> 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!
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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'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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
That's some sweet quality of life fixes!
Deleted Comment
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?
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 see they haven't handed over https://pebble.com though, that still forwards to Google's smartwatch lineup.
https://repebble.com/watch says the Pebble Time 2 has
> Heart rate, step and sleep tracking
Isn't that what you want?
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.
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.
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.
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).
What are you using for your AI assistant?
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.
(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!)
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/
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!
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.
Deleted Comment
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But if you just need that, almost any watch will do. The Pebble is clearly not made for those people.