Ask HN: Any Pebble Alternatives?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21907699

by guzik • 7 years ago

143 80 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Are there any programmable Pebble alternatives nowadays? I've heard of Pebble Versa 2, but people are complaining that it's not possible to create an always-visible custom watch face.

My goal is to create a TODO/Pomodoro watch app (as I had on my good, old Pebble) that is always on.

slartibardfast0• 7 years ago

Are you aware of bangle.js?

https://banglejs.com/

mateuszf2• 7 years ago

This looks cool. If I wasn't very happy with my Withings Steel HR I'd consider preordering.

It would be nice if it had NFC for payments though.

lsc3• 7 years ago

It would be nice if it had NFC for payments though.

I find this interesting. I mean, sure, when I'm buying online, having a unified wallet is really, really nice and saves me a lot of effort punching in my credit card with each site I buy from, but in person, I don't see how a phone or watch is more convenient than a credit card; I'm carrying backup cash and ID at a minimum already, so adding a credit card to the mix doesn't really lighten my load. (for that matter, the other day I found myself without a wallet but with cash and my cellphone. I ended up in a bar that took credit cards but not mobile payments or cash. It was awkward.)

What use do you find for a nfc payments solution?

INTPenis3• 7 years ago

Wow this looks very interesting. LCD screen instead of LED or any e-ink-similar display. Claim of 20 hour battery life.

I'm willing to back this project even with a Fossil HR on my wrist.

m-p-32• 7 years ago

To me, a eInk/transflective display totally make sense on a smartwatch energy-wise compared to a LCD, even though it's not as visually appealing.

threwerwe4234• 7 years ago

Claim of 20 hour battery life.

This isn't something of note now is it ? Xiaomi's watches have insane 2 week+ battery lives these days.

krastanov• 7 years ago

This is amazing! nrf52 microcontroller, 3 axis accelerometer, 3 axis magnetic field sensor, a GPS, programmable with javascript running on open source interpreter, can be dissembled, a battery that works for the entire day... And ridiculously low price!?

gbraad2• 7 years ago

PineTime ?

https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PineTime

stamps• 7 years ago

You can actually get a devkit that's the full watch (just not sealed/glued shut) and it will ship within a couple days.

https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetime-dev-kit

gbraad2• 7 years ago

it is based on a very common CPU; the nRF52832 and therefore easy to develop for; I do not have the PineTime (or devkit) myself, but made one according to the schematics and BOM for development.

ninjin2• 7 years ago

As someone with a PineTime Dev Kit on their desk in front of them, I would say that “just not sealed/glued shut” is not the entire story. Sure, you could glue it shut. But you would be stuck with somewhat bog standard software that is neither exciting nor updateable unless you hook the device up via Serial Wire Debug (SWD) to flash it – which requires yet another piece of kit to achieve. PINE64 are not joking around when they state that: “The PineTime Dev Kit [is] aimed solely for development purpose only, this is not for end user[s] who [are] looking for [a] ready to wear Smart Watch. More specifically, [we] only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of developer[s] with extensive embedded OS experience and an interest in Smart Watch development.” [1].

That being said, I have had a lot of fun learning embedded systems over the holidays and highly recommend getting a dev kit if you want a rewarding hobby that is likely to contribute to this watch coming out “for real” with a lot of fun software some time next year. Admittedly my reading list is very Rust biased, so feel free to ignore parts of it. But I highly recommend the embedded Rust “Discovery Book” [2] and “The Embedded Rust Book” [3]. Also, anything written by Lup Yuen Lee (李立源) so far has had the highest quality of all writing related to PineTime development. The only downside is that it is on Medium (yuck!), but do start with the one where he breaks his PineTime open for the first time and go from there [4]. There is also of course the PineTime sub forum [5]. Lastly, if you are new to embedded systems (such as myself) it may also be worth getting the development board that corresponds to what is inside the PineTime [6]. Happy reading and hacking!

[1] https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetime-dev-kit

[2] https://docs.rust-embedded.org/discovery

[3] https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book

[4] https://medium.com/swlh/sneak-peek-of-pinetime-smart-watch-a...

