MeshCore Radio for Social Networking and Disasters with zero Internet required The Boland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) invited me to do this talk on 23 July 2026. HAMNET Emergency Communications provided the Zoom platform. The audience consisted of radio amateurs, citizens, and disaster management. MeshCore is a newer type of license-free decentralised radio network that allows citizens, government agencies including nature reserves, disaster management agencies, and amateur radio operators to all talk together, whether in public channels, directly to each other, or even in private encrypted channels. This is WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal without the Internet. The network is not only useful to make new friends across the city and stay in communication with neighbours, but more importantly it is a resilient network that will stay operation long after the Internet has ceased to work due to a disaster or lengthy power outages. This is achievable through solar-powered repeater nodes at high sites, and the fact that this network is not dependent on any central server or presence, and of course there is no approval or registration to use it. My talk highlights the similarities and differences between MeshCore and Meshtastic networks, and the reasons why such a network is so important to have in place across cities and towns. I highlight two recent outages we've had in the Western Cape where towns lost their electricity supply due to adverse weather conditions, and had their normal communications cut off for up to a week. In this time HAMNET does assist with communications but only from key points. Having a broader MeshCore network available, allows citizens and disaster management agencies to stay in contact with each other for essential services and assistance. The City of Cape Town and Western Cape Provincial Government, recognise the value of having fallback communications, and HAMNET already has emergency radio rooms at both sites, which are kept in operational readiness. We are aiming to have something like MeshCore also officially endorsed by the City and Province, so that citizens can equip themselves with these radios ahead of any potential disasters in the future. We also have some wilderness areas in and around Cape Town which have no cellular phone coverage, such as the top of Table Mountain. These areas are also ideal to have such radio networks operational, as they are easy to deploy, and radio nodes cost around R500 each (whether bought by citizens/tourist, or even available to rent for the day). The talk concludes with a comprehensive Q&A around various topics relating to MeshCore radio. Watch at See

GadgeteerZA

MeshCore Radio For Social Networking And Disasters With Zero Internet Required

The Boland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) invited me to do this talk on 23 July 2026. HAMNET Emergency Communications provided the Zoom platform. The au...

#disasters #meshcore #opensource #southafrica #technology

FokOffMense is South Africa’s spam block and POPIA toolkit Block community-flagged spam on Android, send formal POPIA opt-outs, and monitor breaches — one SA account, no ads. iOS users can use the website, but there is no iOS app yet (probably also because iOS does not allow apps to take control of the dialler, which is why TrueCaller was so broken for me when I had an iPhone). This app actually takes control of the Android dialler (otherwise calls cannot be blocked) and accesses / adds to the blocked numbers list on the phone. It is not a caller ID app so you won't see the names identified of callers, but if the number has been reported by 10 or more other users as spam, it will be blocked (as well as for SMS). You have the option of reporting a number in the app to the community, and you can go even further to file a formal POPIA report, which is mailed out through the app's server, so not from your own e-mail. The 10 number requirement is to stop individuals trying to block their spouse for example from everyone. But looking at the list I see some genuine call centres I need to get calls from (who probably spam non-customers) so it seems you can select those numbers from the Community Shield, or not. There is a free tier to try which gets you 5 POPIA request per month, 5 Community Shields blocks per month, and one e-mail monitor. The next tier is at R29 per month for 45 Community Shield blocks and 5 POPIA requests per month. The Premium tier is R99 per month, and Family tier for R279 per month for up to 5 people. Every plan includes privacy scans, a full exposure report, unlimited spam reports and blocking, and Gmail spam upload and email filters. Whilst TrueCaller will give caller ID and call blocking, and allow reporting into its crowdsourced block list, it has no POPIA reporting, nor privacy scans, exposure reporting, or Gmail spam filtering. See

GadgeteerZA

FokOffMense Is South Africa's Spam Block And POPIA Toolkit

Block community-flagged spam on Android, send formal POPIA opt-outs, and monitor breaches — one SA account, no ads. iOS users can use the website...

