That's some sweet quality of life fixes!
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:
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.
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.
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
It’s funny how these very tariffs were introduced to “combat inflation” end up increasing it by an order of magnitude.
30 days for the Time 2 will be pretty impressive if they can pull it off, though.
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.
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.
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 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.
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,...
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.
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.
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 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.
If that's all you use your smartwatch for, you may as well skip the watch and get a payment bracelet or ring though.
Shame because you can get some nice watch straps with curve integration, which would neatly solve the missing payment feature on Pebble watches.
Edit: https://diyusthad.com/2021/04/top-5-open-source-smartwatch.h...
Far has I know, pebble user have spent the last 10 years searching for another pebble without luck.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1qr1npj/pebble_roun...
I'd pay more for being able to fumble about in the codebase and add exactly what I want.
Battery life is real.
You can get the same thing in watches from Garmin, Coros, Polar, Suunto, Casio and probably more.
I had Basis first and this is the most loved watch from me, then Pebble.
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.
