Yeah, I had a Withings semismart watch, one of their cheaper models without a screen. It integrated a pedometer, and had a dial had that would show steps taken, it moved from 0 to 100% of your goal. One had to pair it to the Withings Android app to set not just the goal for number of steps/day, but even for setting the time.

I sold it after a few months, realizing how much I missed a second hand and a glow-in-the-dark face. Also, the app had a ton of telemetry going back to Withings.

Building your own you would be in full control of the data.

Yep there are plenty of watches like that (for example Fossil I think), but I'd really like to take a nice vintage watch and build a hackable watch platform myself.