[5] https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=134

[6] https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-Tools/Development-Ki...

yitchelle• 7 years ago

Just as an aside, the pine64 team also has a phone, laptops and others...

https://www.pine64.org/

vanous3• 7 years ago

I would suggests Amazfit Bip. Amazing battery life, steps, hr, gps, notifications, no need for official app (use Gadgetbridge) and can flash alternative firmware for which you can develop in c.

https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/wiki/Amazfi...

The following link takes you to a Wiki page about BipOS. In the wiki is all you might need to know: https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/wiki/Amazfi...

poisonborz• 7 years ago

Seconding this, it's a fantastic watch if you don't have high needs. Most importantly it has a transreflective display (e-paper like) so it doesn't need backlight. When not using GPS or heart rate it can do crazy 50-60 days on a single charge.

Pxtl• 7 years ago

While I realize that everybody is manufacturing in China, is it responsible to buy an actual Chinese branded piece of electronics with Chinese software on it? Right now?

It may just be splitting hairs, but it seems like in general those brands should be avoided, between Huawei's alleged espionage and the human rights problems these days, it feels like we should be making the minimal effort to avoid those brands.

Of course, I'm a total hypocrite writing this on a Motorola/Lenovo phone.

daxorid• 7 years ago

between Huawei's alleged espionage and the human rights problems

NSA backdoors Cisco and Juniper gear, and the United States imprisons a significantly higher percentage of its citizens than the PRC.

kgarten• 7 years ago

Huawai is doing it alleged ... nobody has proof. For Cisco, Amazon, Google etc. we have proof :)

atlasunshrugged3• 7 years ago

I agree with the sentiment, I think it's important to put your money where your mouth is when it comes to values, especially when there are alternative options (although many still with Chinese components or assembly). I was considering switching from an Apple to a Huawei but after reading William Holstein's The New Art of War which details some of the things China is doing in terms of industrial espionage, coercing students/expats/Chinese descendent people, etc. I decided to not make the switch.

m-p-32• 7 years ago

Do you have some kind of repo, list or suggestions of extra apps for it?

vanous3• 7 years ago

Yes, it is in the wiki...

https://github.com/MNVolkov?tab=repositories

And also here on the forum (Google translate link):

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

asadlionpk• 7 years ago

Seconding this. I was a Pebble user and have moved to AmazeFit, it’s a great alternative. So much that I went on to buy about 6 more for all my family!

jeswin2• 7 years ago

It's fantastic. I charge it once a month, and can't imagine using a watch that needs to be charged every night.

But I'm worried about the data it sends back.

unicornporn• 7 years ago

I'm worried about the data it sends back.

https://gadgetbridge.org/ ?

gnicholas4• 7 years ago

I just posted a comparison review of the Pebble vs Fossil Hybrid Smartwatch. [1] I'm still on the fence about whether to keep the Fossil. The main con is that it doesn't allow notifications from any app (just a dozen or so they've hand-picked, for now), and that the light does not come on easily. But the battery life is comparatively amazing (2 weeks).

The most interesting thing I've noticed is that because it doesn't look like a smartwatch, when I look at my wrist to check a notification, people ask if I'm OK on time. They assume it's a regular watch, and therefore the only thing I could be checking is what time it is. Kind of a funny side-effect of having a well-camouflaged hybrid smartwatch.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9RiP70_5M0

INTPenis3• 7 years ago

I've had the Fossil hybrid HR for a few weeks now and you pretty much summarized all my thoughts, so I can't do anything but agree.

Could add that after the last update I was able to finally add a battery indicator to my watchface. So I had only todays date on my current watchface and when I tried adding the battery indicator the app forced me to enable location services to continue.

So I went in, enabled location services, added the battery indicator, went back in and disabled location services. Lo and behold, the battery indicator worked fine.

I don't get this obsession with location services unless they have some ulterior motive. It was equally hard to setup a fixed location in the weather app, easy to miss.

I was so happy with the Pebble Time until about a month ago when the battery quickly started deteriorating. I really miss that smartwatch. To me it's of the utmost importance to not need charging every single day and still be able to read notifications. In regards to the Apple Watch, I don't see any reason to have a high resolution image on my watch. It's a practical device.

It's sad that no one picked up the torch after Pebble.

