Thank you, Google. You didn't have to, but you did. We (the Pebble team and community) are extraordinarily grateful.
I wrote a blog post about our plans to bring Pebble back, sustainably. https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back
We got our original start on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827868), it's a pleasure to be back.
I vividly remember spending days fine tuning the heuristics of a simple step detection algorithm in the first watchface where I thought “seeing your daily step count next to time sure is awesome”. And later, tens of thousands of people thought so as well - this was one of the signs what the health-tracking wrist device is about to become.
It was incredible that even the first model allowed you to run a 30 samples per second accelerometer sampling and classifying the movement, 24/7, and still lasted days. No other watch offers a similar level of hackability.
And as the time progressed, Pebble became the first platform to get Weathergraph - my graphical weather watchface.
Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down), and then to Apple Watch widget (as it became a capable platform with the introduction of standalone watch-apps in watchOS 6), and then to iOS app & widget, where it now lets me live a life of indie developer, after a serie of corporate design/PM/dev jobs.
Thank you for that, Eric & Pebble team.
I still keep the developer edition Pebble with my name printed on the back (great touch!) in my shelf and heart, and will always remember Jon Barlow, one of the best and most helpful developer advocates I ever encountered.
And kudos to the whole dev team. The watch and companion app was rock stable, always staying connected, the calendar always being in sync, watch apps installed quickly and reliably - the things that 10x larger companies struggled with for years were nailed here almost from day one.
Godspeed!
PS: What a mishap to shut the company down shortly after a release of Pebble 2. It nailed the experience of a lightweight watch, with the most contrasty BW reflective screen I have seen, and buttery smooth animations (while Garmin still renders menus in like 8-10 fps on their MIP screens 10 years later). So small and lightweight, I’d love everyone to try it on, and compare with 2024 smartwatches.
> Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down), and then to Apple Watch widget
Thanks for bringing Weathergraph to life. I found it on the Pebble and used it religiously until I experienced enough challenges with Rebble to switch to a Garmin watch. I was thoroughly chuffed when I saw that you had brought Weathergraph along with you.
Are you saying I'd have to get an Apple Watch to get the third-generation Weathergraph? ;-)
A decade of messing with my search results (they only cannot do that anymore since I switched to Kagi) and the killing of Google+ (still interested if anyone have alternatives. Despite its problematic start it became the only social network I ever enjoyed).
I don't think I was a particularly early user of Weathergraph - but when I finally had to retire my Pebble Time I only considered platforms that had your watchface.
Thanks very much for the attention to detail!
And I don't want this:
https://wristcam.com/blogs/learn/do-apple-watches-have-camer...
I then looked at what http requests their app makes which was more straightforward and actually interesting but still not what I wanted... I hope I will find the time to try again soon.
I would like more transparency on how long each device gets updates for, similar to how Apple handles their products.
The biggest downside is that the battery does not seem to be user-replaceable, so the 1 month of run-time I used to get slowly fades down to about a week or two after a couple of years of use. I can't go away for more than a week now without bringing the charger.
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My only wish is for an easily serviceable battery.
It's not really playing in the same ballpark, though, is it?
48 hours of battery life is indeed very good for an Apple Watch, but I used to charge my Pebble maybe once a week, and my Withings Scanwatch about once every 3 weeks...
When I got a garmin smartwatch I was astounded by how poor the basic ux is in almost every single way. If I’m swimming, how do I stop my work out? The touchscreen doesn’t work because it’s wet. I have to do some sort of double click of the button. No that’s pause. Maybe triple click - no that didn’t do anything. Maybe hold the button? Now it wants to delete my whole workout.
And the GPS sync thing amazes me. I put up with this problem when I was using garmin GPSs for accurate time sync for servers back in the 1990s, but 25+ years later for them not to have figured it out when literally every other GPS device does it just fine completely blows my mind. Apple watch? I want to go for a walk/run/whatever I hit go. If I move during the 3-2-1 countdown nbd it figures it out. Garmin I want to do it I hit go, it tries to sync the sattelites. If I move during this process it starts from scratch. Sometimes the sync takes 30 seconds or so. Annoying but not impossible to live with. Most of the time however the sync takes 30seconds or so and just fails. Also annoying but whatever. Some of the time however the sync takes a few minutes and then fails. And if I move at all during this, it gives me a message saying it’s going to have to start again and starts from scratch.
And to add insult to injury the thing has a custom charging plug with the socket on the back of the watch. It has a ridge and two spikes that physically press into my wrist making it actually painful to wear. So bad.
I have a withings scanwatch right now, the app is nice, ecosystem is nice - but accuracy is very underwhelming.
