Sunday, May 3, 2020

List of smart watches, bands, weighting scales and wearable devices that can be linked with Huawei Health

Huawei Health is an integrated mobile application for health management, physical activity journaling, professional exercise coaching and wearable device management. It is available for free download in Google Play Store, Apple App Store and also Huawei App Gallery.

 

Although Huawei Health can work as a standalone mobile app in the smart phone, its power is only unleashed when it is wirelessly paired with smart watch, smart band, weighting scale and/or other wearable devices with Bluetooth.

Huawei Health has a pedometer which can intelligently takes your step counts collected from the handphone and also from all the connected devices, and display the composite result.

It can display the total distance travelled by your body from combined activities of walking, running, climbing and other. It can also display the amount of calories burned from such activities. It can even display the height climbed by your body from the composite data recorded through the barometer in your smartphone and connected wearable devices.

It also provides dashboard for heart rate records, SpO2 blood oxygen saturation measurement, sleep quality analysis, stress level analysis, weight measurement, exercise records, and even menstrual cycle tracking for women (by using data from another mobile app called Huawei Cycle Calendar).

Huawei Health is also a wearable device management center for paired devices. You can use it to upload and change watch faces, upload and manage music in the wearable, configure device settings, and even perform firmware update to the wearable.

Currently, the list of officially supported devices that can work with Huawei Health are as below. Devices not in the list are not yet fully tested by Huawei for their compatibility with Huawei Health, which you can still try your luck to find out if their can successfully paired with Huawei Health without much problem.

Huawei Health supported smart watches:
  • Huawei Watch GT 2 (both 46mm and 42mm)
  • Huawei Watch GT 2e
  • Huawei Watch GT (both 46mm and 42mm)
  • Huawei Watch 2
  • Huawei Porsche Design Watch
  • Huawei Fit
  • Honor MagicWatch 2
  • Honor Watch Magic/Dream

Huawei Health supported smart bands:
  • Huawei Band 4 / 4 Pro
  • Huawei Band 4e
  • Huawei Band 3 / 3 Pro
  • Huawei Bend 3e
  • Huawei Band 2 / 2 Pro
  • Huawei TalkBand B5 / B5 Lite
  • Huawei TalkBand B3
  • Huawei Color Band A2
  • Honor Band 5i
  • Honor Band 5 / 5 Sport
  • Honor Band 4 / 4 Running Edition
  • Honor Band 3

Huawei Health supported weighting scales:
  • Huawei Body Fat Scale
  • Honor Scale 2
  • Honor Smart Scale
  • PICOOC S1 Pro Body Fat Scale

Huawei Health supported heart rate monitors:
  • Jabra Sport Pulse Wireless Headphones
  • Suunto Smart Belt Heart Rate Strap
  • Polar H7 Heart Rate Chest Strap

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

My Tx8 3.5mm AUX to Bluetooth 5.0 converter for audio transmitting / receiving

My Ruizu X02 MP3 player is without Bluetooth output function, and I think it would be good to add Bluetooth function to it, so that it can output audio to wireless earbuds, Bluetooth speaker, soundbar, etc.

There are cheap AUX to Bluetooth converters available, some even priced below RM20. Based on their product description and customer review, the follow shortcomings are quite common to them:

  • Single function of either Bluetooth receiving or transmitting only.
  • Poor and short distance connection.
  • Sound is lagging behind due to low transmission rate.
  • Battery only works for short hours before recharging needed.
  • Product quality not so good with high faulty rate after some times of use.
Anyhow, I managed to find this Tx8 2-in-1 Bluetooth transmitter and receiver, at the cost of below RM30, with the following features:
  • Supports Bluetooth 5.0 for better audio data transmission quality.
  • Can work for 8-12 hours before battery recharge is needed.
  • Transmission distance exceeding 33 feet.
  • Able to remember the paired devices.

It is very compact in size, easy to carry along. It even has a fixed folder design. It comes with USB charging cable, AUX cable, RCA cable, and a user manual.


I have purposely put my Logitech M590 mouse beside to give a better idea about its size.

