Show HN: Version 1.1 of our $99 hackable Bluetooth smartwatch | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Version 1.1 of our $99 hackable Bluetooth smartwatch

wwww.getinpulse.com

139 pointserohead63 comments

Eric from inPulse here. We're back in stock with a $50 discount today. Now with a native compile option (http://www.getinpulse.com/guide/local/) and a bunch of tweaks that improve on the first version. Check out what other developers have written at http://www.getinpulse.com/apps

I'm also trying something new...hosting a Google Hangout at http://www.getinpulse.com/hangout. Drop by, ask questions and get a live demo of inPulse.

FWIW, the Google Hangout has got you at least one customer. I was weary of how chunky it would be, but you just showed me it on your wrist and it looks ok. I'll be putting in an order shortly.

EDIT: Hmm. I should have placed the order straight away. Looks like the site is getting hammered now.

Suggestion: what about a lite version?

I don't particularly want or need a watch that can display email alerts or interface with my phone or even run a program I wrote (although that last one is really slick). I have a smartphone in my pocket which does all that.

And I definitely don't want a watch whose battery I have to charge every night. Last year I changed the battery in my current watch for the first time ever. I've had it since 2001.

What I would pay money for, though, is a slick watch with a brilliant and skinnable display. One of the reasons why I've stuck with the same watch for ten years is because it (Casio Databank Telememo 30) is one of the few watches I've found with a screen at a high enough resolution to display day, date, and time all at once at a size readable from 5 feet away without looking chunky or ugly.

(No, I don't care about my watch's ability to store telephone numbers. It's a curious example of an evolutionary dead-end; the ability to store 30 telephone numbers in my watch was barely convenient, though gimmicky, when I was in high school. This is true no longer. But the fact that Casio had to design a screen capable of displaying a name and telephone number means that the screen is also capable of fulfilling my requirements above.)

I've said it before, I'll say it again - build one with ANT+ and I'll buy a dozen. I don't see any reason why I'd want an adjunct to my smartphone strapped to my wrist, but I can think of countless uses for a tiny device that can read and interpret sensor data via low-powered wireless. ANT+ is the killer app for the "smartwatch".

The Motorola Motoactv http://www.motoactv.com is an Android watch targeted to runners, so it has ANT+ as well as GPS and Bluetooth. Though it's much more expensive ($249), and doesn't have an open API. It pairs with Android phones and displays texts and lets you take calls with your headset.

That said, I have one, and use it for running and love it.

Is ANT+ popular in the US? I see companies like Nike promoting it, but I've never laid hands on a device supporting it (I'm in Europe).

It's huge in Europe and the US amongst cyclists and triathletes. All UCI ProTour teams use it, with the exception of the teams sponsored by Polar. A good ANT+ system can do some very clever things that provide substantial competitive advantage. Many triathletes use the iBike Aero system, which in conjunction with a force-sensing power meter will calculate coefficient of drag in real time.

I see it in finiteness devices. It allows you to integrate things like heart rate monitors and cadence sensors on bicycles or running shoes with watches and smartphones.

Once a device has ANT+, it is the logical tool for data transfer as well, so devices like Garmin watches come with an ANT+ USB dongle to integrate with your computer.

But to be fair, ANT+ data transfer is super fucking flaky. I would say that I get my running data off my Forerunner about 50% of the time when the watch is physically touching the USB dongle and 0% of the time when it's not.

And, nothing ANT+ seems to work under Linux. So let's skip this for a while and stick to Bluetooth or USB; it works better and works everywhere. You have to plug in your watch to charge it anyway.

Most of Sony Ericsson's Xperia line support ANT+, and I use it with a Garmin heart rate monitor transmitter.

http://www.thisisant.com/pages/developer-zone/android-api

It's catching on in certain markets. Garmin has been dropping it into a lot of its cycling gear.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=160

I love the watches but I would somehow love to take a stab at re-designing the landing page.

Somehow your background colors are not supporting the watches well.

Edit: Just tried removing the background and the orange element. You really should consider making the background darker. It will make your watches look more digital and crisp. (You should also considder getting a proper photographer or photoshop wizard to re-do the pictures of those watches)

Again love the watches, but can't stand seeing them not presented properly.

HN peeps help me out, there is a tool/service that lets you reskin a website and then show that to the site owner. What the heck is it called?

I think the service you want is http://bo.lt/

Lets you "remix" websites and share them.

It was like that (which is pretty cool btw, thanks) but more oriented to designers. I think website owners were encouraged to put a button on their site that invited designers to alter the css and submit a variation.

Unfortunately, I can't help you, but I know the one you mean. It's the site that lets you include custom CSS you write and then gives you a URL with it, isn't it? It was on here a few months ago.

FOUND IT! It was called 'csspivot' and it appears to be dead now. Here's the old blog: http://blog.csspivot.com/

Very nice! Odd that they've gone dead after raising a bunch of cash, though...

Firebug?

I've long been fascinated by the making of physical products. It seems to much harder than software. I feel like I can make bits dance from my keyboard, but assembling atoms is much harder. Any chance you could write a blog about how you made this, the challenges, and the like? Also, possible to bootstrep your way through it?

I gave a talk at the Hacker Dojo recently about starting up a hardware company. They posted a section of the talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afH8KGv0W24 Happy to chat about this kind of stuff eric AT getinpulse.com

Great idea but right now, I think far too much real estate on the face of the watch is not a screen. The digital part should be flush with the border instead of effectively having two strokes around the screen. That alone would make me wait for another version.

Here are examples I would try doing

http://www.timefy.com/en/design/420-watch-i-steel-by-flemmin...

http://www.timefy.com/en/design/599-slip-watch-white-by-non-...