Largely I'm happy with the Fossil HR because it's so practical. I'm sure a software update will bring me my Signal and Pushover notifications that I'm missing, in time.

borgel• 7 years ago

I was under the impression that they recently fixed the limited set of notifications problem, though I'm having trouble finding the source at the moment.

gnicholas4• 7 years ago

It looks like they had an app update (at least on iOS) a week ago that offers "enhanced notification support". [1] I wish they'd pushed a notification to let me know about this!

They added a bunch more apps — there's maybe 40 or 50 now. The best news is that they're clearly aware that this is an issue and will presumably be adding more in the future. Some of my important apps are still missing, though they've added some important ones (Facetime, Slack, Skype).

Thanks for pointing this out!

1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fossil-hybrid-smartwatches/id1...

nl3• 7 years ago

https://github.com/Jeija/esp8266-smartwatch

Just need a nice case. No, I haven't tried it myself.

There's a version on Aliexpress but it is preconfigured to be a WiFi Deauther rather than a watch.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000522565001.html?spm=a2g0o...

Edit: this one looks like a good version https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000302271246.html?spm=a2g0o...

k_sze• 7 years ago

Dip it in conformal coating and you get a baremetal, but waterproof smartwatch! Cool!

ksmith14• 7 years ago

From the blog post announcing the FitbitOS 4.1 SDK it sounds like custom always-on clocks are in the works:

https://dev.fitbit.com/blog/2019-12-19-announcing-fitbit-os-...

(Disclosure: I work at Fitbit but not on any of the SDK or device stuff. This is my own personal opinion and should not be considered the official position of my employer.)

VectorLock2• 7 years ago

When will the spo2 feature ever materialize on existing Fitbits that have the hardware for it?

duelingjello• 7 years ago

Find its predecessor, the Alerta InPulse watch. It has a very simple but usable SDK.

VectorLock2• 7 years ago

I've never heard of this and Googling for it turned up nothing. Perhaps its known by something else?

asandweech• 7 years ago

Could just go with a garmin. There are already multiple pomodoro apps for them, I use one of them. Just search for pomodoro at https://apps.garmin.com

If you dont like how they implemented it you could easily write your own, the api is fairly straightforward: https://developer.garmin.com/downloads/connect-iq/monkey-c/d...

lloeki• 7 years ago

Seconded. Those devices are unexpectedly good.

pimeys2• 7 years ago

I replaced my Pebble 2 when it broke with a Garmin Vivoactive 3 and it is surprisingly good with almost as long battery life.

I need it mainly for blood glucose monitoring and I keep the watchface on all the time that does this.

The downside is that there is no way to stop Garmin to automatically updating the watch software and once an update broke the http callbacks causing my watchface to stop functioning. Angry comments pushed them to stop the automatic updates until the bugs were fixed and let me to downgrade the OS.

JeremyNT• 7 years ago

I'd second Garmin. To me the killer features of my Pebble were the lack of a touchscreen, the long battery life from the passively lit display, and the ability for developers to write their own software - all qualities that the Garmin line possesses.

The only downside of the Garmin devices is the extra fitness sensors (gps, hrm, pulseox) which not all Pebble users might want. As a runner and cyclist myself these features are all upside, but not everybody will use them and they add to cost / size.

I can recommend the forerunner series. I have the 945 which is marketed at runners but it has the same features as their other high end devices, just in a smaller and lighter plastic case.

h4waii• 7 years ago

I would continue to purchase Pebbles. I have a few (too many than I want to admit) in storage that I take out, update with my settings, half charge, and then put back in my fire safe.

There really isn't anything else that I've found to fill the gap. Good battery life, well supported by an open source community, and it really just continues to work very well for my uses.

I've heard good things about the Amazfit models, but they aren't as "open" as Pebble as far as I'm aware. Keep an eye on PineTime [0], it looks promising.

0. https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PineTime

gnicholas4• 7 years ago

Where do you go to report issues with Pebble/Rebble? I did a Runkeeper update a while back and was saddened to see that it broke the Pebble integration (which allowed me to see how long I'd been exercising and pause/resume my ride). I assume Runkeeper won't fix this because there are so few Pebble users, but presumably the Pebble community might be interested in fixing the issue?

pimeys2• 7 years ago

I remember seeing in Runkeeper's changelog they removed the wear support altogether. Now using Garmin and no Runkeeper functionality here either.

thatcat• 7 years ago

The pinetime dev kit is only 25$ and would be a good platform for this. https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetime-dev-kit

swiley• 7 years ago

The pinetime looks really good, I’m planning on getting a couple for me and a friend since we’re both decent embedded devs and the lack of a preinstalled OS probably won’t be so bad for us.