I would pay 1k for a watch that
- is hybrid with subtle watch aesthetic and minimal display/vibration for notifications
- has Apple watch level metric accuracy
- has week long battery life
- ideally would have replaceable battery but not a deal breaker if warranty is 3 years
I mostly use it for reading my calendar, weather, notifications and time. Occasionally I use it for exercise.
But what it also excels at is GPS. I use it as a backup navigational tool when sailing. It has also prevented me from getting lost when running in the woods a number of times.
I recoil at having been tempted by the more expensive Garmin watches. What a waste of money that would have been!
I ask because I get directed to the Apple Watch homepage.
Does anyone at Garmin actually practice sports? For a company with such great hardware they really need someone competent on the UX team. Throwing everything into more and more menus and submenus is not working.
The specific watch I'm criticizing is Garmin Instinct 2x solar. The name is very ironic because there is nothing intuitive about using that watch. Like, at all.
I'd think the ideal for me would instead be something in-between a Pebble and a Sensor Watch. Something hackable with more battery life, that is a watch first (and a smartphone notification screen never). I wonder how far I could go towards that goal with the upcoming Pebble hardware and rewriting the OS kernel to sleep more.
So if they can bring contactless payments to their new Pebble they have my attention, otherwise it's useless to me.
A better "thank you" to Google would be to direct people to Fitbit.
Google used to (still?) have a page internally where if you clicked on “I don’t care about security” it sent you to the jobs page of a competitor that had suffered a notable breach.
Very on point.
https://store.google.com/product/pixel_watch_3
Fitbit has already gone off to the great Google graveyard, unfortunately.
Basically what Whoop is doing with their strap - but minus the subscription model. I know a ton of people who tried the whoop but felt it was extremely pricey and didn't have the accuracy of an apple watch.
I would be happy to pay ~$400-500 up front for hardware that integrates with Apple Health and provides solid, reliable health tracking without a need for a subscription.
And by health/fitness - features expected would be sleep tracking, activity (gps), heart rate, Sp02, skin temperature sensors, fall detection. Then secondarily - additional things like ECG/EKG, apnea, AFib detection
The in-accuracy of some of the devices in the market is why I still choose to remain with my Apple Watch.
This youtube channel may help understand a consumer's perspective on health accuracy - https://www.youtube.com/@TheQuantifiedScientist
Is it about inducing more exercise? Or is it the timer aspect that it records how long your workout is? (in which case I don’t understand why it’s so much better than a stopwatch?)
For me, and those around me, the fitness feature seems vestigial and has very little impact on actual fitness levels of the individual.
When training for something I will often at least consider its recommendations and those are based partly on the health readings as well as the training load it has tracked from treks/runs. Though TBH other than that the health tracking is unimportant compared to it being a GPS device that can track for a day or more constantly without needing to talk to a phone (which sits in my pack/pocket in low-power mode to conserve battery unless/until I need it for something). A don't even tend to pay attention to the heart-rate stats (though I do know people who use those features to directly guide their training).
I know a few people whose use pattern is very similar to mine, near identical in fact, so I think it is fairly common amongst people who walk and/or run more than the average person.
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[1] Less than I'd like ATM, the rest of life like ill family and my own burn-out² are getting in the way, but I'm getting myself back into it
[2] The key reason I'm trying to get back at it: herfing myself around the green stuff³, is something I find beneficial to my mental state as well as physical.
[3] or even the “mostly brown stuff” as it can be this time of year.
An example here is how I made sure my parents are getting their exercise in by making completing their Move rings and 10K steps every day. This pushes them to take a walk in the evening instead of doom scrolling / watching TV.
Another example - Check trends like resting heart rate to see if my body has fully recovered from covid19, SP02 at night indicating potential sleep apnea etc.
On the note about how annoying it is to start and stop activities, I strongly agree, tho quick start and auto track have eased the pain a lot for me. I cycle everywhere and really like to keep track of the total distance I do in a month and my watch just automatically tracks that for me.
- Measuring resting heart rate, SpO2, etc. passively and tracking these over time and the impact of my fitness regime on them
- Sleep tracking
- Tracking pace and heart rate on a run, ride, etc. and (a) using it to manage my pace during the activity; and (d) use it to measure how my performance changes over time
- Navigation and tracking when hiking/skiing
I don't have so much interest in the tracking during, say, a gym workout.
I agree with the GP about wanting a subscription-less Whoop as I like to wear "real" watches so a band on the other wrist is perfect ("double fisting" watches VC-style is not an option I'm willing to entertain). I did like my Pebble enough to include it in the rotation of "real" watches though, too.
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The Forerunner 255 can be found on Amazon right now for $250.
Mind you, I also used to own an Apple Watch. Garmin is the best, and second place isn't close.
That price point would make it unaffordable for the majority of the world’s population. Shouldn’t we try and make health monitoring and fitness tracking more accessible? That was one of Pebble’s biggest benefits.
