Pebble Production: February Update | Hacker News Reader

Pebble Production: February Update

repebble.com

314 pointssmig0161 comments

> Many old Pebble apps/faces use weather APIs that no longer work (Yahoo, OpenWeather). The Pebble mobile app now catches these network requests and returns data from Open-Meteo - keeping old watchfaces working!

That's some sweet quality of life fixes!

And we are very determined to keep the Open-Meteo weather API open-access indefinitely and don’t share the same fate as many closed-source APIs like Yahoo or OpenWeatherMap.

just here to say i love Open-Meteo keep up the good work !

Thanks for providing such a great service. I use it in a totally different free, OSS project, and it's really great to have this option available!

Thank you!!!

Somehow I've managed to avoid learning about Open-Meteo until now, this is really awesome!

I use your service every day. Thank you so much

How does that work? I assume these APIs use SSL, which should prevent such MitM attacks.

Are those Apps using the system SSL library which bypasses certificate validation for those domains? Or does the OS add a Root CA to the certificate store which signs fake certificates for those domains?

I suppose it's because pebble apps use the Pebble SDK, so the SDK can MITM any comms. The Pebble is not connecting directly to the Internet right?

I forget the shape of the API but the pebble requests resources over Bluetooth and the mobile app actually makes the requests so it should be able to rewrite anything before/after a request easily.

The return of com.getpebble.android.provider.basalt is a very nice development. It revives the legacy plugin ecosystem overnight without requiring original developers (many of whom may be long gone) to push updates. Moving the app store native and switching iOS weather to WebSockets are also solid wins for latency, but I'm most curious about the package ID reclamation.

Has anyone else successfully recovered a dormant package name from Google Play recently? I was under the impression that once an original developer account goes inactive, those namespaces were effectively burned forever? Is that an incorrect assumption on my part?

I'm sure it helps that the owner of the pebble package ID is Google, assuming all the developer accounts were part of the original Fitbit acquisition, and then Google acquiring Fitbit.

I see they haven't handed over https://pebble.com though, that still forwards to Google's smartwatch lineup.

I wish someone would take all the Fitness sensors of the Apple Watch, and put it in something with a simple e-ink display like these Pebble devices. I don’t care about apps, I just want a thing that measures my heart rate, notifies me if I get a call or text, has more than a couple days of battery life, and that’s it.

Garmin watches might fit your requirements.

I've been a Garmin user for 14 years and I wish someone would take the GPS, heart rate, and IMU sensors out of my Fenix and put it in an open-source product.

But GPS is really hard to get right, especially if you want weeks of battery life.

Garmin have been a decent company (in the ethical/moral sense) to be a customer of for many years, but I think they're slowly losing that reputation. Yes, my 2018 hardware still does everything it did in 2018, no, I don't pay for or currently have a need for Connect+, but they're running out of hardware optimization opportunities to push people to new devices, and appear to be seeking alternative ways to maintain growth.

Watches are now roughly in the same spot as phones - form factory is largely complete and each new version is a small iteration over previous generation, with changes that most people don’t care about.

That being said - feature I LOVE added recently-ish that made really happy I’ve upgraded my many years old garmin was a flashlight (proper one, not screen brightness). It seemed like a gimmick but it’s now one of most used features on my watch - walking dog at night, looking for kids toys under the bed, fixing things around the house, looking for things in the bag, etc.

Fully agree, the led flashlight is ridicously useful.

I use the white screen backlight "flashlight" on my Fenix 6 every day for getting out of the bedroom without waking my wife in the morning. It's good enough to do that, not nearly bright enough to be useful for taking the dog out at night or fixing stuff around the house, for those tasks I'd use the screen backlight to search for my headlamp in my backpack and then use that!

The only change I'd want from the new watches would be the emergency satellite messenger that the new Fenix 8 Pros have. The feature isn't as good as my dedicated InReach Mini 2, but like the flashlight it would be always on my wrist. However, the new watches are $1300 luxury items now, that's not the price of a fitness watch: it feels like they're no longer marketing to my tax bracket.

That's cool, Garmin finally integrated their 2016 acquisition of InReach into watches.

I grew up hearing about a luxury watch that had a satellite antenna built into it - the Breitling Emergency - that now costs over $18K and apparently could never have connected to satellites since the signal was too weak. Now a better version of that feature is on a Garmin and an Apple Watch.

My pebble 2 has a heart rate sensor, and the battery still lasts for a week after almost a decade of daily use.

