JavaScript in the Internet of Things: JerryScript and the Fitbit Ionic | Hacker News Reader

JavaScript in the Internet of Things: JerryScript and the Fitbit Ionic

js.foundation

53 pointsrbanffy36 comments

In case you didn't know, this is the result of Fitbit's talent acquisition of Pebble. I'm still pissed we lost a <$100 programmable smart watch.

With a week of battery life and a daylight visible screen

And a hacker-friendly company, with proper SDK, lean OS, and no bullshit attached.

OK so no more week-long battery life, but Ionic still has 5 days which is not bad.

I work for Fitbit. I don't speak for Fitbit, but this page does: https://www.fitbit.com/shop/ionic#features

Fitbit killed Pebble instead of continuing it (and making a profit from it.)

I got a Garmin. I really lije it.

If Fitbit had continued Pebble I think there is a fair chance I'd gotten one.

Pebble went out of business. Fitbit acquired part of it. I don't think "killed" is accurate.

https://investor.fitbit.com/press/press-releases/press-relea...

Pebble didn't directly go out of business. Their leadership decided to cash out with a partial acquisition and laid off everyone who wasn't in engineering.

The financial situation of Pebble remains unknown to the public.

With a $269 price tag, I'm not sure what the benefit of a Fitbit is over an Apple or Android watch, other than battery life.

Fun fact, one of the original designers of the pebble timeline ui (Itai Vonshak) works on Intel's new Vaunt smart glasses prototype as head of products at the New Devices Group.

As well as the person who put JS on Pebble in the first place (Heiko Behrens, rocky.js) and Pebble's Head of Dev Tooling (Katharine Berry, CloudPebble etc.)

And yes, the Vaunt glasses run JS.

I didn't know that, but it makes me pretty excited to play with one :)

Same here! I've had the pleasure of meeting them both IRL, and frankly, Intel can consider themselves lucky that they're on the team.

I am biased (I also work there) but the benefit of a Fitbit is the consistency of the focus on fitness and overall wellness.

Over the long term the compounding positive effect can be a bigger deal in most people's lives than whatever effect is created by a flashy, "fun" gadget that enmeshes you further in the electronic haze. As a result, though, Fitbit's market positioning has become pretty solidly middle-American.

Only, now it can do some of the flashy too.

To think about where this all may be going, I had a "wow" moment after really thinking about what things like continuous glucose monitoring for the healthy masses might mean someday: http://www.businessinsider.com/blood-sugar-tracking-device-d...

I've got a Pebble Time and love it, most of the feedback I've heard from friends with fitbits is "jesus christ this is the third time I've sent it back because of a band failure."

Now the Fitbit Ionic isn't the same bands as those, but it's not exactly reassuring that they've made another proprietary one instead of accepting standard watch bands like the Pebble Time did. At least the band is independently replaceable instead of molded to the device.

The last Fitbit to come out with the band molded to the device was Surge in 2015. Your friends likely had the one that came out just before Surge, called Charge HR.

Yep, Charge HR looks like the one.

There's also nothing that comes close to Time Round in size.

I don't want a giant bulky thingy and sadly now that they're gone I don't really see a replacement on the horizon.

Such a shame :(.

Did you guys see this Pebble + Apple Watch clone from Xiaomi? If only they opened it up. 30+ day battery life with a similar display as the Pebble:

https://us.amazfit.com/shop/bip?variant=336750

Very interesting! Closed platform is a bummer, but that hardware is exactly my wishlist for a smartwatch.

A closed platform is just a hurdle to overcome - but yeah, someone has to do it. If they make it a little more consumer friendly this could be very impactful.

Software wise, the couple things I'd want are music control, TOTP codes, and health data going to Apple Health instead of Mi Fit. You can get them for $60 on GearBest though, so all things considered that's a pretty good deal for what it is.

And standard bands and hardware buttons.

So did Fitbit just decide that they didn't want that market to exist at all?

Because that's what it looks like, as a consumer.

> Fitbit Ionic marks an exciting evolution in the smart device market by both incorporating open source technologies, like JerryScript into the device itself, and allowing developers to build on top of the software and contribute apps.

I realize this is marketing copy, but what exactly is evolutionary about using open source software and providing an SDK for a smartwatch? How does this differ from Apple's offerings? Sounds like the evolutionary part is that you can use JavaScript.

FWIW, even the "can use JavaScript on IoT devices" is not new. XS[1] is an open-source, built-for-IoT JavaScript runtime with 95% ECMAScript 6 compatibility[2][3] ("JerryScript" is ES 5.1 compatible).

This is what JS Foundation thinks compelling content marketing is, I guess?

[1] Created by Moddable (moddable.com), formerly Kinoma. Terrible name, which I think is one of the reasons it's criminally-overlooked. [2] http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/#xs6 [3] http://kinoma.com/develop/documentation/js6/

It's still incredibly limited compared to Samsung's smartwatch platform.

For the past few years, the Gear watches and fitness wearables have been running full Linux. If you enable Wi-Fi debugging, you can actually ssh in to the smartwatch and poke around the file system.

The UI story is a mess though. There's EFL, a C-based GUI layer of somewhat legendary status in Linux circles (it's derived from the Enlightenment window manager). It's plenty fast, as a smartwatch should be, but kind of a bastard to program for.

Alternatively you can write HTML apps, but they run like sedated dogs on the smartwatch.

Last I heard, Samsung was trying to add React Native into the mix. I'm not very convinced that adding in yet another runtime will fix the fundamental problem.

You missed the part of the multiple C++ UIs taken initially from Bada OS, and now .NET Core.

Sounds terrible. I'm glad I don't have to care...

It gets worse, Samsung showed Tizen:RT at FOSDEM.

https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/tizen_rt/

Which is yet another variation of Tizen.

But isn't the crappy widget library a general problem with Linux? What would one use if not EFL?

Well, there's Qt, but I guess it doesn't align with the politics because it's owned and controlled by a private corporation.

I agree there aren't any good options. Given the choices on Linux, EFL actually makes sense for a smartwatch.

Not a specific answer (focused on desktop apps), but most recent relevant discussion (yesterday):

Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16318677

It would be very nice if it had a browser and something like "add to desktop" like in Chrome.

I have doubts that putting browser stuff on a microcontroller will fare well

It's evolution in the smart device market as the use of a lightweight JS engine on an IoT device goes more mainstream. Being lightweight is key to allowing third-party apps while maintaining decent battery life.

I’d imagine that the Ionic JavaScript toolkit company are not too thrilled about the name.

Haven't really noticed it, to be honest. There's a lot more web developers than wearable devs right now, at any rate.

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