#southafrica #spam #technology

Hugging Face Said Last Week It Was Attacked. An Unreleased OpenAI Model Did It, OpenAI Now Says “OpenAI’s blog post essentially says an evaluation was going on that was intended to test the ability of the models to carry out cyberattacks—benchmarks as they’re called. These instances of the models were running theoretically without internet access, and instead given only the ability to download from a network hosted by OpenAI itself via some unnamed web hosting vendor.” I get that AI models need to suck up data to “learn on” but this just goes to show that it is actively being done by AI vendors. And so much for accusing Chinese AI vendors of learning from US AI models, because is this not exactly what OpenAI has been caught doing themselves here? Is this not gaining access to other AI models, surely not just for fun. But either ways, even if it was trying to find a way to cheat on the AI benchmarks, this is very much case of being caught with your hands in the cookie jar. I really don't believe and country or AI vendor is squeaky clean (didn't OpenAI also just settle a case and pay out authors for stealing the content of their books?). Make no mistake, AI is very useful to us all, but AI vendors must really not cast stones from their glass houses at others. See

GadgeteerZA

Hugging Face Said Last Week It Was Attacked. An Unreleased OpenAI Model Did It, OpenAI Now Says

“OpenAI’s blog post essentially says an evaluation was going on that was intended to test the ability of the models to carry out cyberattacks�...

#ai #security #technology

Euki Period-Tracking App Actually Keeps Your Data Private "Period tracking is a simple job that plenty of apps can do. But most apps these days—including those that track health data—store information about you on their own servers and sometimes even share that data with advertisers. The Mozilla Foundation has tested several of the most popular period-tracking apps, and it identified one as better than the rest at keeping your data private: Euki." It is really sad when something that tracks personal health metrics has to be specifically protected from oppressive governments. But that is where many are today, and this app at least offers a way to keep that data private and secure (like it should be). The data stays local. Remember anything going to a cloud, where you did not set your own encryption key, is likely not actually private. The objective test is, if you forget your password, and it can be rest or restored for you in any way by the service provider, then it is not your private data. See

GadgeteerZA

Euki Period-Tracking App Actually Keeps Your Data Private

"Period tracking is a simple job that plenty of apps can do. But most apps these days—including those that track health data—store information ...

#health #privacy #technology

=OpenAI Exec Laments That China Is Giving Away Models So Good That For-Profit Companies Won’t Be Able to Compete “Last week, a Chinese-made large language model called Kimi K3, developed by Beijing-based firm Moonshot AI, burst onto the scene. The open-weight model impressed with early benchmark results, trading blows with some of the most advanced closed-weight ones being developed by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic — and at a fraction of the cost.” Lest we forget, there is BIG money in oil, pharmaceuticals, AI, etc, and those executives do not like their profits being undercut by free community projects. Big money usually locks users in by glossy adverts and other enticements, and if those fail they can always use scare tactics about hidden Chinese backdoors. It's true that cloud services running AI do require big investments, but when better things come along which are cheaper, the market moves as this is what capitalism is about. And in fact, this is what innovation is about. You innovate, or you become irrelevant. This is often what post offices have found out about as courier companies started overtaking them. The US approach seems to have been about throwing more money and resources at AI, whilst the Chinese appear to have been innovating around doing more with fewer resources. The same goes for open source projects where many local AI models are running on smaller home labs and PCs. This how quantisation, GPU offloading, flash attention, context length tuning, etc all came about. No proprietary AI business can either lay claim to any particular copyright of content as all or most of that content was all sucked up from across the Internet by them in the first place. Open source is about collaborating to solve challenges, and resharing and building on what others have done. Yes not everyone can afford to run a mainframe computer at home, so the business model for AI as a service may well be a valid one going forward. There will be lots of room in the market for “selling AI services” because most people are not going to buy massive GPUs at home and do not want to tweak lots of settings, and the one that Microsoft scores on, is too many users can't decide what Linux distro to install (read: can't choose what AI models to use). OpenAI though would do well by competing better instead of screaming foul at their competitors. Maybe they do need to lighten up on the resource requirements. No city wants to see their dwindling drinking water, or power grid, swallowed by ever more and bigger data centres. I do remember about two to three decades back, when I was a PC programmer, that we had a very expensive IBM mainframe that needed upgrading because of resource constraints with the systems we were running. Then someone had the bright idea to try optimising the source code of the biggest systems. Turns out we saved over 30% on resource usage and no longer had to upgrade the mainframe! Sometimes working smarter is better. Today with digital sovereignty becoming more and more strategic to many countries, I think they will be looking more at what AI models they can run locally themselves. AI is already being weaponised to breach vulnerabilities, and to be weaponised through poisoning sources etc. It is all the more reason why you want to run our own and set your own guardrails in place. Running your own AI also means your company or country data stays local. Is it possible? Yes, of course it is. Before we had Linux, we all thought we had to run Windows to get anything done, but we've realised that was a steel box that was built around us by Microsoft's PR (to protect us from the cancer called Linux). Turned out though it was not cancer after all, it was the dream of having freedom and being in control of our own OS without their telemetry. Hopefully AI never becomes another Microsoft, with only one player dominating the whole market. Right now it is looking good with many AI cloud providers (OK mostly in the USA and China) but at least it is not in just a single country, and we have local AI models doing very well at more specialised tasks. It needs to stay open with the providers competing to provide better services for less. If one or two players fall out along the way because they are just too expensive on resources, then so be it. See