> I don’t care about apps, I just want a thing that measures my heart rate, notifies me if I get a call or text, has more than a couple days of battery life, and that’s it.

https://repebble.com/watch says the Pebble Time 2 has

> Heart rate, step and sleep tracking

Isn't that what you want?

Basically! Is heart rate recorded to a Pebble specific app, or can it be synced with things like Apple Health?

I guess the one other feature I like of the Apple Watch is the rings/daily fitness goals functionality. I'll have to look into the Pebble more to see if that's possible. I also like the background monitoring features the Watch has (hypertension, etc.), but I'm assuming that's a little too much for the Pebble.

I believe you can see that stuff on the Pebble app but you can't sync with Apple health. See this previous pebble blog post: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...

The Pebble 2 could write data to Apple Health ten years ago. It would be surprising to have that missing now.

Not so surprising. In the interim, Apple watch became a thing, and Apple has since locked down the ability for third-party smart-watches to do things in the iOS ecosystem.

Some info from Eric: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...

My Garmin syncs its data to Apple Health. I don't see why Pebble wouldn't be able to do it. My understanding of the post is that it mostly refers to internal iOS APIs that are not available to third parties (e.g. actionable notifications).

That’s not true. There’s an API to read from and write to Apple Health: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/healthkit

I’m not sure if that’s something the Pebble app uses right now, but it’s certainly possible, and a third-party app could make it happen as well.

Withings scanwatch 2?

I have an older generation Withings scale that is so bad that I just would never buy another thing from them.

Eats batteries, loses WiFi, changes scale settings on its own every few days… no way I would trust them with a watch if they couldn’t handle a scale.

If battery life really is high up your list, look up Amazfit. The Bip 6 can last up to a month as a dumb watch health tracker. It's got some decent watchfaces too. Another Amazfit product that's popular is their Helio Strap, essentially a Whoop band rip off that does not require a monthly subscription but works just as well.

Exactly, why does nobody think about this!

My Garmin Instinct 2 does all of the above. I charge it every 2 or 3 weeks. Sounds like that would meet your needs.

I’ve got the solar version. It runs a long time between charges. Maybe I haven’t done enough tracked exercise recently

The only comparable to Apple Watch Sensor suite is Huawei watch, with 10-15 day battery life, but due to obvious geopolitics, that's not viable for most people, i.e. even EKG is region locked (unless hoop jumping).

I'm really excited about the Index. I don't love that it's disposable, but I really like the UX. I couldn't wait, so I made my own (obviously not a ring, but airtag-sized), and it's amazing. I have it in my pocket, I take it out, speak a little note, and it goes off to my AI assistant for whatever needs doing.

That and the AI assistant have really changed how I operate day to day. I'm super excited about the Index, and I hope it has the same capability my app has (mostly, sending a webhook with the transcription with exponential backoff, so I'm sure all my notes will eventually be sent).

can you give some more detail about the airtag-sized device you made? This is exactly what I've been thinking about doing to test the "idea" of the Index, but haven't figured out how to go about doing it.

(Tried looking on your blog, but ended up instead reading your article about the little ESP8266 clock which convinced me to buy one to play with myself, thanks!)

Sure, I haven't written it up, but the code is here:

https://github.com/skorokithakis/middle

I'll take some photos, it's larger now than it will be, because I don't have a MEMS mic (and a small battery). It looks like this now:

https://imgz.org/iACAKWj2/

I too am very excited. I had a voice recorder laying around and have worked that into my workflow over the past few months. Although, my AI assistant is a cobbled together set of python scripts.

What are you using for your AI assistant?

I made my own, as I thought OpenClaw was a bit too insecure:

https://github.com/skorokithakis/stavrobot

I love it, it's amazing. I want to add a small section to the README about how to use it well (how to manage memory and the database, basically), but it's just fantastic. It has had basically zero bugs, as well.

Interesting, would you mind sharing your architectural setup? How does your index communicate to your agent server, what is the main agent framework/engine used?

Sounds like a cool concept to speak into your watch/wearable which automatically saves or performs tasks on the fly.

What is the general execution time from:

Prompt received -> final task executed?

So basically there's a /chat endpoint that goes to the LLM (a Pi agent), which has access to call specific tools (web search, SQL execution, cron) but doesn't have filesystem access, so the only thing it can do is exfiltrate data it can see (pretty big, but you can't really avoid that, and it doesn't have access to anything on the host system). There's a Signal bridge that runs on another container to connect to Signal, a Telegram webhook, and the other big component is a coding agent and a tool container. The coding agent can write files to a directory that's also mounted in the tool container, and the tool container can run the tools. That way you separate the coder from everything else, and nothing has access to any of your keys.

