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Comment by noname120 | Hacker News Reader

I'm highly skeptical that they will sell 20k units at that price point.

I know that the diabetic community are extremely interested on these watches. 30 days of battery life, already working support for Android APS and xDrip with these watches. What is there not to like. Put one of these to your child's wrist and they can get alerts on the glucose level easily.

Glucose levels were my first thought as well.

I don't understand how the watches help with glucose levels. The specs mention step, sleep and heart rate tracking.

What am I missing?

(Vested interest as a diabetic myself.)

Diabetics have a sensor on their bodies that speaks Bluetooth. It talks to their phones (running eg. xDrip). The phone then communicates this to the watch.

My wife is a diabetic and this kind of stuff, while it seems minimal, makes a big difference for her quality of life.

So it is just a better way of accessing information collected from another device?

Correct

It's all about building these things by yourself. The tools are there, and Pebble used to be the first smartwatch every open source diabetic I know used (including myself).

If you're not familiar, here's a good starting point:

https://androidaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Oh, and you want to avoid Apple's hardware. Some of the software can only be distributed as source code, so installing them to an iOS device is not easy.

I would definitely get the color Pebble over many competing devices. I do not need fancy sport features, steps+sleep+heart rate covers all my needs, and 30-day battery life honestly sounds like a dream.

That's a great price point, and there's a lot of pebble fans

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