenty cool, hackvalue indeed, I also think what about the disposable nature of these things? How long do they last? How long do electronic devices in general last, especially “smart”-anything? Sure, they are really small, so the impact is probably small.
Still.
The attitude of just throwing stuff away to get a new shiny because, hey, shiny! is problematic. I know that many of us love to extend the usable life of devices as much as we can, but with this thing a battery replacement is out of the question.
Nothing has zero cost.
e.g. How often do you replace the stick up your…?
It’s small and cheap. Live a little. Stomp that throttle.
Could this ring possibly be paired to the flipper zero so you can use it to execute things on the flipper?
“ Thanks to lack of any encryption whatsoever, you can simply collect the data from your ring, no pairing necessary”
… that sounds bad? Does that mean accelerometer and heart data freely accessible to anyone in BLE range? This kinda data you probably do want encrypted.
I feel like this really stretches the term “smart”. If it had some kind of haptic feedback, maybe. The ability to communicate with the user wearing it would make it really useful. But as it is right now, it’s just a data collection device. And I’m not convinced that the accelerometer data collected from a finger would be very useful as fingers move around so much.
Simply get two of them and compare the data between them. The relative roll of the rings especially will only change if you grab one of the rings and spin it.
I bought one of these and the newer one with the OLED display: not that impressed. I ended up giving them away. The one with the display couldn’t even be set up to rotate the display 180° so the touch sensor was continually activated, let alone something as simple as brightness levels.
The ring in the article was fine for heartbeat measurement but steps & sleep recording were completely out of whack and the software wouldn’t even allow manual corrections.
These are novelty toys and fun for a few weeks but without a decent program to control/monitor them they’re nothing more.
I would be so appreciative if someone used this cmdline tool or its underlying client library to create a HomeAssistant addon for colmi rings. We’re tantalizingly close to a world where I can control my smart house with hand gestures on a $10 ring.