You can't really avoid the coder exfiltrating your tool secrets, but at least it's separated. I also want to add a secondary container of "trusted" tool that the main LLM can call but no other LLM can change.

This way you're assured that, for example, the agent can't contact anyone that you don't want it contact, or it can read your emails but not send/delete, things like that. It makes it very easy to enforce ACLs for things you don't want LLM-coded, but also enables LLM coding of less-trusted programs.

And now it can even make private (and public!) dynamic websites that have access to data from your database, while exposing only the data you want exposed.

I'm really liking it, I created a page to show my favorite restaurants per city, for example:

https://stavrobot.home.stavros.io/pages/restaurants

That's dynamic, loading from the database, and updating live when the assistant creates new entries.

This page was created just by telling the assistant "make me a page to show my favorite restaurants, with their ratings, groupped by city".

Fascinating, thanks for responding. If k may ask, what is your monthly (or any other interval) token usage? And are you finding a pi to be a bottleneck in regards of any performance?

You mean with the bot, or with developing the bot? The bot's token usage is fairly small, but it's only a few days old so I don't know. Pi hasn't been a bottleneck that I can see, my bot is much faster than OpenClaw was when I tried it.

Was thinking about the bot. I stared your repo and will be checking it out later!

Thanks, let me know if you have feedback! I've made it fairly easy to set up, I think, you don't even need a separate server since it's all sandboxed, you can try it on your PC.

Sorry to see the timing slip once again, now from March to April. I get that hardware manufacturing involves uncertainty and risk, but they've been off launching new products instead of getting these out the door.

The delay from December to April is pretty sizable, and it makes me take all of their current estimates with a huge grain of salt. After all, they might decide to launch a necklace between now and then!

I don't know and can't speak for the team, but I suspect the "launching new products" is not a significant factor in the delays. It sounds to me like the delays are as a result of hardware manufacturing things (which maybe could/should have been planned for, but optimistically weren't), and that basically the alternative for the hardware folks would be a series of "sit on your hands for a couple weeks, then respond to the thing that came up" events, with the resulting delay for the PT2 being roughly equivalent whether they spend the intervening time designing new products or just waiting.

I considered that possibility, and if they were just adding in the PTR launch I could understand. But expanding into a totally different product line seems like it would take up a lot of time, and is surely slowing things down.

Given that the Chinese holiday is falling right in the middle of production and delaying things by over a month, it seems like they could have focused more on the PT2 and gotten it out the door sooner.

My guess is that once they realized they couldn't finish the run before the holiday, they gave up on trying to even start mass production before then. But like you, I'm just speculating from the outside.

So the Pebble Duo was a one time thing based on the cache of old parts they found? Why... A lot of people would like a cheap small thin plastic watch. Most fans went after Amazfit Blips after Pebble went out for a reason.

I love my Amazfit Neo, if that's what you want.

Yup. I actually strongly prefer the look of the duo and consider the time to be ugly. Was fairly annoyed when I got an email saying that actually they can't deliver the watch I bought and would I like to pay more for the ugly one. (Although, some other folks on HN who did get a duo said it had quality issues, so I guess I dodged a bullet)

Yeah I also find the time pretty ugly. I actually had a pre order for it, but cancelled when they revealed the final design (which was very much not to my taste, whereas I liked the preliminary design). I know Eric really likes it, and probably others do too, so I don't see it changing, but I would really like something of the more sharply rectangular design of the original Pebble. It looked so cool.

> So the Pebble Duo was a one time thing

The Time 2 too:

> Both are available in limited quantities, with worldwide shipping. Prices are in USD. Pre-ordering is the only way to get one --- https://ericmigi.com/blog/introducing-two-new-pebbleos-watch...

Not quite the same: the Duo won't ever be made again, since the leftover parts are now all gone. The PT2 could be made again, but there is no guarantee.

My guess is there will at least be periodic runs, and people will just buy a watch if they anticipate needing one in the next year or two based on battery trajectory, for example.

> Also, don’t expose it to hot water (this could weaken the waterproof seals), or high pressure water. It’s not invincible.

Aahhh. Finally the mystery of how my old pebble died is solved. Hopefully . One fine morning, the display came off. It was supposed to be waterproof and there was no puffed up battery either.

How hot is hot, though? Boiling hot or taking it to a hot shower?

How hot is a hot shower?

40-45C

Glue seal can easily loosen at 50 degrees C and a hot shower is 40-45C.. so it must have been very hot shower (or bad glue).

