Pebble Production: February Update

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.

Garmin watches might fit your requirements.

> 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?

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

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?

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!)

> 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.

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

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.

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)

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

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

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/

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.

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.

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!

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).

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).

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 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.

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

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,...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

ok buy one of those then