Google has a reputation for killing products. RIP Google Reader, Google Podcasts, Google Cardboard, and hundreds of other devices, apps, and services.
But in a surprising turn of events, a long-dead project is rising from the Google Graveyard. Google has open sourced (most of) the operating system that powered the Pebble smartwatch and Pebble founder Eric Migicosvky says he plans to launch a new smartwatch that runs the newly open sourced operating system. It will have “basically the same specs and features as Pebble, though with some new fun stuff as well.”
Now, to be fair, Google didn’t actually kill Pebble. But Google acquired the company that did, and that means Google owns Pebble’s intellectual property and hasn’t really been doing much of anything with it.
The original Pebble smartwatch launched in 2013, and it was a device that both helped show that there was a market for smartwatches and that it was possible to use crowdfunding to kickstart a successful company. Pebble build a small but loyal fan base and an active developer community and the company released a couple of additional models over the next few years. But as bigger companies entered the smartwatch space, Pebble struggled to compete.
Eventually Fitbit acquired Pebble and then Google acquired Fitbit. Along the way, Pebble hardware, software, and services were officially discontinued… but kept somewhat functional thanks to the folks at the Rebble project, which developed replacement for the Pebble firmware and services.
Migicovsky says he’s still using Pebble watches, partly because none of the newer options that have emerged offer the features he was looking for including an always-on electronic paper display that’s easily visible without emitting light (although it’s worth noting that Pebble uses transglectice LCD displays, not E Ink), a battery that lasts more than a few days, physical buttons for controls, and hackable software that makes it easy for developers to create new apps and watch faces.
I spoke with Migicovsky last week and he told me that one of his favorite things to do during Pebble’s heyday was to logon to reddit and see what new apps and watch faces independent developers had made available for download. He’s hoping to recreate that kind of community – but he’s also keeping his ambitions a little simpler for his new smartwatch project.
Basically the goal is to create new hardware that he wants to use, with the idea that there seems to be a small community of other folks who want the same thing. The plan is not to compete with Apple, Samsung and other major tech or fashion companies in the mainstream smartwatch space. Migicovsky wants to keep the new company intentionally small, focus on making a niche product for an enthusiast community, and not have to answer to outside investors who are looking for big returns on those investments.
He hasn’t announced how much the new watch will cost, exactly when you’ll be able to get your hands on one, or even what it’s going to be called (it won’t be called Pebble). But you can sign up at repebble.com to be notified when more information is available.
One thing to keep in mind is that Google has released most of the source code for PebbleOS, but not all of it. There were some proprietary components in the Bluetooth stack and chipset support that Google didn’t have the rights to release. And without those bits you cannot simply compile the code Google has released and expect it to work on a Pebble watch. But the newly open sourced software should help the folks at Rebble and Migicovsky’s company as they port PebbleOS to new hardware or continue to support the software running on older hardware.
Meanwhile the folks at Rebble have announced plans to form a non-profit foundation to continue development of the software that makes Pebble watches tick.
As nice as it might be to have a totally organic community on a third party platform, social media looks like it’s so utterly messed up right now that it’s probably for the best to just make your own forum for the new watches.
Lora on board?
I only ask form my friend.
I can pretty much guarantee that it won’t have Lora on it because almost nobody wants it. The small number of people who have a use case for using that from a watch already have existing options.
The only thing I could even imagine LORA in a smartwatch being useful for is tracking the locations and health data of a bunch of people under your command.
Of course there are uses for it, like if you operated a site and had a bunch of sensors sending information over it. You could have your watch receive those directly, and without needing to have working WiFi everywhere on the site, you would be able to see the state and any alerts with a glance at your wrist. The problem is that there aren’t any uses for it that are going to sell in the mass market. Pretty much everything is for a person or group willing to write their own software and plenty of it to make it do anything at all. That makes it pointless and expensive to build something in that most customers will not appreciate.
Tracking locations and health data doesn’t make any sense. Lora doesn’t work well as a positioning system. You can do it like you can triangulate any other signal, but the hardware necessary to do that with much precision is overkill. I’m not sure why you would want to track health data, but a broadcast of health data that’s still limited in range wouldn’t do much as compared to linking it with a shorter-range but higher-bandwidth method.
I’m pretty sure that if I wanted to see the data from a bunch of other sensors on a LORA network, I’d prefer a bigger screen to look at the data on.