He seems to say not in a hot tub, but IIRC I've seen him say that showers are OK. Maybe it's because showers don't submerge the watch, even if the temp is similar? That is, the watch itself wouldn't heat up nearly as much in the shower as it would in a hot tub or bath.

> taking it to a hot shower?

Friendly reminder that they're water-resistant not water-proof... Soap decreases surface tension and might enable the water to enter through the microphone or speaker hole. Might also be susceptible to steam entering and condensing inside.

IDK if there are any watches where the vendor promises their being vapor-tight.

Glue and seals weaken with exposure to temperature extremes in both directions. I found this out the hard way too.

I spent all day out in below freezing temps, when I got back to my hotel room and my smartband (not pebble) started to warm up, the screen just fell off. Everything still worked and the screen was lit up. Fortunately I discovered it before I ripped the screen off on something. When I got home I was able to glue the screen back on and it's been operating just fine, of course it's probably no longer waterproof.

Hoping this thing holds out until I get my Pebble.

Glue and seals weaken with exposure to temperature extremes in both directions. I found this out the hard way too.

Yeah, the stuff everyone uses in consumer electronics is crap.

I learned a lot about this after I got a used boat and started working on it myself. I wish manufacturers would take a page from the marine industry and use better quality materials like Stainless 316 for metal frames and fasteners (much more rust-resistant than common 304 Stainless), Santoprene for gaskets (a UV-resistant EDPM blend with a working temperature from -81°F to 275°F / -60°C to 135°C), higher quality adhesives, etc. I noticed SCUBA (diving) and SCBA (firefighting) hardware tends to be built somewhat better (though still not perfect), presumably because it's life-safety. And NASA and others pioneered incredible materials and assembly methods for aviation and spaceflight back in the day. We have the means to build for longevity, it just costs 3X+.

Don't even get me started about commodity vulcanized rubber coatings that become a sticky mess after a few years.

I pre-ordered a round one which is going to be my third Pebble and I'm excited for it, but there is some really good competition nowadays. Casio makes a watch with similar display technology, solar power so the battery life is basically infinite (it doesn't even have a way to charge with a wire) and bluetooth time sync to your phone. It's not a smart watch so it doesn't have apps or notifications or customizable watch faces - the things that make the Pebble really fun - but as a watch it's hard to beat a GW-BX5600 if all you need is time-related functions like stop watch, timer, multiple time zones etc.

> if all you need is time-related functions like stop watch, timer, multiple time zones etc.

But if you just need that, almost any watch will do. The Pebble is clearly not made for those people.

I think it's made for those people as well as people who want a hackable customizable wearable.

I've never been a watch, necklace, ring guy. But one time when my phone was destroyed, I wished I had a no-screen typing interface somehow so I could call an Uber and get home... alas it was not meant to be, had to figure out how to use the bus.

it is possible to call a Uber with a pebble watch?

I don't know, was saying it generally like Apple watch seems to be an extension of the iPhone

I also realize your point where Uber has its own app, it's not like a phone number you just call. So a "vibration input" type device or something small/maybe without a screen would have to deal with that problem too. Voice would be the easiest interface to talk to an otherwise brick.

Not sure if it's still a thing but I remember being able to call Uber with my Apple Watch (cellular version) in 2017 when my phone died.

I was hoping to have my watch well before the forced migration of my FitBit account to Google. Now it seems to be up in the air if I will get it in time.

looks nice, I am wearing Amazfit Bip for like 8+ years, now on my third one (1st usual issue whole body popped up, 2nd got swollen battery after damaged glass and being exposed to water), the only problem I have with these Pebble watches - they are way too expensive compared to original Amazfit Bip years ago (which I can still buy used for like 15-20EUR and charge it once a month) and their battery life seems to be worse than years old Amazfit Bip

I don't care about the apps, only thing I need are notifications from phone (calendar event reminders, alarm, incoming call, messages), sleep tracking is unnecessary bonus

What is the battery life on your 2 year old amazfit bip that exceeds a month?

as I said I charge it roughly once a month, it ain't for sure 40 days as if it was brand new, but not that much deterioration

Is there a watch that looks like Pebble or Garmin Venu (e.g. small and square) that is good for navigation? I want to walk and look at the watch to see which direction to go next. It would be great for traveling in a foreign city.

At a different angle: can there be a "watch face" that shows a bit of map, and directions, while the proper navigation app is running on the phone?

Yup, I want to set a destination, walk, and only look at my watch for direction.