Wowfunhappy• 7 years ago

Why not get an actual Pebble? That's what I did!

xrd• 7 years ago

Buy a supported device from eBay and then install AsteroidOs (AsteroidOs.org)

snek• 7 years ago

I've just kept using my pebble. consistent week long battery life, it gives me notifications and tracks my activity, not much else needed.

meremortals• 7 years ago

The newly released Xiaomi Mi Watch may be worth investigating, as it runs customized Android (MIUI): https://xiaomi-mi.com/mitu-watches/xiaomi-mi-watch-black/

Xiamoi also makes the aforementioned Amazfit series watches

KirinDave2• 7 years ago

I've yet to find a programmable watch that is competitive, but...

I've been working on a DIY smartwatch firmware that uses the OLED version of the DSTIKE ESP32 watch development kit. This kit is less than $40 and is basically a small ESP32 dev board with a few LEDs and a mono OLED screen.

It has the following features of use for a developer: 2.4ghz wifi, BLE, 2 cores and an interesting ULP core that can actually do a fair amount of logic (such as detect buttons) while still drawing microamps, A modestly accurate RTC that survives deepsleep, An internal white LED, which as packaged can be used as a reading light, A neopixel on the front, a square wave driven buzzer on the front, and a 600mah LIPO battery, and power management with discharge protection and .

It is not by ANY means waterproof, but with some work (3d printing an enclosure and using a sealing spray) it can be modestly water resistant. At its price, you can actually buy more than 1 as backup in the event of serious water damage though.

The predecessor to this was an ESP8266-based system (a much less capable chip) for mass wifi deauth attacks.

It's a very interesting project writing a smartwatch firmwatch from scratch. Currently I'm trying to get to where I can use Rust (which I don't really know yet, so: learning opportunity) to write the core event loops I need. I won't be able to use Rust for the ULP cores (that has to be done in assembler) or OLED drivers, but I'm fairly sure the normal Rust binding generators will work fine.

I highly recommend trying something like this if you have the time and inclination. It's very fun to incrementally add features to the watch.

jsilence2• 7 years ago

If you are going down this route: The M5stack has a wristband accessory. Basically the same thing, but with a nice enclosure.

jsilence2• 7 years ago

Do you open source your project? If yes, where? I'd be interested to try it. Received the ESP8266 version a couple of days ago...

KirinDave2• 7 years ago

Sadly very little I do will be useful to you. The 8266 version is very, very limited. You'll be able to deauth and set the time with nntp, and that's about it.

But also: I'm trying to work out a way to open source my work. My employer produces software for smart watches and wearable tech. Even if I don't know about that part of the business, they're kinda tricky about open source project policies.

davidandgoliath• 7 years ago

No, but the google fossil wear (no idea re: name) watch is great.

jbj• 7 years ago

Just get a pebble.

I got a replacement pebble of ebay, works great with the "solanum" app (pomodoro) and GoogleTasks for pebble as a todo list that syncs to a google account.

I have the rebble subscription as a support for the maintanance team although I rarely use the voice to text capability.

I wear my pebble everyday. Just because the company doesnt exist doesnt mean the products are useless.

you may have to track down the apk file if you are on android and dont want to use gadgetbridge from F-droid

EDIT: I extracted my pebble apk with apk extractor [1]:

size 26589168 md5 3edeeffdca616336adc27eaf6189e85e sha1 b3b3642ceaf125049eb241fee2e28f573bf2a04f

correspondingly the one on apkmirror is slightly smaller [2]:

size 26589160 md5 eb057a463e688b0f51c2820227fb0520 sha1 41ad7557920e94ab05081e7bab07f0accd759e50

I am actually surprised that the version I have is 8 bytes larger.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/axp.tool.apkextractor/ [2] https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/pebble-technology-corp/pebble/...

sheinsheish• 7 years ago

Have you considered a good old Casio g-shock with a repeating sports timer?

Ask HN: Any Pebble Alternatives?

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