GadgeteerZA

OpenAI Exec Laments That China Is Giving Away Models So Good That For-Profit Companies Won’t Be Able To Compete

“Last week, a Chinese-made large language model called Kimi K3, developed by Beijing-based firm Moonshot AI, burst onto the scene. The open-weigh...

#ai #opensource #technology

AI Barometer: the best AI for every job right now because choosing is difficult “Barely a month goes by without an AI laboratory declaring its latest model the smartest ever built. For anyone simply trying to keep up, or trying to pick a tool that drafts a decent e-mail, fixes broken code or turns a prompt into a usable image, the noise is deafening. This is the first instalment of TechCentral’s AI Barometer, a recurring, evidence-based snapshot of which AI models and platforms lead in the tasks people actually use them for. No vibes and no vendor marketing: every verdict below is drawn from public, independently run benchmarks and leaderboards, each chosen because it tests the use case in question. The scores were checked in the first week of July 2026 and, given the pace of releases, some will likely have shifted by the time you read this. That churn is precisely why the barometer exists.” This is certainly something that is needed as the constantly shifting array of choices is just too much for any one person to comprehend. A lot depends on what you want to do, how much VRAM you have, etc. And then there are the myriads of settings that can be applied to a model. This barometer keeps to online cloud models by the looks of it, but it is scenario based which would certainly help those who just want to pick what online service to use. Of course, online also has a choice of subscription vs API usage, and the two are usually costed separately. API usage is often pay as/when you use so you can experiment between different services without lock-in. Although there is a cost to that, is i a lot cheaper than buying a GPU with a lot of VRAM today. The only thing I can say for certain is, there is no one model that is best at everything, and there is no one set of settings that is best at everything when it comes to AI models. It will all be a lot better in another year or two. See

GadgeteerZA

AI Barometer: The Best AI For Every Job Right Now Because Choosing Is Difficult

“Barely a month goes by without an AI laboratory declaring its latest model the smartest ever built. For anyone simply trying to keep up, or tryi...

#ai #benchmark #technology

HeliBoard is a privacy-conscious and customisable open-source keyboard for Android This is a very feature packed and functional keyboard. I've found its word suggestions as good as GBoard and other Big Tech keyboards. I managed to import an Afrikaans dictionary and HeliBoard handled multilingual typing well. There are also quite a few layout tweaks that can be applied, it can pop up more word suggestions, clipboard history, do split keyboard, etc. Interestingly too, in the About menu there is a page that shows a description of hidden features that may go unnoticed. That is a nice touch, and shows how much attention has gone into this keyboard. It is open-source and fully private, but even has a toggle to enable incognito mode to cut off features such as learning words. It is not available on the Android store so you either install the APK from their GitHub site, or install it from F-Droid or IzzyOnDroid stores. Their GitHub project has 5.6k stars. The project is about 3 years old and has 67 releases so far, the last one being yesterday. So good to see it is actively maintained by 57 contributors. It's now my daily driver as a keyboard (you that keyboards can potentially monitor every single thing you type, and cloud connected keyboards that sync your learnt words are all reporting to someone else's home). See

GadgeteerZA

HeliBoard Is A Privacy-conscious And Customisable Open-source Keyboard For Android

This is a very feature packed and functional keyboard. I've found its word suggestions as good as GBoard and other Big Tech keyboards. I manag...

#android #opensource #privacy #technology

Tech Bros Puzzled by Why AI Hasn’t “Massively Disrupted” Books Yet “The reality, of course, is that attempts to integrate AI into education have been consistently disastrous. As it turns out, a technology that spits out a confident mixture of fact and fiction without challenging the user to track down or digest information on their own isn’t conducive to particularly effective schooling.” Yep, lack of context has been its Achilles heel. And because of this novel length books, taking over many jobs, proper education, etc are completely beyond it. It has improved a lot, but at a tremendous cost for resources. The limitations are also becoming better understood. AI certainly has some good uses when applied to what it does well. I recall another post about two months back where the crux of improved workplace productivity, was where humans were paired with AI, with humans providing the context and the guardrails. See

GadgeteerZA

Tech Bros Puzzled By Why AI Hasn’t “Massively Disrupted” Books Yet

“The reality, of course, is that attempts to integrate AI into education have been consistently disastrous. As it turns out, a technology that sp...

