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Comment by alonsonic | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe this, just got a Pebble 2 a week ago and now they are literally saying it may not work in the future.

If we rely on their cloud services for activity tracking and app downloads then it will be useless if FitBit doesn't maintain the platform.

I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware. If the company fails forget about the smart stuff you bought, it just won't work anymore.

We should look for ways to minimize the impact on backers. Sadly we'll see more of this in a future in which the products depend a lot on the company cloud services to operate.

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>>I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware.

Buyers need to start demanding Open Source Software and Open Hardware...

With out that, you will always be screwed

>>Buyers need to start demanding Open Source Software and Open Hardware...

Exactly

Point me to an F/OSS and Open Hardware version and I'm there. Seriously, I'm always backing those sorts of devices over proprietary ones every chance I get - though it's rare as heck.

Pretty sure this is still under active development, but it's supposed to be a completely open fitness tracker: http://openhealth.wemaketotem.org/

There's also the FOSS smart watch OS Asteroid OS: http://asteroidos.org/

Thanks! Not sure that the tracker is what I'm looking for (or I'd be into the fitbit move), but Asteroid looks intriguing. I'm following both now.

Appreciate the tip!

Or at least treat any kind of cloud integration as a big negative. Without cloud dependence, the devices can always be hacked and made to work again until hardware dies.

One of the main reasons I went with the Pebble over other options was that I could use sleep tracking with it via a 3rd party app, without any need for their cloud. Sleep as Android has your back there. It's the only sleep tracking tool I like because it's able to keep your data locally on your phone or sync'd via a few mechanisms.

As for the step tracking... yeah, not sure.

Your device will keep working yet, but what if you switch phones/tablets? Now you need to setup a new device with the watch and...oh wait... Pebble re-downloads and re-installs all the apps. If their app/servers go away, now we'll be looking up hack people wrote on github to get our devices working again.

Yeah, fortunately TiBu can backup both the Pebble app and the Bluetooth pairing. But that's basically next, modified firmwares already exist I believe, so I don't think it's unreasonable to think that if we need to use those and sideload apps we'll be able to.

I'm fairly sure that I could crack the pebble apk myself to remove the authentication stuff at the beginning if it's needed. Backing up all the apps and stuff before it's gone might be the bigger worry here.

Backup is already underway, Reddit folks stepped up to the challenge.

I don't think PBW format has any magic in it that could enforce cloud dependency.

Yeah, from what I saw with the customized firmwares it looked fairly open to tinkering.

I'll have to check out what's going on with the pebble community over there. Might be interesting to get as much reverse engineered as possible before everything goes belly up.

Shenzhen is booming because of Open Source hardware. It's amazing. They realized that IP is garbage and only holds back everyone.

Interesting. Where can I read more about this?

A non-comprehensive, short list of what I could find from a couple of minutes of Googling around:

[1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4751

[2] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

[3] http://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-p...

I watched this series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp6F_ApUq-c&list=PLPoleY2BUv...

Then Open Source Software needs to get better.

It is already very good.

I like how they announce it after Black Friday and Thanksgiving sales. I'm sure they knew of it during the acquisition as it would be all laid out, but they wanted to squeeze in more sales. Hopefully the average consumer gets wind of this and return their product.

I'm really thinking about returning mine. I just don't know what I would get instead since the competition is either crap or crazy expensive.

I think it's likely their product will reduce in price for fire sale, like the HP Touchpad.

At least with HP Touchpad you could flash the ROM and change the OS.

It is a difficult sell to have someone pay full price for a product when the manufacturer openly states they won't support it anymore, and may even reduce functionality in the future.

You can keep yours till the end of the return period and see if the price drops. Or maybe pebble will change their own, or open source their software (but now you paid full price for a product with no hardware support). Depending on where you bought, some stores have extended returns for the holidays.

e.g. a pledge to open source the code base if the company folds?

That sounds like a really good idea, and gives more confidence to the early adopters that the platform might live even if they fail

Could such a pledge provide enough assurance? If the company folds its IP is up for grubs, this might include their products source code. Right?

If that's the case I would prefer to purchase devices that are actually already running free software or there is free software available to flash on them.

Person

That would be a pre-existing contract that the future IP holder would (or should, if written 'securely') be obligated to uphold.

Thanks hmm... that indeed sounds legit. Would definitely like to see that. If I have no open source alternative for a connected hardware device that seems to me like the next best thing.

I also have a Pebble 2, what cloud services? The android app checks for a firmware update when you pair but is otherwise standalone.

I enabled sync to google fit because I hoped it would backup sleep data but that does nothing sensible, it's all stored locally (and in fact if you reinstall the Pebble app you lose all your data).

ps: if anyone knows of some software to export these data from an android phone, I'd love to know because I could not find anything

The timeline and dictation both require cloud services to function. Also, the app store is a cloud service.

I see, good thing I don't use any of those then...

The timeline has features which rely on a service, and all of the voice stuff is processed remotely by nuance.

It would seem that fitbit would want to retain pebble customers. If they discontinue cloud support for pebble that won't be a good thing

From what I remember, Fitbit has ~30M customers, and Pebble has ~1M. That's just 3% of Fitbit's userbase, so pretty much a rounding error. I don't believe they will care.

I'm pretty sure the pebble cloud services are going to be up and running for the foreseeable future.

source: I do infrastructure stuff at fitbit. Also they explicitly said this in the developer.pebble.com blog post.

Great! Thanks for chiming in.

I mean, I won't really blame Fitbit for whatever happens now. It was Pebble's fuckup, and my anger (which I sadly expressed in the threads last week) is wearing off.

I do hope you guys do something great with all those new people and IP. In the meantime, I guess me and other Pebblers will be extra-careful about our watches. They are really something unique and there's hardly anything like it on the market now.

Caveat emptor.

I'm not sure if this even makes sense here.

It does, if one broadens "quality and suitability of goods" to include the manufacturer–originator, which seems like a reasonable thing to do for a tech gadget purchase that will involve a long/ish term relationship with the corporation that makes the gadget in question.

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