The Apple Watch has an interesting vibration-based navigation. Assume you’re going straight and if it vibrates you have to turn left or right. Additionally, it has specific vibration patterns for left and right so you don’t have to look at the watch at all. I use it while driving to remind me to pay attention to turn instructions or exits.

Weren’t foreign nations gonna pay the tariffs? What is this with requiring each customer to pay $10 per watch?

It’s funny how these very tariffs were introduced to “combat inflation” end up increasing it by an order of magnitude.

Any specs about Pebble 2 battery capacity ?

Their site lists a time in days, but not the actual battery specs that I can see.

30 days for the Time 2 will be pretty impressive if they can pull it off, though.

Thank you for checking :) I was unable to find any details about it. 30 days are impressive, so I was curious if there is some special battery in Time 2.

Do the pebbles have the same functionality as the Index ring? As in we can record notes with it?

Yep. I don't understand the appeal of the ring, assuming you're wearing the watch all the time. One-handed operation isn't worth much to me, and I have zero interest in a ring (which won't fit either when it's hot or cold).

Does anyone have their original pebble, that is working? Mine is long gone.

I'm curious, what sets it apart from other watches? The design look nice

Privacy, it does not push data to the cloud. And also the ease of access to the data.

Focus on longevity and extensibility. Lots of people still use their original Pebbles from 10 years ago and the community continued to release content for the platform. Also, the batteries last a really long time.

Longtime pebble user here. The main things are the always-on ePaper display, long battery life (they claim this new gen's battery will last a month!), and the hackability. I personally love the user interface and charming animations!

Pebble was my first smartwatch, all the way back in 2015. It was fun and quirky back when it was first released. Then it stopped production for many years while smartwatch category grew. Now they're coming back with same/similar models as before.

For me, its value lies more in nostalgia than anything else. I don't expect it to ever compete with the likes of my Apple watch for smart features, or a Garmin for activity tracking.

That said, it's an e-paper display so battery life is pretty good. Plus it had (and probably will have) an active community of small apps and watchfaces, which kept (and probably will keep) it from becoming stale quickly.

It's a very minor distinction, but they aren't a epaper display (low refresh rate, zero power to maintain an image), rather the technology is a sharp memory LCD (ludicrously low power, but high refresh rate). They're extremely neat and don't suffer from the washed out color and ghosting that epaper does, at the cost of needing ever so slightly above no power to keep an image displayed. I much, much prefer them even though Sharp doesn't really advertise them anymore.

https://sharpdevices.com/memory-lcd/

Isn’t e-paper the general category of low power displays? I understand that “e-ink” are a trademarked subset of the broader e-paper category, which also includes memory-in-pixel LCD displays which other watches like Garmin (and probably pebble) have. E-ink displays are only manufactured by eink corp, and are popularly found on e-readers, shelf price tags in some stores etc.

I may be mixing terms in my brain, though. Happy to be corrected.

I haven't really heard it being used like that, always heard e-paper being used as the specific e-ink displays and never anything else. The only time I've seen the (in my mind) confused messaging is on Pebble's own website, I still have my original Pebble Time somewhere, and that's a good part just down to how much I love those displays. I don't think I'd have used one for years if they were epaper.

> The only time I've seen the (in my mind) confused messaging is on Pebble's own website

Yeah, other wearable manufacturers who use the same display technology usually call it MIP instead. Pebble are pretty much the only ones who call it e-paper, which has led some to think theirs is a distinct thing, but it's just MIP.

> Isn’t e-paper the general category of low power displays?

Yes, or more precisely: reflective displays without backlight. There were many such display technologies a while ago (when the Kindle took off and various companies tried to compete with E Ink), but most have since been abandoned.

Pretty much all colored e-paper screens have much lower contrast than color printing on paper, since they mix colors by using can conventional RGB sub-pixels and darkening them individually, just like regular lit screens, which reduces the amount of reflected light.

> Pretty much all colored e-paper screens have much lower contrast than color printing on paper, since they mix colors by using can conventional RGB sub-pixels and darkening them individually, just like regular lit screens, which reduces the amount of reflected light.

Isn't that how color images printed paper works, too? We use inks (often in CMYK coloration, but a galaxy of other options exist) to subtract light from what would otherwise be reflected by a plain white paper.

What makes e-paper screens worse in this way?

They more or less have colored particles hanging around in goop and those get pushed around within a small sealed cell by electrostatic charges, there’s presumably some fundamental limit on the total quantity of the colored particles within the cell that’s quite low. I think modern displays have 4 different colored particles in each cell implying only a small portion of the contents is viewable most of the time. On paper you can have basically 100% saturation of whatever color you want in one area.

