openwearota 0.0.1a1

Re-purpose e-waste smartwatches via OTA firmware updates

OpenWearOTA

OpenWearOTA re-purposes "e-waste" smartwatches into flashable microcontroller boards. It talks to the watch over BLE using the same OTA protocol the watch's own companion app would use, and pushes your own firmware instead of the OEM image.

It is a from-scratch reimplementation of those OTA protocols, built by reverse-engineering the official Android companion app — not vendor SDK code, not a fork of anything. See DOCUMENTATION.md for exactly how each protocol was recovered and what's confirmed vs. best-effort.

Is my watch eligible?

If your watch pairs to an app called FitPro (or one of its same-APK, different-splash-screen clones — DaFit, WearFit, VeryFit, etc.) and you found it by scanning a QR code in the box rather than searching an app store, it's almost certainly one of the chip families below.

Supported chip families

Family	Real silicon	Status
SHB/SLB ("3rd-gen" generic Chinese OTA)	YiChip-Ali-BLE (SLB side, unconfirmed)	✅ Flashing implemented
PhyPlus	PHY62xx	✅ Flashing implemented
Telink	TLSR8232 / TLSR8253 / TLSR82xx	✅ Flashing implemented
JieLi (RCSP)	AC695N / AC696x	✅ Flashing implemented
Beken	BK3431 / BK3432 / BK3266	✅ Flashing implemented
OnMicro	OM6620 family	⚠️ Detect + best-effort transfer — unconfirmed ACK/retry semantics
RealSil (RTK)	RTL876x	✅ Flashing implemented

Detection works for all seven; if your watch isn't on this list at all, OpenWearOTA will fall back to dumping every GATT service/characteristic UUID it found so the chip can still be identified manually (and, ideally, added to the table above — see Contributing).

Install

pip install openwearota 

Requires Python 3.10+ and a BLE adapter that bleak supports (Linux/BlueZ, macOS, Windows).

Usage

Run with no arguments for an interactive menu — it'll scan, detect the chipset, and walk you through picking a firmware file:

openwearota

Or drive it directly for scripting:

openwearota scan
openwearota flash AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF firmware.bin
openwearota uart  AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF          # BLE-serial bridge for custom/MicroPython firmware

Progress

Under active development. Even once tagged as a real release, treat it as Alpha: the SHB/SLB, PhyPlus, Telink, JieLi, Beken, and RealSil flows have each flashed real hardware, but OnMicro is not yet trustworthy for anything but detection (see the table above).

NOTE: If you are developing custom firmware for your watch, you MUST implement UART over BLE as according to uart.py, otherwise you will have no way to communicate with the watch unless you solder to SWD-like pads and UART Tx/Rx. if you also do not implement the same OTA functionality (check documentation and driver files if starting from scratch), you will only have one single flash forever until you do same SWD-like and UART soldering.

⚠️ You can brick your watch with this tool. OpenWearOTA will tell you the detected chipset before writing anything, but it cannot verify that the firmware file you point it at was actually built for that chipset — that's on you. Compile against the SDK matching your watch's specific chip, and don't interrupt power or the BLE connection mid-flash.

Contributing

The most useful contributions right now are the ones DOCUMENTATION.md asks for directly: confirmation of OnMicro's full block-transfer/ACK handshake, and a packet capture of a real SHB-mode OTA in progress — DOCUMENTATION.md §1.8 and §1.8b document two different opcode-numbering schemes for the same GATT fingerprint (likely two PhyPlus SDK generations), and it's not yet confirmed which one any specific watch in the wild actually speaks. If you extend the protocol reference, keep its standard — cite what you actually observed (decompiled code path, vendor SDK source path, or a packet capture), and mark anything inferred as best-effort rather than presenting a guess as fact.

License

GPLv3 — see LICENSE.