By connecting the Tx8 with cable to the audio output of MP3 player, computer, handphone, tablet, TV, and any other devices with AUX audio output port, the Tx8 can transmit the audio wirelessly through Bluetooth connection to wireless earbuds, speaker, sound bar, Hi-Fi system, car audio system, etc.

On the other hand, by connecting the Tx8 with cable to the audio input of a speaker, radio, sound bar, and any other audio devices with AUX or RCA input, the Tx8 can receive the audio wirelessly through Bluetooth connection from handphone, tablet, computer, TV, media player, smart watch, etc.

The Bluetooth pairing is pretty fast, and the connection is pretty stable.

If you are looking for similar gadget with an affordable price, you can consider this one.

Saturday, April 18, 2020

Raspberry Pi - fully working computer at the cost of RM300++ (best for home use during and beyond MCO period)

During current Movement Control Order (MCO) period, there are quite a lot of schools have resorted into online teaching and learning mechanism. There are also quite a lot of companies practicing work-from-home (WFH) concept.

However, this raised a question: what if the family does not have a computer at home? And, what if the family only has one computer at home, but needs to be shared by parents who need to WFH and also multiple children who need to learn from home?

Well, you can buy a fully working computer online, including additional computers needed for all your family members, at the cost of RM300++ each, in the condition that you have a screen (either computer monitor or TV) at home, and Internet access (either phone's hotspot sharing or broadband Internet).

The full set Raspberry Pi (recommended for Version 4 model B with 2GB RAM) with all its required accessories, is a fully working computer at the cost of about RM300-RM360 only. Beside its low cost, it also consumes minimal amount of electricity and requires minimal storage space due to its small size.


It is good enough for normal online learning, doing assignments with office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation slides, database, etc.), and some entertainment including games.

With about RM360, you can buy the following full set of computer:
  • Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with Quad core CPU and 2GB RAM - RM174
  • Casing for the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B - RM25  (*1)
  • Official Raspberry 15W power adapter - RM35
  • Micro-HDMI to HDMI cable - RM10
  • Wired earphone - RM15 (*2)
  • 16GB micro SD card preinstalled with NOOBS - RM36 (*3)
  • Logitech MK220 wireless keyboard & mouse - RM65 (*4)

*1: The casing is an optional item. Without the casing, the Raspberry Pi will be a naked computer board as shown in the image above. With the casing, it will look like below:

*2: If you connect the Raspberry Pi to your TV using HDMI cable, you can make use of the audio output from your TV. You need an earphone or speaker, either wired or Bluetooth, to listen to the audio from Raspberry Pi if you are using a monitor without audio output.

*3: Raspberry Pi makes use of micro SD card as its "harddisk". You can also buy a blank micro SD card, which is much cheaper, and download NOOBS for free from Raspberry's website. That will require some basic computer knowledge to download and install NOOBS into the micro SD card. NOOBS is an installer that will prepare the SD card for Raspbian (including partitioning, etc.), and automatically download and install the operating system into it.

*4: Alternatively, you can also use cheaper USB wired keyboard & mouse to further reduce the cost.

The recommended operating system will be Raspbian, a scaled down version of Debian Linux. It has fully functioning Chromium or Vivaldi web browser, LibreOffice resembling the Microsoft Office, and tonnes of installable free softwares in Raspbian repository. This is good enough to access to Google suite of applications (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Hangout, ...), watch online & offline video, listen to online & offline music, access to learning portal and other websites, attending audio/video conferencing, etc.

There are also programming tools and graphic design software available in Raspbian for learning purpose.

In fact, you can install a full LAMP stack in Raspbian and turn your Raspberry Pi into a web application server as well.

The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B also supports webcam and voice input with additional module, which will need additional cost to buy and some technical skill to assemble.

Beside Raspbian, there are other choices of operating system that works with Raspberry Pi too, including Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Edition, which you can explore if you are enthusiastic with them.

Hint: Click on the "Older Posts" link to continue reading, or click here for a listing of all my past 3 months articles.