How to help us build open source Pebble software | Hacker News Reader

How to help us build open source Pebble software

ericmigi.com

90 pointscmbailey33 comments

I want a kids app where a parent can send a task to the watch and have it display, possibly with an occasional alarm or vibration. Ideally with a picture and text. Bonus points for a function to read the task out loud (for kids who cannot read yet).

Basically Brilli but for a watch.

Kids generally want to follow directions but get distracted and forget what they are working on. I want an easy and consistent place for them to check “oh right, I was packing working on X when I got distracted”.

It might sound dystopian for people without kids but as a parent the fewer times I have to remind/check-in on an individual task the less frustrated I am and more patience I have. It makes me realize that when my mom complained “I’ve told you to unpack your backpack 10 times” they probably weren’t exaggerating and I only remembered the last one.

I’m possibly interested/able to write my own apps, I made an android app and I’m relatively fluent in a few languages. I would be most productive in Rust.

From an implementation point of view, I'm not sure how this could work unless the new Pebble either has wifi (not out of the question) or there's a mechanism to pair multiple of them to a single phone and clearly mark out which are kid-devices vs primary.

As a parent, I totally get you though. Ultimately kids should learn to pay attention and stay on task without the crutch of a digital nag, but it sure would be useful to be able to send them reminders or even do something like have their devices hooked up to a shared family calendar, so they could get certain periodic reminders automatically ("it's Friday morning, don't forget your toonie for popcorn day at school!")

> From an implementation point of view, I'm not sure how this could work

This could probably be a plugin for Cobble, the new Pebble companion app, which is capable of performing bridge tasks (like checking the weather or a to-do list).

I wonder is Apples AirTag networks could be utilised to send data, that would remove any need to have a data/wifi connection and it would also have an inbuilt way to keep tabs on a young child. And for most parents a short message is all that’s needed to send “Running 5 mins late, see you soon” etc.

That's a fascinating thought, since obviously it is bidirectional + there's already the ability to send a small custom payload when an object is marked lost.

If I was Apple I'd be extremely cautious about opening that up, though. Not everyone would be excited about the idea of their data plans and bluetooth bandwidth being used up to enable a free texting plan for every kid within twenty meters.

Think of how that would play out at elementary schools, with hundreds of students piggy backing off a handful of teachers' iPhones.

In my mind I was thinking it would be a more locked down parent/child relationship. So a parent could send a simple message to a child and child to then have predefined responses, ok/yes/no or perhaps a simple character input limit, whatever fits in the dead space of an AirTag message.

Then by it's nature it would be no more of an issue than a standard airtag ping.

I guess longer term you might have LoRa/meshtastic type networks that would make more sense.

I loved my pebble and pebble time, but they really lost my trust with the “Pebble Time 2” kickstarter - it really felt like the kickstarter was just a ploy to enable their sale to Fitbit. Now they are hoping for some free dev work so that they can do it again? Pass.

Edit: Want community trust? Give some guarantee (eg open hardware) that you’re not going to just kill the hardware (again) for another big buyout. I would be more excited about new pebble hardware that did NOT involve the original founder/team.

the OS is the hardest part and they are developing it as open source. my understanding is that anybody can develop hardware for PebbleOs.

As someone who didn't know much about or ever own a Pebble, can someone sell me on it and explain why it was so popular?

I had a PebbleTime back in the day. It was such an awesome watch. 7ish days of battery with an always on display that had no glare (all because of e-ink). All the foundations of a smart watch, to me at least, like notifications, text response, weather, etc were just done so well.

Keep in mind that an always on smart watch that had good battery was (as far as I know) non-existent at the time. Now, the Apple Watch is fantastic and getting about a day and a half is plenty for me, but it wasn't until just recently that I had anything to fill the space that was left on my wrist after my Pebble left me.

I still have that Pebble Time, and I'll get it from my parent's home next time I visit. I absolutely loved that thing.

Would I switch back to it? Probably not, just because I'm a very happy Apple Watch user now, but if I was still on Android, I wouldn't think twice.