As for getting the position data from watches, that’s just a matter of having the watches transmit whatever data they have from their own GPS (not that the revived pebble watches will necessarily have that).
I have a Garmin Instinct 2 which is almost perfect, but I always end up going back to my Pebble because of its buttons, simplicity, and always-on display.
Garmin enduro with a mip-display, solar charging, physical buttons, etc. lasts for over a month.
Like, I’m sure the guy likes his Pebble, but pitching it as something uniquely featured just doesn’t fly.
Also, the enduro is a fully featured sports watch with a god damn flashlight.
False. Enduro doesn’t get even close to that battery life. Per the product page:
“ Keep going, with up to 80 hours battery life in GPS mode — or up to 300 hours in max battery mode1.”
Yeah, when tracking a sport..
And it costs ? 500€ if you’re lucky ? Also, can you write simple apps for it ?
It’s not the same category of product at all. I had two Pebbles back in the day, and I agree that there has not been an equivalent watch since then. Affordable, reliable for days, simple but practical and hackable. Every watch I’ve known was lacking on one of those aspects at least (which does not mean they’re all bad).
While I wish the revival all the best I’m not sure there’s room in the market any more. I’m wearing a Garmin Instinct 2X which has buttons, an always-on monochrome display, a month of battery life or more, plus all the rugged, sporty and health tracking features you’d expect.
What was the old pebble’s battery life, a week? Maybe a new version can do better and undercut Garmin on price.
My OG Pebble went from a weeks battery life up to 2-3 weeks on the latest firmware, and that was after 2 years of daily use, pretty good, I’d say 🙂
That’s impressive and if it happened on newer firmwares that explains why the reviews all say a week, or 1.5 days for the Pebble Time Round. Newer versions should at least match Garmin if they skip heart rate tracking. I think it’ll come down to price.
Ooh, I’m in. I miss the heck out of my original Pebble. Its battery lasted weeks, it wasn’t sending fitness data to a hundred different businesses, and it had that nice pre-programmed text response menu built-in.
No other device confused so many people about display technology: they said “electronic PAPER”, but it is simply a reflective LCD, exactly a Sharp Memory LCD. So no, no paper, LCD.
I liked those display, at least monochrome/B&W¹ versions, because with color you loose a lot of contrast in those reflective displays (if you can turn on backlight, for some situations, it is called transflective display, a very old tech I remember form some ugly Windows CE PDA decades ago).
I’d like they choose monochrome Memory LCD, like in original Pebble, instead of color Memory LCD like on Pebble Time, because with color you loose contrast and increase consumption (because you need to active backlight much more times than with B&W display).
¹: And it was really black and white, because those no-color Memory LCD have 1-bit memory per pixel, so they can be on or off, black or white, no greys in the middle. Of course you can simulate greys like you do on other 1-bit per pixel displays.
It might surprise you to know that ePaper/eInk displays are also not really made out of paper. You fell for the marketing.
“Flexible electronic paper uses plastic substrates and plastic electronics for the display backplane.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper
I don’t think they thought it was made out of paper. They were pointing out that the two types of display are different. At a basic level, real epaper displays don’t require power to maintain a static image. LCDs do. There are other differences in appearance and functionality.
lie, bangle.js
Huh, I missed that when it came out a few years ago. It does look remarkably Pebble-like.
There do seem to be a few small differences: For example, the Pebble has more buttons, while the Bangle.js has a touchscreen. Migicovsky seems to really prefer buttons, so I wouldn’t say this is a “lie,” so much as a statement that he hasn’t found anything that meets his very specific requirements.
But this is certainly worth checking out for folks that don’t want to wait for a new Pebble (or whatever it will eventually be called).
the first version of bangle js had enough buttons. unfortunately discontinued
Garmon has gone better in some ways: some of its models have always-on monochrome display (they can be seen better than color displays without backlight) and SOLAR panel around displays, so they can get near real always on smartwatch: it could be you don’t need to connect it to recharge in years, because it recharges itself with solar or ambient light.
garmin is proprietary garbage with proprietary software garbage
I didn’t know about it either, though I knew there are multiple Esp32-based watches project out there. I don’t really count those as pebble “competitors” because they are more for makers-type of persons, not general users. bangle.js seems to be a bit more advanced, but at first sight not as user and consumer friendly (both for developpers/hackers and non-developpers/”normal” persons) as Pebble (OS) was.