#ai #technology

Android is open source, but your phone isn’t—here’s why Google locked it down "Android has come to dominate the global smartphone marketplace, and a large part of why this has happened is thanks to its open-source nature. Any phone maker can put Android on its phones with no licensing fees, and its adoption has also spawned a massive app ecosystem, so unless you're a trillion-dollar company like Apple, going a different way isn't sensible. But is the Android operating system on your phone really open source? The short answer is, technically, "yes." However, the phone in your hand is less open-source than proprietary." The way bigger issue for me though is that some essential apps, especially like banking app, dig into that proprietary API, for "security" reasons. This is why you find with some rooted phones, or those running pure open source, that the banking apps won't work. The problem with that is, it is getting difficult to bank with a phone app when they use it for authentication changes made in the browser to banking services, creation/editing of virtual cards, etc. So more and more now I'm finding it is not about the choice of just installing a googled Android, but it is about some apps I really need to use which just do not run without the Google API. For that I also hold the service providers responsible, but I get that they need to ensure the app is not hacked etc. It's basically forcing the world into two Big Tech dominated devices. Whilst we have options for Android, that may break apps, the iOS world is even worse as there is basically no choice for a de-Appled iPhone. Just interesting, and very sad, to see how the world has changed in the last 10 years. The same pattern repeated with the Internet itself, that as more of Big Tech and corporations became involved, the freedoms we had got eroded. I don't mean the freedom to install something open source, because yes I can still do that, I mean to install it and it is still all fully functional. In the early years of LineageOS I could still install and use my banking app just fine. Later I had to use RootCloak, but eventually that also no longer worked. I may have to one day just say to the bank, like I deleted WhatsApp, and just say sorry I don't have a mobile phone so no SMS, no WhatsApp, no biometric authentication. See

GadgeteerZA

Android Is Open Source, But Your Phone Isn't—here's Why Google Locked It Down

"Android has come to dominate the global smartphone marketplace, and a large part of why this has happened is thanks to its open-source nature. Any...

#android #opensource #technology

German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern heads down the open source sovereignty road “So far, around 5,000 staff are using their new FOSS tools for chat, video conferencing, and groupware, but the plan is to roll it out to more than 50,000 public employees. It is also using OpenProject. For now, the plan is to keep Microsoft client OSes, changing the groupware tools first. This is not a Linux migration… yet.” Which is the best-practice way of implementing such a migration. Start with the applications, and test out cross-platform alternatives on your existing OS. Once those are bedded down and are working, it is much easier to switch the OS out on user machines. The admin side of the organisation has to test out updates, backups, networking, etc for the OS migration later on. I was part of such an exercise back in 2007 or so, I as an early adopter in a government agency, I was running full Linux, with LibreOffice back then, and Zimbra email. It was fully possible as I know I did it for many months and that included remote VPN access into the network, and daily document interchange with other staff. It just comes down to the will power of the CTO or CIO. Digital sovereignty adds a bit of impetus and will power to that equation. Having myself just transitioned off some cloud subscription services to alternatives, ye sit took a bit of effort and paradigm change, but all my processes are still working, and I've saved a mint of money. Our problem is, like being with a bank or insurance company, we are afraid of change. Believe me, it is often very worth it! See

GadgeteerZA

German State Of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Heads Down The Open Source Sovereignty Road

“So far, around 5,000 staff are using their new FOSS tools for chat, video conferencing, and groupware, but the plan is to roll it out to more th...

#digitalsovereignty #germany #opensource #technology

Wallos — An Open-Source Personal Subscriptions Tracker Which Saved Quite A Bit Of Money For Me Wallos is a free and open-source application that you can self-host and which will help you track what subscriptions you currently have, what they cost (with auto-conversion to your currency), when they renew, notify you before they are due for renewal, and it will also optionally use AI to give you recommendations on what you could possibly save money on. In the video I also spend some time showing what subscriptions I saved R5,800 (about US$438) per annum on. Wallos will show you where your money is going. Measurement is the first step towards better managing your subscriptions. Watch See

GadgeteerZA

Wallos — An Open-Source Personal Subscriptions Tracker Which Saved Quite A Bit Of Money For Me

Wallos is a free and open-source application that you can self-host and which will help you track what subscriptions you currently have, what they ...