But just because advanced devices with (currently) costly components have higher costs is no reason to not create them.
If something works and meets a need, the costs of components and manufacture usually come down as engineering and manufacturing progresses on the learning curve and competition comes into play. (Not true when there is a captured market where extractive pricing becomes the norm, but those are the exception in consumer goods)
A solution could be to measure it but not really track / visualize it day to day.
I turned mine off to save battery life.
I'm almost the opposite for your, Notifications, then watch functionality, and card payments are primary for me. For me, fitness, and health tracking are barely secondary.
Which, IMO, is what I've always loved about Pebble, it was a smartwatch first.
At the same time the fitness features add cost, bulk, the uncomfortable sensor bump and cost battery life. The original Pebble didn't have any of that and in my opinion was better for it. I also see little point in competing with the already existing numerous options for fitness tracking, even if you only look at the ones without a subscription.
For a more practical take on heart rate accuracy see the DC Rainmaker reviews instead.
It also needs to be a good watch. Don't forget to not fail at that.
I have my phone on me. My watch doesn’t need to tell me the time.
And for those who recommend a Garmin, an Oura ring or similar:
I have a Garmin and it's great but I cannot wear it during martial arts (grappling).
I also can't wear a ring doing weight lifting or when I'm grappling.
I had a Whoop and it was really good for tracking martial arts (the boxers with the holder was super comfortable) but alas it was expensive and the sleep tracking with it in the boxers was really poor.
I gave up with tracking because the short life of a smart watch meant many of the more critical times (sleep/sleep tracking) would be interrupted by charging or dead batteries. I just want a band/strap that is focused on sensors and battery life WITHOUT a subscription.
Until that happens I'm staying out of the ecosystem entirely.
I still have this email in my inbox from 2011, after a posting here on HN about your launch:
Subject: You bought the first one! BODY: Congratulations...
Great to see this happening again, best of luck!
I tried keeping my pebble alive for so long even after it's demise, I bought 2 Pebble Time when a few were still available on ebay.
I remember writing my first integration from scratch to control room lamp using my Pebble watch. I hacked it together by getting a wifi socket and programming a web-server hosted on my raspberry-pi.
Here is the DEMO video I made 8 years ago: https://vikashbajaj.com/pebble.mp4
My pebble watch would call an app on my phone, in turn the app would make a request to the webserver and the webserver would then make a query to the wifi socket to toggle it.
It lagged a bit but it got the job done. I could connect anything to these wifi sockets and control any appliance with my Pebble time. This was before hackable smart hubs were a thing.
When you ask your programmer husband to turn on the light
However...
If you want to make it TRULY HACKABLE as you claim, you will not encumber it with cloud dependencies like you did last time. Let ME self host my own Pebble server if I choose. Go ahead and default to your servers and sell services and whatever, but let me host my own and switch the base URL to my own domain, preferably with open source software and simple APIs, without requiring me to go through your servers.
That way, even if this attempt also doesn't pan out, those of us willing to do the work will at least still have the functionality we want. I get the whole VC "lock them into required cloud services for life so we can make endless subscription revenue" model, but it's absolutely corrupt.
And, Eric, I know you know that - you have a hacker's heart. Please listen to it.
The 2022 updates gave an interesting insight into how your perspective had changed in regard to your initial thoughts and I'm interested to know if another three years has lead to further perspective changes.
I found Andrew Witte's remark of particular interest with regard to "...we allowed early success [...] to mask the fact that we never gained a good understanding of what our actual customers valued the most. We lucked into having made something people wanted (the original Pebble) and, IMO, never really were able to figure out exactly why it was successful. So it was hard to reproduce that success."
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[0] https://ericmigi.com/blog/success-and-failure-at-pebble
Wishlist for the next device:
More sensors: heart rate, spo2 and ecg...
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> But I'm not really sure that this fear is grounded - before we sold to Fitbit we 'unlocked' the Pebble mobile app [...].
If I'm reading OP's comment & your reply correctly, my impression is there's potentially a fear of either (a) "re-locking"; or, even just (b) "new thing not unlocked"--and, I think, you're saying that (a) isn't going to/can't happen?
On closer reading I think you might also be saying that (b) isn't going to happen because "new thing" is still going to use the previous unlocked app and/or maybe a new unlocked app? But, if that's the case, I only really saw that possible interpretation after a much closer re-read.
(Alternatively, maybe I just didn't weight sufficiently strongly the FAQ: "Will it be exactly like Pebble?" "Yes. In almost every way.")
More broadly (outside the positive example of your specific track record with regard to OGPebble & the app unlocking), given the landscape of the past 1.5+ decades littered with even just recent examples such as Spotify's Car Thing, Google's Stadia controller, Bambu Labs, and pretty much every phone ever[0][0a], I think it would be a stretch to consider the fear to be entirely ungrounded.
