Some commenters mentioned that the e-ink screen (and the accompanying battery life) was one reason why the Pebble is so beloved, which reminded me of the Basis Peak, which was primarily a health tracker watch with some (very limited) smart functionality (mostly just some notifications, if I recall), that also had an e-ink screen and a nearly 1 week battery life and had a sort of similar trajectory:
Bought by Intel, then killed two years later after a battery related recall issue.
It was, in my opinion, by far the best fitness tracker watch ever, and remains so to this day. Not so much because of it's actual features (which were relatively standard), but the software paradigm of simple yet effective exercise gamification that helped encourage exercise habit formation. 8 years later and I still miss it.
Good exercise of your sequence priority philosophy, but I also think they all have their own right to be posted and discussed - this is exciting, and different angles and POVs can be brought to each thread. One is about Google's affairs with Pebble, one is about the community-grown Rebble, and one is about the founding team of the original Pebble itself.
I'm a little confused at the moving pieces here. We have RePebble, Rebble, and PebbleOS. PebbleOS is the easy one. OS recently opened by Google.
But how are RePebble and Rebble related? Are they the same thing? Is Rebble making hardware as well as RePebble, or are they the same effort? Is RePebble also open source and community owned like Rebble?
There's also the Pebble watch which I believe was the thing that this all comes from originally? Just piecing this together from all the HN posts now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)
I'm curious if anyone has tried one of the newer e-ink smart watches you see on Alibaba, which use ESP-32 or other low-power SOCs. I saw one recently at a meet-up and the guy who was wearing claimed it was completely open-source and he could run whatever he wanted to on it. It did not have heartrate monitoring or anything other than clock on it, as far as I could tell.
Not only can you run anything you want on it but it supports the Arduino IDE and Micropython. I assume all of the Alibaba ones are based off of Watchy.
The biggest issue is the software. It's mostly abysmal. The best effort I've seen so far has been InfiniTime for the PineTime. It's very difficult without full-time employees working on improving things.
MostlyStable|1 year ago
Bought by Intel, then killed two years later after a battery related recall issue.
It was, in my opinion, by far the best fitness tracker watch ever, and remains so to this day. Not so much because of it's actual features (which were relatively standard), but the software paradigm of simple yet effective exercise gamification that helped encourage exercise habit formation. 8 years later and I still miss it.
ClassyJacket|1 year ago
dang|1 year ago
The submitted title of this post was "Google has open-sourced the pebble smartwatch operating system" but it actually points to https://rebble.io/2025/01/27/the-future-of-rebble.html, so I've changed the title and moved the comments from here to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845070, which has the Google announcement.
The 3 threads are:
We're bringing Pebble back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845091
Google open-sources the Pebble OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845070
The future of Rebble - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845017 (<-- you are here)
HaZeust|1 year ago
zamalek|1 year ago
msolberg|1 year ago
freedomben|1 year ago
But how are RePebble and Rebble related? Are they the same thing? Is Rebble making hardware as well as RePebble, or are they the same effort? Is RePebble also open source and community owned like Rebble?
will0|1 year ago
(Disclaimer: I'm part of the team)
RePebble is a new thing by Eric, the original founder of Pebble and is unrelated to Rebble.
> Is Rebble making hardware as well as RePebble?
Potentially! We have always talked about it, but some of the announcements today have thrown us for a loop so plans are still being discussed.
> Is RePebble also open source and community owned like Rebble?
Remains to be seen, but if I had to guess it's unlikely.
subarctic|1 year ago
TheMagicHorsey|1 year ago
throwup238|1 year ago
Not only can you run anything you want on it but it supports the Arduino IDE and Micropython. I assume all of the Alibaba ones are based off of Watchy.
Avamander|1 year ago
andyjohnson0|1 year ago
poisonborz|1 year ago
Don't do that. Don't give me hope...