Edit: Thanks to the replies that clarify the difference between e-ink and e-paper. I always forget what the difference is, but I'll have to keep the insight in mind for the future!

> all because of e-ink

And yet the pebble used a transflective LCD, sharp marketed it as an eink display but it wasn't.

To be clear it was marketed as e-paper (e-ink is a trademark). Reflective LCD falls under that category: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

Disclaimer: former Pebble employee

I love my pebble time steel. In fact, I still have one sitting around (I don't wear it for reasons unrelated to the device's quality). However, just to be clear, the screen is not e-ink. It is “e-paper” (a very low-power, low-fidelity LCD). I think this was a very carefully-considered trade-off; and, at least at the time, I think it was the right call!

I'm strongly considering going back to wearing it.

All the best,

I owned a couple, with peak Pebble being the Pebble Round. It was the only smartwatch I owned that understood it was a watch meant to be worn on the wrist, and not a portal into a series of invasive micro notifications. It was helpful, without being obnoxious. It was slim and stylish, the kind of thing you'd wear even without the built in intelligence. It was there, but only when you wanted it.

Also the battery life was measured in days, when Apple couldn't go more than 12 hours.

I had a Pebble Time Round, too, and it was great. For me the Pebble hit a sweet spot for a smart-enough watch that allowed me to keep my phone in my pocket. I could get notifications and reply to them right from the watch. I have a Withings SteelHR now, and it's great as a watch + activity tracker, but not being able to dictate replies to the notifications I get means I reach for my phone more now than I did with my Pebble

I loved that it was a fairly hackable watch with an always on display and battery life of more than a week. It did notifications and quick actions. No audio, touch screen, wifi, etc...

it did its job well.

Battery life. Smart watches require lifestyle adaptations, which for many of us with ADHD are borderline absurd. Maintaining a smart watch battery is additional ceremony my life does not need.

I look at the Pebble kind of like the musician Buddy Holly. Someone asked me, “what’s the big deal with Buddy Holly?” My short answer was that without Buddy Holly, he would not have influenced the Beatles (so said Lennon). No Beatles means modern music might be very different.

There would have been smartwatches without Pebble, but it was arguably the first practical smartwatch, and either paved the way for others, or at least had some influence. It might look simplistic now, but at the time it was the smartwatch equivalent of Buddy Holly.

I’m sure a little mythology helps, too. Like the “e-ink” display. Well, first off, Pebble never claimed it was “e-ink”, it was called “e-paper”. And if you want that display, Garmin still sells watches with the MIPS LCD displays. But the Pebble is still revered for having a unicorn display. Regardless, that display helped give it outstanding battery life.

The software was simple, and yet got the job done. The Pebble didn’t try and do more than it was capable of, making it responsive and simple to use. No touch screen, no gestures, just some buttons.

Their time line UI was really good: Go back in time to see emails and texts. Go forward in time to see upcoming events and weather info.

I was never in doubt about was button to press. I have had my Apple Watch for many years now, but still fumble around with basic stuff like turning on the torch light.

You could select what apps you want to also trigger notifications on the watch. And easily pause notifications for an hour or for the rest of the day.

It was really the first usable smartwatch in my mind.

My absolute favorite thing was that it gave developers the ability to create custom watch faces. I wrote a bunch of them and absolutely loved the dumb thing.

Long battery life

Apps/watchfaces SDK and app store

Smart replies (i.e. reply to sms)

Display visibility outside

I never had one, but several of my friends did— I was at UW the same time as Eric and was definitely aware of inPulse/Allerta before it became Pebble, and was mildly jealous of their participation in YC. The killer things were always the battery life and the always-on display.

My first wearable was a Fitbit I got a few years ago, and until recently I would have said that the HRM and sleep tracking were non-negotiable features for me. However the Fitbit (now my second one) has gotten increasingly spotty with its ability to sync that data up to my iPhone— it basically never does it automatically any more, and even when I try to initiate a manual sync it often times out with seemingly nothing transferred. And now, with several months of not having that data, it turns out I actually don't care all that much about it.