#opensource #selfhosting #subscriptions #technology

Here’s what end-to-end encryption protects—and what it doesn’t “Earlier in May, the Texas Attorney General’s office sued Meta for deceiving users on the level of security offered by end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp. E2EE is used as a catch-all term to describe secure messaging features across a lot of different apps, but these apps each apply different implementation standards and the level of security is never the same. You should not assume that all your communications are safe from interception just because your messaging app supports E2EE.” Worth reading because too many just assume if the packaging says E2EE, it's all good. In some cases you must actually enable E2EE for specific chats, and in the case of Meta the WhatsApp metadata gets shared elsewhere. Seems Signal is still the best out of the mainstream centralised account-based messengers. There are though many decentralised and completely private messengers, but good luck to finding any of your friends there, or convincing them to switch to anything different. See

GadgeteerZA

Here's What End-to-end Encryption Protects—and What It Doesn't

“Earlier in May, the Texas Attorney General’s office sued Meta for deceiving users on the level of security offered by end-to-end encryption on...

#privacy #technology

David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82 “South African-born pioneer of the British tech industry David Potter, the man behind the iconic Psion pocket computers, passed away on 28th June, six days before his 83rd birthday. Potter was the founder of the company of the same name, a pivotal firm in the British technology industry from the 1980s to the 2000s. Psion supplied software for the early computers from Sinclair Research, the ZX80 and the ZX81, including a Flight Simulator that you can play online. In 1982, Psion supplied the bundled software with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and the later, the XChange suite for the Sinclair QL, later available for DOS under the name PC-Four.” I fondly remember my Psion 5, and actually even the offices I bought it from in Cape Town, right next to the Kenilworth racecourse. But the linked article is very interesting to read, as I did not realise the connection with Sinclair Research (the ZX81 was my first commercial computer I ever bought). And of course Symbian became famous also with Nokia. Another thing I never knew, was how the name Psion came about. A spoiler is that P stands for Potter, but as a tech nerd the name was clearly not very glossy PR stuff we think of around Apple products etc today. But Potter certainly deserves to be called a pioneer of early IT. He innovated in the years when small start-ups all competed with each other, and there were no multi-million Dollar buy-outs or takeovers, and unlimited cash let you dominate the industry. See

GadgeteerZA

David Potter, The Man Who Put Psion In The Palm Of Your Hand, Logs Off At 82

“South African-born pioneer of the British tech industry David Potter, the man behind the iconic Psion pocket computers, passed away on 28th June...

#obituary #psion #technology

I ran the same SSD health check on Linux and Windows—only Linux gave me the full picture OK this was not “me” obviously, as I run Linux as my main OS. But interesting as I always thought CrystalDiskInfo was the best tool out there for SSD checking (or maybe that was the marketing PR that stuck in my head?). Commands like this are actually useful, as I use similar ones to extract specific data I want to monitor, and I display it on a Conky window on my desktop. See

GadgeteerZA

I Ran The Same SSD Health Check On Linux And Windows—only Linux Gave Me The Full Picture

OK this was not “me” obviously, as I run Linux as my main OS. But interesting as I always thought CrystalDiskInfo was the best tool out there f...

#ssd #technology

Brave Browser just summarily disabled an extension I’m using I use the Snoozz extension to park browser tabs for later action. I also have some tab that I open at regular scheduled times to do things. So I rely on those tabs to pop up in a week or in a month's time. Obviously I have no way of recalling right now exactly which tabs they are, as that is why they are parked for later. So imagine my extreme irritation this morning, when I find that Brave has just broken my workflow without any warning at all. The notice just says "The extension was turned off because it is no longer supported". This is absolutely unacceptable because me as the user is not in control here. I should be given the choice to disable it, and when. This extension was not a security risk requiring any urgent action. I have tried to see if I can toggle it back on, but no, I cannot override it. This is behaviour I expected of Microsoft, not Brave. We know that uBlock Origin was not going to be supported any longer, and no data gets lost when that is disabled. But the Snoozz extension is a very different story. Luckily AI did point me to a log file where the data could be extracted, so I have my snoozed tabs back, and I have them in another extension. See

GadgeteerZA

Brave Browser Just Summarily Disabled An Extension I'm Using

I use the Snoozz extension to park browser tabs for later action. I also have some tab that I open at regular scheduled times to do things. So I re...