Particularly if some portion of the device firmware etc and/or server software is still going to be closed source.
In terms of strength of confidence in the potential of achieving a "desired open outcome/ongoing experience", I imagine the ordering from least to greatest trust required by product purchasers is something like: "completely open & unlocked from the beginning", "legally binding commitment/escrow for open & unlocked on 'exit'", "word/reputation for open & unlocked on 'exit'", through to "amorphous hope for largesse/noblesse-oblige/benevolence/other-fancy-latin-phrase for positive outcome at some unspecified future time".
And, um, trust in general might be slightly lacking these days, for some reason. :)
Anyway, IMO FWIW.
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On a slightly different note, while reading comments in the various PebbleOS/RePebble threads I've been contemplating what has changed with regard to the consumer electronics hardware market compared to, say, fifteen plus years ago.
Certainly the "hope" of Android bringing the Power & Freedom of "Linux on Desktop" to "Linux on the Phonetop"[1] from the early 2000s seems to have been completely abandoned[2] but on the other hand Framework[3] exists and the Steam Deck[4] exists.
Perhaps the two most surprising things related to this "control over personal devices" topic from recent history:
(1) the discovery 1-2 years ago that it wasn't just irascible curmudgeons like me wanting to have control over the devices in their lives[5] but a much younger generation was also looking to "dumb phones" in a conscious effort to exert some control over the impact of such devices on their lives.
(1.1) aside: the attraction of similar demographic(s) to audio cassette tapes on the other hand, I totally don't "get" but by now I'm starting to suspect this state may now be primarily driven by the desire to not accidentally make cassettes uncool by "getting" it. :D
(2) noting over the past year or so the significant increase in the number (or even the mere presence) of YouTube comments from gamers remarking that they have just, or, want to, move from Windows to Linux. Gamers. GAMERS! The same demographic who previously would ruthlessly mock anyone who dare suggest such a move might be possible[6] let alone desirable...
This might all just be the biased perspective of a jaded idealistic optimist[7] but it's not nothing. Unless it is.
Approaching consumer electronics hardware with this trend as a guiding force may also not be the way to run a financially sustainable hardware business but on the other hand, what if?
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BTW I noticed in one place on the page (https://repebble.com/) the text states:
* "(which purchased Fitbit, which had bought Pebble)"
and in another it states:
* "before the company's IP was sold to Fitbit in 2016".
I mention this because the difference is a nuance that has seemed to be significant in other times/places, so thought it might have unintentionally slipped through proof-reading--even if of no real consequence now. :)
----
Also: Hello! (Again. :) ) This was unexpected news, for sure.
Left another "short" note for you here (in case you've not encountered it organically): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42856930
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[0] Yes, yes, Fairphone exists.
[0a] Televisions!
[1] Irony? Satire? Sarcasm? *shrug*
[2] Speaking of small phones, this still remains of interest: https://smallandroidphone.com/
[3] I so want to know what category Framework's "Next Thing" is in--primarily because what's seemingly the "most obvious" category for them to move into also seems the most "unlikely" by any reasonable measure. So to find out would be to either be surprised by a category I hadn't considered or surprised by the audaciousness of their next goal.
[4] Hand-waving away for now any problematic aspects of its current context.
[5] See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848761 & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845574 (non-pejorative :) )
[6] Yes, yes, every PlayStation fan-persoin runs BSD.
[7] I do like the phrase "user-respectful technology" as used here: https://rebble.io/2025/01/27/the-future-of-rebble.html
Yes, it will lock out people for whom that price is unacceptable, but now more than ever your real customer is serious hackers, and we are collectively more than fed up with the cloud and subscriptions. Framework and Nabu Casa need to be your models here, because your customers are overwhelmingly their customers.
I don't think we will be getting this in our "free market". It would need to be mandated by state for manufacturers to use open APIs. There is just no incentive for them to offer those otherwise.
-- agree with you rzazeuta!
- Servers: I agree with you. Make a default "cloud" owned by Pebble, but give us the ability to self-host it. NO SUBSCRIPTIONS, NO ADS, NO PRIVACY INVASION, PLEASE.
- PebbleOS: This is already a reality, and I'm very happy that it's happening.
- Mobile apps: Make them open-source! Let us play with them and you'll benefit of the fixes, improvements and innovation of the community.
- Hardware: It would be fine for me if the hardware was not open. As long as I can install my own firmware on it and have full control of it, I'm happy.
I think I speak for most of us when I say that I'm sick and tired of not owning my stuff. In the dystopic world we're living in, with enshittification at it's peak, an open, hackable, and truly owned device would feel like a breath of fresh air.
You have a real opportunity here, Eric. Please use it :) Best of luck!