> Isn't that how color images printed paper works, too?

No. When you print a piece of paper some color, e.g. red, it will be completely red. But most e-paper screens will only be 33% red (optimistically) and 66% black. This is because physical pixels usually can't change color themselves, only brightness, so you use three of them, and darken the RGB components, to produce a colored pixel.

For displaying white on color e-paper screens you will have three non-dark RGB sub-pixels, but each color component only reflects at most a third of the incoming spectrum, either red, green, or blue wavelengths, while white paper (or monochromatic e-paper screens) will reflect all three wavelengths everywhere.

That’s not really correct, modern color eink displays actually change color, there’s different pigments inside each cell and others are created visually using dithering. Only the older type are monochrome displays with a color filter behaves like you’re describing.

https://www.eink.com/tech/detail/How_it_works

Multi-pigment panels exist but in practice nearly all color e-readers still use the filter-based panels, because they are so much cheaper. There are zero Kindle or Kobo models with the multi-pigment technology.

The ReMarkable devices are E Ink Gallery 3 multi pigment display, I have one on my desk.

I did say nearly all, and the price of the ReMarkable Pros reflects on how expensive the Gallery panels still are.

Yeah, E Ink Gallery is the only real exception to the rule with full color support. (The store signage can also change colors, but they don't support color mixing, so there are just three or four colors in total.) Unfortunately, even after 10 years, E Ink Gallery is still far behind colored paper in quality. I think fundamentally their approach to e-paper (electrophoresis displays) is just not suited for full color.

Besides what others already mentioned, it's the only smart watch with an open source OS supported by the vendor themselves (that I know of anyway).

The e-ink display is the killer feature. Week-long battery life and always-on readable display even in direct sunlight. Every other smartwatch is a tiny phone screen that dies in a day. Pebble chose the opposite trade-off: less flashy but actually useful as a watch. The open SDK and hackable firmware are the other half - you can write watchfaces and apps in C, which attracted a dev community that most wearables never get.

My old pebble lasted a week. I got one of the new ones in December and so far I've only had to charge it once!

It's e-paper, not e-ink.

I had a couple of Pebbles in the past that are now broken, I'm considering buying one of the newer ones. One Pebble Steel which had a defect for a bunch of them where the screen would gradually start corrupting and a Pebble 2 where the rubberized buttons turned to mush after all these years.

The thing I like about Pebble is the fact its not trying to do a million other things. The two things I really want in a smart watch is to be able to triage a notification/get an update without having to actually pull out my phone and have easy media controls on my wrist. Optimizing for that means it gets excellent battery life and comparatively low prices, because it doesn't need a ton of compute and giant screen and a million sensors constantly taking measurements to accomplish it.

Its nice being able to still get messages and change the music and what not while you're doing something dirty or whatever and aren't about to pull out your phone. Doing yard work, wrenching on the car or motorcycle, lounging in the pool, riding a bicycle, etc. That's all I really want.

On top of what others have said, the Watchface/App dev experience is pretty great. The OS provides a lot of compositing and animation features that encourage really lively and cute designs, and the Pebble app has a JS runtime that allows apps to do whatever phone-side stuff you need without having to build separate Android and iOS apps (or, as a user, install a ton of companion apps). Spin-up and iteration is really easy because pebble-tool manages building, deploying to QEMU, and running the phone-side code in Node.js so that you can launch and test your app end-to-end with one command.

Having to write C on the watch-side isn't everyone's cup of tea but they are actively working on a replacement for rocky.js so that you can write everything in JS.

I never had an original Pebble but was always a curious observer. To me, the attraction is a device that is clearly complementing a modern smartphone rather than trying to be a second phone on my wrist. I know lots of Apple Watches are sold sans-eSIM, and I get the appeal in very specific situations like a water park where I have to leave my phone in the locker but I can still wear a watch... the watch is now my gateway to texts, calls, Find-My, etc.

But nonetheless, that is a rare occurrence, and I don't think for me it's worth paying the battery life and complexity cost of an Apple Watch (or similar full featured wearable) for that 1% use case. I'd rather have a simpler device that just focuses on health tracking and a few notifications, basically what FitBit was if it had a better battery and didn't suck.

That it's hackable and there will likely be lots of community-maintained apps that link into services I use is gravy on top.

> To me, the attraction is a device that is clearly complementing a modern smartphone rather than trying to be a second phone on my wrist.