#bravebrowser #technology

They’ve read the scroll thing! AI helps decipher ancient document charred by Vesuvius “A sealed scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum, which was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius' eruption nearly 2,000 years ago, has finally given up its secrets, thanks to a combination of machine learning and high-resolution CT scans. According to the research paper, the ability to make out the entirety of the scroll was thanks to high-resolution phase-contrast X-ray microtomography performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France – an improved imaging technique over prior methods used to capture prior images that were analyzed in the prize competition.“ I've actually experienced something similar, although nowhere near to this achievement. I was pushing some old family photos through AI and asking it to repair, colourise, etc the photos. One photo was a front view of an old family home that had been demolished to make way for a new road. AI clearly showed a man in the garden (my great-grandfather). When I look again at the original, I could just make out the faded image of the man. I had completely missed that when looking at the original. Obviously the achievement with the scrolls is even more impressive as it is deciphering the faded writing in a closed and very fragile scroll. See

GadgeteerZA

They've Read The Scroll Thing! AI Helps Decipher Ancient Document Charred By Vesuvius

“A sealed scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum, which was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius' eruption nearly 2,000 years ago, has finally giv...

#ai #technology

Voicebox is a local-first AI voice studio — a free and open-source alternative to ElevenLabs and WisprFlow Clone voices from a few seconds of audio, generate speech in 23 languages across 7 TTS engines, dictate into any text field with a global hotkey, and give any MCP-aware AI agent a voice of your choosing. The two cloud incumbents sit on opposite halves of the voice I/O loop — ElevenLabs on output, WisprFlow on input. Voicebox does both, bridges them with a bundled local LLM for refinement and per-profile personas, and runs the whole thing on your machine. Apart from full privacy, as you are running it locally, you do not have the token limitations of many online cloud services. There are some good YouTube videos showing how to get going with Voicebox, and also featuring what all it can do. It is not just a simple text-to-speech processor. See

GadgeteerZA

Voicebox Is A Local-first AI Voice Studio — A Free And Open-source Alternative To ElevenLabs And WisprFlow

Clone voices from a few seconds of audio, generate speech in 23 languages across 7 TTS engines, dictate into any text field with a global hotkey, a...

