Set up a Wear OS watch for Sentinel

Install the VEXA watch app on a Wear OS watch, grant body sensors access, and stream your heart rate to Sentinel from your wrist.

Android Updated 26 July 2026

What this does

Makes a Wear OS watch the pulse source for Sentinel. Sentinel monitors physiology and has no view of your trades, so nothing reaches it except what the watch measures. The VEXA watch app reads your heart rate, sends it to the phone, and the phone writes it to your account.

The watch app can also start and stop a session on its own, and it carries a tile you can add to a watch face showing your current heart rate and whether monitoring is running.

Before you start

This is the Android path. A Wear OS watch does not connect to the iPhone app.

The watch asks for the Body sensors permission the first time you open VEXA on it. Without that permission it cannot read anything.

Continuous heart rate sampling is hard on watch battery. A full trading day of monitoring will cost noticeably more than a normal day.

There are two routes from a watch into Sentinel. The VEXA watch app streams directly and updates continuously. Health Connect polls every 30 seconds and works with watches that write into it. The direct route is faster. See Connect Health Connect if you would rather go through Health Connect.

Steps

Android only

Install VEXA on the watch from the Play Store on the watch, or push it from the phone’s Wear OS app.
Open VEXA on the watch and tap Allow on the body sensors prompt.
On the phone, open Home, then tap Sentinel.
Tap the gear icon (Settings), then Sentinel Settings.
Under Wearable source, choose Wear OS Watch.
Return to Sentinel and start a session from either the phone or the watch.

What you should see

On the watch: a status pill showing that monitoring is on and the phone is connected, a large animated heart rate, a session timer, and a Stop control.

On the phone: the live card fills with a beats-per-minute figure that moves every few seconds, and the LIVE badge names the watch as the source.

Stopping on either device stops the other. The session is one shared thing, not two.

If it doesn’t work

The watch app will not read anything. The body sensors permission was declined. Open the watch’s system settings, find VEXA under app permissions, and turn Body sensors on.

The watch says the phone is not connected. Bluetooth between the watch and phone has dropped. Reconnect them in the Wear OS app, then reopen VEXA on the watch.

Heart rate reaches the watch but not the phone. Open VEXA on the phone and leave it running. Android can suspend a backgrounded app aggressively on some manufacturers’ battery settings. Exclude VEXA from battery optimisation if it keeps happening.

Readings arrive roughly every 30 seconds instead of continuously. You are coming through Health Connect rather than the watch app. Install the VEXA watch app for a live stream.

Connect Health Connect on Android Grant VEXA read access to heart rate, resting heart rate, sleep and steps through the Health Connect app so Sentinel can read your physiology. Which heart rate devices work with Sentinel The seven wearables Sentinel supports, how each one connects, which ones need your phone unlocked, and which ones can measure HRV. Start and stop a Sentinel session Sessions are one shared thing across your devices. Starting on the web starts your watch, and stopping anywhere stops everywhere.

Still stuck? Email support@vexatrade.ai.