That’s exactly why I have it. It’s hard to get distracted by it as yet another screen in my life. Plus since I use an iPhone it currently doesn’t do text or calls, it just alerts me if I have a call coming (and calendar alerts). Basically I call it my “advanced beeper.”

The attraction is that it's like the early versions of Android, you can do whatever you want with your hardware and there's nobody to tell you no.

The app store is delightfully quirky and adding a watchface is just a matter of drag and drop. There's no Gatekeeper, or hundred of pages of Terms of Services and Privacy Policies and GDPR disclaimers you have to fill out. You don't have to sacrifice your first born child to Big Tech and nor do you have to beg for root permissions on your own hardware. Whatever goes, caveat emptor. If you install malware and brick your device (a very difficult thing to do given that it's a watch), well, that's also entirely on you.

It's similar to why OpenClaw went viral; you can do whatever the fuck you want with it, nothing is wrapped up in carefully sanitized corporatism, with everything locked down to a t and filled with cover-your-ass privacy and permissions declarations that are not worth the pixels they are displayed on.

Nobody's around to nanny you and play authoritarian daddy with what you do with your watch. If you want to share offensive, pirated, or DMCAed watchfaces — go wild. If you want to build a protest app to track government thugs and civil servants — all the power to you! If you want to turn it in to a sex toy controller to use during long boring church services — well, that's between you and your faith, there's no Big Tech between God and your bedroom. It's just like the old days of Android and APKs and jailbroken iPhones. A return back to simpler days of open computing.

Your grandma won't get as much out of this watch versus an Apple Watch, but if you are a real hacker at heart, this is the device for you.

I still wish other smart watches behaved like a pebble, the interface was so intuitive you could use it to do the basics without looking at it most of the time.

It's like trying something so good it ruins every other one for you. The UX was just so well thought through i don't know how to explain it.

Pebble was sort of the first/only smartwatch that are common+open enough && uses simplistic lightweight OS such that it'll last couple weeks per charge. Its competitors either didn't exist, weren't open(Xiaomi), or burned enormous amounts of power that they required daily recharges(Google/Apple).

You know the proverb: "jack of all trades, master of none"?

For Pebble fans most of other watches sound like that. Pebble, o.t.o.h., is focused on doing well just the essential: always on reflective screen, long battery life, easy to develop, UI based on buttons instead of touch screens, being easy to program to,...

For me, charm and character.

I was an original Pebble Kickstarter wearer from 2012, then got the initial Time, then the first Android smartwatches (Moto 360!) then basically every Apple Watch from then to now. Even used Google Glass a few months in 2013.

I like my wearables. I use features on my Apple Watch constantly: NFC payments, voice reminders, fitness and sleep tracking, make my iPhone yell out so I can find where I put it, etc.

But not a single damn wearable I've had has captured a fraction of the charm the original Pebble and Pebble Time had. Their UIs are low-res by modern standards, and greyscale or largely solid colors, but wow.

Dug up some videos as reference. Here's one that highlights what the core system UI aesthetic is like. Notice the transitions as you use the UI. I remember it feeling really snappy too, and it feels great to use a UI that moves like that with physical tactile buttons, as opposed to scrolling a Digital Crown or using the touch screen on an Apple Watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdRENEQcymQ

And aside from the system UI, the community of apps that existed for it back then and no doubt will continue to grow now has a lot of charm too. The creators of all the apps are making them out of love, not to be a Top 10 on an Apple app store. And they don't exactly have a strong cohesive system UI to comply with unlike Apple. Human Interface Guidelines are wonderful for phones and tablets and for serious app ecosystems I depend on, but watches are Not That Serious as far as I'm concerned so the individuality and love within each app just fills me heart with joy every time I look down at my wrist.

Can this do NFC/tap to pay? That's all I use my smartwatch for....

It can't, and I wouldn't hold my breath for such a small company being able to navigate compliance for contactless payments. The Pebble does use standard watch straps though, so you could get one of the ones with a programmable payment chip embedded inside.

If that's all you use your smartwatch for, you may as well skip the watch and get a payment bracelet or ring though.

e.g. https://www.curve.com/wearables/

Except not in the USA. To bad the rings looks nice.

I used to use Curve but they became really unreliable, especially when paying for public transport, so I just switched back to a normal card.

Shame because you can get some nice watch straps with curve integration, which would neatly solve the missing payment feature on Pebble watches.

Since this is hackernews, I'll point out that you can use a solvent to remove the card part of a credit card leaving only the chip plus antenna. Then embed in a new housing of your own design.

Ya, and then attach it to the back of your watch...