So I think I've really become the perfect Pebble customer— someone who'd enjoy something attractive and minimalist, a device that isn't distracting or invasive but gives me just enough notifications that I can fully silence my phone and be more present with the people around me, while still being aware of the important stuff, like a text from my kids.

Hopefully the new team can get this right, and with the benefit of a decade of development on both the e-ink and battery fronts, deliver a Time Round successor that cleans up some of the tradeoffs: properly watertight, no more ugly bezel, and restore the multi-day battery life.

So, I bought the Original, the Steel from Kickstarter, the Time Round, and Pebble 2.

The story was about unintrusive technology. An Apple watch is an iPhone on your wrist. It does so much that you forget all the things it does. Problem is:

1. Doing things on the watch sucks. It just does. It is too small and takes too long.

2. The ability to act on things makes it a tool for distraction.

The Pebble watches were simple -

- Watchface display

- Fitness Tracking

- Calendar

- Media Controls

- Notifications

The last one was important, by not being able to act on notifications and by being able to filter the notifications in the app, you could configure it to only buzz you when things actually matter. You can see that notification and then the hint of resistance to reply to it made it easier to stay in the moment.

Other advantages were:

- Battery Life (weeks, not a day)

- Weight & Size (The Pebble Time Round being the smallest smartwatch ever made)

- Tactile controls

- Transflective LCD (Made for incredible outdoor lighting performance)

I would also note that their design team was ungodly good. The Timeline OS's perspective on time and how it interacted with your day was 4D chess brilliant. Liron Damir's ux was some of the most fun ever, sadly the guy got stuck on all kinds of brave products that were good but failed due to biz sabotage. (They worked on the WebOS team at HP, Portal Team at Facebook, etc.)

This is a great read as well: https://medium.com/@ericmigi/why-pebble-failed-d7be937c6232

What are the challenges with replicating raspberry pi success of open(?) hardware for other form factors such as tablets, ”smart” (I prefer dumb) displays, and yes watches. Without bells and whistles, but still appealing enough that people like me (neither a hardware guy nor an embedded guy) can buy, use, and play around with it without accidentally bricking it?

I know HN is biased toward open stacks, and I know economies of scale fuck up most idealistic startups who try, or become extreme niche hobbies. Yet, I am hopeful that there’s an incentive sweet spot where a healthy ecosystem can grow around open commodity hardware.

Like what Pine64 does?

Can someone explain if they are asking for free labor? Or this actually moves the world forward?

I don't know if the hardware or any layer is patented.

Could I remake the watch, send over the software/firmware, and sell the watches legally?

You’d be amazed at how much tech runs on free labor.

It seems like their goal is to have a fully featured open source ecosystem that Core Devices (Eric's new company) builds hardware for. I don't think he's made any commitment on open source HW but you could sell your own pebbleOS devices if you wanted to (with maybe some effort required for radios or sensors that they can't legally open source code for).

Obviously he stands to benefit from the free labor, but the only reason the project makes any sense to start with is because of how many passionate hackers have kept the Pebble devices and community going. If they want to dedicate more free effort in exchange for the opportunity to buy hardware built this decade then it feels pretty fair to me.

> Please don’t get your hopes up that the new watch will have X/Y/Z new feature. It’s going to be a Pebble and almost exactly as you remember it, except now with open source software that can you can modify and improve yourself.

That’s largely pretty cool. I explicitly don’t want a touch screen, for example. However some more tracking or longer battery life (Amazfit Bip shows it’s possible) would be appreciated. Styling wise I’ll be completely happy with the Pebble Time 2.

Thinking of joining in on the Discord Hackathon if I have time!

Now I'm probably going to buy a rebble watch (or whatever they get called) regardless, but in the meantime there's a pinetime sitting on my desk. I wonder if it's possible to port the pebbleos software to that existing hardware.

Is there a reason you forward to the Pixel watch when someone clicks "No" on the "Do you want a new Pebble" lmao?? Cool animation transition though :P

I think it's based on your browser OS. Clicking the link from an iPhone sends you to the Apple Watch product page.

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