#ai #alternativesto #opensource #technology

After a week with my new Pebble Time 2 watch I’m really happy with it I see it arrived just on a week ago now, and although I've been using it a lot with testing apps, exercising, monitoring sleep, etc the battery is only now dipping below 50%. It is supposed to be good for about 3 weeks of use. Isn't this what a smartwatch should be all about! With all my Apple Watch, Samsung Watches, LG watches, etc it was always about 2 days max battery life. Pebble Apps's Battery view I did have one glitch that was really worrying me, and that was the movement detection was just not working at all. So it was not showing any steps being walked, nor any movement during sleep. I had tried re-updating the software, rebooting it, and also using the three-button reset. I filed a bug report from inside the app, and Pebble suggested long pressing the left button for 10 seconds. It rebooted and all was fine again. The other thing concerning me was that a handful of people had cracked the glass of the watch (out of thousands shipped). The reason is that the glass protrudes slightly above the metal body of the watch. The recommendation many had, was to download a free 3D printing file, and print a bumper to clip on the top of the watch. I did this and found an online service, in South Africa, to print a few and courier them to me. This fits like a glove on top of the watch, and it feels better protected now. What is great about this watch is that it is open source, so the community is creating tons of useful apps for it. The Time 2 has a colour e-ink screen, a heart rate sensor, 3-axis movement sensor, a speaker and microphone, and a touchscreen. So new apps are still appearing which take advantage of these capabilities. So much can be tweaked for it compared to Big Tech watches where you get basically what they want to let you use. Pebble App showing sleep and heart rate data So what am I actually using on it then? Watch faces Seeing I was a Casio, and I love classic watch faces, I'm actually using (featured photo at top of this post). The OS is set to sound a chime on the hour (well actually it does a haptic vibration as the speaker is not yet enabled on the firmware). I also like the CORE91 watch face, but the Quartz one is by far my favourite. Shopping It has long been a requirement for all of my watches to have OurGroceries running on it, so I could tick off my shopping items, by aisles, as I move through the shop. I was a bit devastated to find the old Groceries app for Pebble had not been updated since 2015, and it broke by querying an API authentication link that no longer existed. I tried to rewrite the app with Gemini and Claude, but it was just not working. In the end I found and tried Grosh for Pebble and for Shopping. My criteria are I want to set up lists on my web browser, and it must have categories for the aisles so that I can move through a shop logically and not dash back and forth for items. Grosh fell out of the running with some clunkiness (pity as it was fully free including web browser access). In the end the free version of AnyList Shopping actually works very well. Yes the paid version would get full web browser access, uploaded photos, prices, and quite a few other interesting extras, but the categories work well, and I can set my lists up on the phone quite fine. I was a bit put out that when opening the list on the watch, you see all 100 checked off items, and need to scroll down to the first unchecked item you want to buy. After checking the item off, it did jump straight to the next unchecked item. But kindly enough, as many open source devs are, the dev added a toggle so I could hide all the checked off items and just see my clean list when shopping. So right now I'm super happy with this shopping app. AnyList Shopping app view that I see on the watch while shopping Exercises The Pebble watch has a pretty good exercise app built in. It records all you need, but there is no GPS in the watch, so what it pushes through to Android Health Connect, is just steps, pace, heart rate, estimated distance and calories. This would sync via Google Fit into Strava, but I wanted the GPX maps and altitudes, etc. Accuracy-wise I was very impressed as I compared the heart readings with my Polar H10 Chest Strap, and they were either spot on, or off by about 2 to 3 bpm. Yes my Apple Watch was as good (when I had an iPhone) but the last two Samsung watches I had, were incredibly bad, sometimes lagging by 20 minutes into an exercise before it even showed the correct reading (it was so bad I took the first Samsung watch back twice for repairs). The Samsung watches never came right, and that was why I bought the Polar H10 Chest Strap, about which I did a lengthy blog post at . Official Pebble Workout app The only way around this is to use an app that works with a companion app ion the phone. That companion app will respond with the GPS tracking, using the phone's GPS. Another way is for the watch app to query the phone's GPS and record that. So I narrowed it down now to about two apps to try out further. is a watch app that also has a companion app on the phone. The other app is which appears to query the phone's GPS as it has no companion phone app. They both track various types of exercises with a wealth of data. Iron has numerous customisations one can do to the stats shown on the watch, whilst Pebble Fit seems a bit more preset in this area. The image below shows the view I'm using on the watch. Clicking the middle right button scrolls through the middle row view options you set up, and the bottom right button scrolls that bottom view showing heart rate, altitude, etc graph views. Iron app on the Pebble Watch Iron app on phone playing back exercise activity i- I toggled privacy on so it hides the map I've not tested Pebble Fit in the field yet, but I do like that in its settings you can set how often it should poll for the heart rate in seconds. Also in the app settings is the ability to import a GPX track, and then follow it on the watch (pretty handy for trails). The app defaults to exporting an activity to Google Drive in GPX, TCX or FIT formats. You can also trim the exercise and view it where it shows a map, heart rate zones, heart rate graph, etc. Iron app's screen is probably easier to read though, with its larger font and clean black and white colours. Pebble Fit screen shown during exercise A slight "downside" is that neither will automatically export the activity directly to Strava. Part of the reason is that Strava is restricting their free API tier. So what both apps do, is it exports the GPX or TCX file to the phone (you set a folder). I found another Android phone app called , and this will do one or two-way syncing between quite a few online health services. So I've set it up for Strava now. Basically when I finish an exercise I just do a quick export of that file. I open SyncMyTracks and hit sync, and that's it. It knows what it has already synced, and just syncs the new exercise activity to Strava. You could also import that file manually into Strava, but this sync is actually very slick and quick. SyncMyTracks phone app view Notes and Memos I did first try to use the Index feature (the one intended to work with the Pebble Index Ring). It does work perfectly from inside the phone app, but when using the Android home screen widget for quick records, it locks up the app. There is also no way right now to set up any quick launch button on the watch to trigger it (I suppose to not impact Index Ring sales?). So I'm really tossing up still between and . Both apps activate with a button press, and you record your reminder, task, or thoughts, and they use AI to decide where it needs to go. It can go to the watch's timeline and popup as a reminder, Brain Dump is supposed to also integrate with Google Tasks, Todoist, Nextcloud Notes, and Notion. Brain Dump though has some issue with authenticating to Google Tasks, and I suspect it is a Google imposed limit for the app based on its beta test status. Whilst Notes to Self certainly pushed a reminder note into the timeline for the correct time, Brain Dump did not pop anything up at the time given (I suspect it wants to send it to one of the connected 3rd party services). But either ways, these are useful types of apps for quickly recording something while you are driving or busy with something else. Phone Notifications I do have it setup to show only very select notifications such as SMS, phone calls, health notifications, notifications from my banking app, etc. Sleep Tracking I've long been using with all my previous smartwatches, and they also have an integration with Pebble watches. When I trigger the sleep app, the watch passes through heart rate and movement data to the app. This has been working very well, and I notice that the Pebble built-in sleep tracking also is showing my sleep data on the watch too (probably syncing via Android Health Connection service). General I also have the following activated in the Pebble app: Heart rate – take a reading every 30 minutes throughout the day Hourly chime – well it vibrates only right now, but nice to know when an hour is passing I'm using the cool white backlight on high intensity, but you can choose any colour, and there are requests logged to be able to have it as red at night App Store The thing is there are tons of apps and watch faces available for a single click install from the Pebble and Rebble stores. There are even alternative notifications apps to give more functionality than the built-in notification view. As new watches are busy being delivered weekly, there are also more devs getting involved and creating new and improved apps and watch faces. You can view available apps and faces at . App store Conclusion I'm really happy to be back on a Pebble watch again. One issue that is sorted out is that the OS is now open source so we should not see an issue again with that. But remember that Rebble stepped in the previous time anyway to fill the gap. The bigger issue may be more around the hardware longevity (repairability is not yet determined, and most smartwatches are not really easy to fix as an end user). Often it is the battery that needs replacing after 8 or 10 years (I've only kept my previous smartwatches for a max of 2 years). The other thing may be around newer models to keep users interested and move with the times. Generally though Pebble watch users are not looking for the latest in fl;ashy screens and technology – they want a functional device that does all the basics, has the ability to run 3rd party open source apps, and has excellent battery life. What we may see in future is new sensors being available as they go mainstream and cost less e.g. like blood-oxygen sensors. Pebble was not intended to be a direct replacement for Apple or Samsung watches – it was stated up front they were not going to be answering phone calls for example, compete with Apple Watch on the level of health data being tracked, or do video meetings. What we will see though, is creative devs making very innovative use of the existing sensors in the watch, where algorithms can analyse data to provide new notifications of various situations as they arise. The new watches were only really shipped in 2026 so we can expect the app store to still grow dramatically in terms of apps and watch faces that will be available. I'll likely be updating this webpage as I learn and discover more. I'll keep its date and time pinned though, as I don't want to keep duplicating blog posts going out everywhere. But updates will be indicated with an edit date next to them. See