Really curious: why did you use l2cap over spp? With spp you'd at least have full coverage of all Android devices since 2.0, independent of platform-specific stacks. Is spp an option at all?

To be honest, it was a limitation due to our custom BT stack and limited processing power on the micro. We tried implementing SPP, but quickly ran out of space.

Very nice. What's in the way of letting it support the iPhone?

As it appears that it's basically the notification/alert functionality of the OS extended to a watch, I'm going to guess that feature touches too much of the core OS to be integrated into iOS without a great deal of help/work from Apple.

Bluetooth, except for a few profiles, is locked down on non-jailbroken iPhones and requires the manufacturer to jump through Apple's 'Made for iPhone' hoops and design in a authentication chip into the hardware.

Does anyone know if this is also true for developing bluetooth low energy devices or are they going to be more open about that?

I have a solution in the works to interface with a Jailbroken iPhone :) Should be up in the next two weeks.

http://www.getinpulse.com/hack/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t...

Probably Apple.

Besides the obvious advantages of open source and hackable, how else is this better than the ipod-nano as a watch design?

Oh interesting that someone thought of comparing the sizes:

http://www.sizeasy.com/page/size_comparison/31203-inPulse-vs...

Might be fun to pair with a bluetooth heart rate monitor for highly customized aerobic (running/cycling) workouts.

Particularly for allowing someone to easily get a customized interval workout. More specifically, I would enjoy having a heart rate alarm that allowed me to spend 10 mins at 70% max heart rate, then switch up to 4 minutes at 95%, 2 mins recovery to no less than 70%, repeat . . .

I could see how personal/high school/college coaches might like that.

Has anybody done any hacking with the garmins HRMs with GPS?

Or to buzz every 30 seconds (or however long you're going) for HITT workouts. I've tried using MP3s with beeps put in every 30 seconds, but the headphones fall out/off/get knocked around when I'm sprinting full-bore. MP3s also have the disadvantage of forcing you to start right on a beep, so if you get interrupted for a second or two it throws off your workout. A HRM could start whenever you started.

Very cool :)

What's the battery life like?

I gather input is bluetooth and the side button, output is speaker (buzzer?), display and vibration? If this is the case then I'm sure a few more buttons would be useful, or possibly a basic touchscreen - something along the lines of splitting the screen into four reactive areas, obv not pixel-precision touchscreen as that would be silly.

Great product at a great price - best of luck with this!

24 hour battery life while connected by BT, 3 days while used just as a watch.

Nice job shipping your 1.1! I'm always interested to see new developments with this project.

Sweet :) I'm curious - what prevents the app from running on Android phones apart from Nexus One, Nexus S, Motorola phones and CyanogenMod users? Something to do with access to certain bits of Bluetooth functionality?

Each Android handset manufacturer can choose which Bluetooth stack they want to use. Unfortunately the L2CAP API calls we use aren't available in the Broadcom stack, which is notably used by HTC and Samsung.

Ah, I see... that's a pity :( I'd assumed the Android platform was at least a little more homogenous than that - surely people would have learned from the horrors of J2ME development...

The phone interaction is predominantly so you don't have to take your phone of your pocket right? (I'm assuming if you have a bt headset, it will announce the caller, and you can decide to pick up that way.)

Unless I'm missing something, can I recommend an android app I wrote called NameBuzz: http://goo.gl/rd7df . It's basically a vibration based caller ID, that works based on the number of syllables in the callers name (Or you can add a per-contact pattern).

I saw an old guy wearing this while driving and thought that is was brilliant for accessibility with its oversized buttons and interface. Perhaps you should market this exclusively to older people?

I got to look at one recently. They are a tiny bit bulky, but beautiful. Would like to see an accelerometer in there though. And GPS. (Pretty soon this thing would be an iPhone on your wrist.)

http://www.metawatch.org/ The TI version has an accelerometer - and a higher price tag to accompany it.

Why would you want an accelerometer in your watch?

Presumably to act as a pedometer and sleep analysis tool; think Fitbit.

this. I would rather have a jawbone up to track health, there's very few times I'm wishing i had a watch to give me caller-id info.

What's the hardware spec, can't seem to find anything about that.

http://www.getinpulse.com/developers/faq/

Not much there but they mention an ARM7 microcontroller. I remember seeing one of their job postings here and they were asking for ARM experience as well.

http://www.getinpulse.com/specs/

Seems like it could be cool for notification on signups or purchases for your startup instead of rigging it to a bell, as you can bring this with you!

How do you check the time on an inPulse watch? I'd get one if you could do it without needing to press a button.

You write a C program to display the time.

I'm mostly joking, but it does depend on the program it's running. I think most of them go to sleep to conserve battery so you have to push the button to wake it up.

It might be cool to have an accelerometer so you could shake to display the time (and do things like tracking your motion like Fitbit)

There is a smaller clock that is always displayed on the screen so you don't need to press a button to view the time. You also have the option to always have the larger clock displayed - at the expense of battery life. These features and a ton more can all be customized through an app that is installed on the smartphone.

I just ordered one! Finally something to do with my Blackberry. Can't wait to get started with the SDK

Who are you? Where are you based? And do you ship to the EU? :)

i think in EU you can buy imwatch.it (they're italian) but it's more expensive. Dont know how it is compared to this one

Is this watch waterproof and shockproof?

Awesome, congratulations on shipping!

Will iPhone support ever be possible?

what are the actual improvements with this new version?

Android support (Nexus and Motorola phones), higher contrast screen (darker), eliminated a few physical issues (strap, button) and tightened up the aesthetic look

Does it have a mic?

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