Yeah, Hornady makes a nice rubber thingy that you can slide onto a watch band with their RFID tag inside, but it's easy to swap it with a t5577 or whatever

This. I seldom leave the house with an iPhone, and my Apple Watch with cellular is my primary "mobile" device. I want to leave the Apple ecosystem as my devices age out, and the one thing I would love to have is an NFC ring or bracelet to replace my Apple Watch.

Eric has said publicly this is not happening. Looks like he's making a watch that fits his use case, and since he always carries his phone that's not a priority.

Left handed mode, nice!

Could it be manufacturee in USA?

When the first Pebble was released, and I got a couple of those, it was unique and cool as hell. This time around, you can get a programmable smartwatch from China for a fraction of the price looking way cooler.

Edit: https://diyusthad.com/2021/04/top-5-open-source-smartwatch.h...

Mind to share one of those models ?

Far has I know, pebble user have spent the last 10 years searching for another pebble without luck.

One example could be Watchy. ESP32 based. 40 bucks. Check the link I've added in my original reply.

You can't get a hackable watch for a fraction of the price, though.

I'd pay more for being able to fumble about in the codebase and add exactly what I want.

I wouldn't put in the same league as pebble, but it definitely ticks the boxes:

https://banglejs.com/

Battery life is real.

Ticks the boxes, but not the buttons. :-(

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007059416132.html

_This item does not exist_

Please post the item title, aliexpress links tend to be short-lived

It was just a link to that same Watchy I have mentioned elsewhere. Check the link in my original reply for a list of multiple ones.

https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/ is $27, which is a small fraction of the cost of a Pebble.

For me it's the eink display that makes them interesting. Being programmable or looking cool is nice, but for that I could also buy an Apple/Google/Samsung watch - that's not unique.

The Pebble display isn't e-ink, or unique amongst watches, it's an off-the-shelf MIP LCD from Sharp.

You can get the same thing in watches from Garmin, Coros, Polar, Suunto, Casio and probably more.

I think you're confusing Pebble with something else. All current models on the website as well as the OG pebble (according to Wikipedia) use eink displays.

Transflective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Hardware

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Hardware

> The watch featured a 32-millimetre (1.26 in) 144 × 168 pixel black and white memory LCD using an ultra low-power "transflective LCD" manufactured by Sharp

Later generations are color, but it's the same tech. If you've ever used actual e-ink then it should be obvious enough that the Pebble displays are something else, it would be nowhere near responsive enough to keep up with pebbleOS's animations.

They’re Sharp memory displays, functionally LCDs but with memory for retention under each pixel. They are not and have never been eink.

Size is the main differentiator for me. I had a pebble, then an Apple Watch, and I've always hated how chunky the Apple Watch and other competitors are.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1qr1npj/pebble_roun...

"programmable smartwatch from China" can you share some examples?

Not gp, but here are some: https://diyusthad.com/2021/04/top-5-open-source-smartwatch.h...

Check out Watchy. $40. If you search for ESP32 based watches, you'll find plenty. Not all that good looking, but you can probably get one for under 5 bucks.

There's so many these days. Just have a look at AliExpress. There were various KS/IGG campaigns, too. One thing which kind of stood out was a smartwatch remote with what I will summarize as 'Flipper Zero capabilities'. I think I saw it on Etsy. It looked terrible though. For red teaming, you'd want something which looks professional, and blends in. Ideally with a watchface as, ehh.. 'screensaver'.

The Deauther Watch?

Yeah, that is it. Dstike Deauther Watch / Travis Lin, on Tindie. I haven't tried it, but that is the one I was referring to. They got several iterations.

ok buy one of those then

I have. The main reason though, for me not buying a Pebble, is less about the watch and more about Eric. It seems that his whole modus operandi, is selling out his customers.

Pebble hadn't been in this mess in the first place, if it wasn't for him. Going back to him a second time, is just unresponsible in my opinion.

Pebble also wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for him (either time) so I suppose it's a wash

I guess you have a good point there :)

> his whole modus operandi

Are there other examples besides just his Pebble company version 1?

InPulse, Beeper. He isn’t in this to build something, he is just starting it in order to sell it - as he always does.

I started using Amazfit years ago, love it and it delivers.

I had Basis first and this is the most loved watch from me, then Pebble.

Personally. If I were to use $100+ on a hackable smartwatch, I would much rather go for a Sensor Watch Pro than a Pebble :)

Hopefully this segment starts cooking with how easy slop code is now. TBH pickings still pretty slim. I just want something with oled touch screen, crown and 3-4 button inputs.

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