GadgeteerZA

After A Week With My New Pebble Time 2 Watch I'm Really Happy With It

I see it arrived just on a week ago now, and although I've been using it a lot with testing apps, exercising, monitoring sleep, etc the batter...

#opensource #pebblewatch #pt2 #technology

Every Physics Teacher (And Student) Should Try This Open Source Software "Open source software has always been a cornerstone in scientific applications. From supercomputers to CERN labs, handling some of the greatest discoveries of humankind and accelerating particles beyond imagination, open source software has provided the framework for all necessary technological usage. Bringing it down to a simpler level, KDE's Step provides you a platform to test out some of the most important basic concepts in physics, like simple motion, electrostatics and gravitation, and even things like spring (harmonic) motion." It is said a picture is worth a thousand words, so what would an experimental model be worth in words? This is not just watching, but also being able to chnage parameters and see how it effects the physics. This is the way educational software should be: Free of costs, free of adverts, free of tracking, and the ability to study how it functions, and adapt it. See

GadgeteerZA

Every Physics Teacher (And Student) Should Try This Open Source Software

"Open source software has always been a cornerstone in scientific applications. From supercomputers to CERN labs, handling some of the greatest dis...

#education #opensource #technology

Voicebox is a local-first AI voice studio — a free and open-source alternative to ElevenLabs and WisprFlow Clone voices from a few seconds of audio, generate speech in 23 languages across 7 TTS engines, dictate into any text field with a global hotkey, and give any MCP-aware AI agent a voice of your choosing. The two cloud incumbents sit on opposite halves of the voice I/O loop — ElevenLabs on output, WisprFlow on input. Voicebox does both, bridges them with a bundled local LLM for refinement and per-profile personas, and runs the whole thing on your machine. Apart from full privacy, as you are running it locally, you do not have the token limitations of many online cloud services. There are some good YouTube videos showing how to get going with Voicebox, and also featuring what all it can do. It is not just a simple text-to-speech processor. See

GadgeteerZA

Voicebox Is A Local-first AI Voice Studio — A Free And Open-source Alternative To ElevenLabs And WisprFlow

Clone voices from a few seconds of audio, generate speech in 23 languages across 7 TTS engines, dictate into any text field with a global hotkey, a...

#ai #alternativesto #opensource #technology