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PineTime Is a $25 Smartwatch / Companion for PinePhone Linux Phone
- lappet 7y agoIs there a similarly priced smartwatch that works with Android?
- jerrysievert 7y agohttps://aliexpress.com/item/32933638584.html https://aliexpress.com/item/32933638584.html (shamelessly stolen from the other comment)
- lappet 7y agointeresting, thank you!
- modeless 7y agoYou can still buy various Pebble smartwatches, for less than $100. I still use my Pebble Time Round every day and it fits my needs better than any other smartwatch released before or since.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoAt that price point, this has a pretty good chance of growing a good community around it, which would be really nice.
- dchest 7y agohttps://aliexpress.com/item/32933638584.html https://aliexpress.com/item/32933638584.html (from https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/d3y87q/is_pine64_scam/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/d3y87q/is_pine64_sca...)
- megous 7y agoIs there a way to build/upload custom FW to this?
- dchest 7y agoNo idea! They say it's the same body, but different internals https://twitter.com/thepine64/status/1172842631107358722 https://twitter.com/thepine64/status/1172842631107358722 Edit: according to Pine64, they will use NRF52832 https://twitter.com/thepine64/status/1173208712669999105 https://twitter.com/thepine64/status/1173208712669999105 which is the exact SoC the linked watch use.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoThat led me right down the rabbit hole. Who makes all this stuff? I’m a little amazed, and a little perturbed... https://m.aliexpress.com/store/v3/home.html?shopId=1523303&sellerId=117746667&spm=a2g0n.detail-amp.store-link&pagePath=index.htm https://m.aliexpress.com/store/v3/home.html?shopId=1523303&s...
- petra 7y agoWhy doesn't this come with a reasonable open sdk ? Why none of the Chinese smartwatch companies offer that ? Seem like a big opportunity. What's different in the Chinese business culture - that nobody tries this opportunity ?
- freehunter 7y agoAt the risk of sounding Nationalist or Jingoist... it seems that innovation isn't something that comes easily to many Chinese companies. Innovation is done by American/Western companies, and many Chinese companies piggyback off of Western innovations. Since many Western companies produce their products in China, it's easy for that factory to just keep the production lines running. When Apple asks for 1,000 products to be made, the Chinese factories can make the 1,000 products for Apple and then 5,000 products for sale on Alibaba at basically no additional cost. When you're selling hardware at-cost and copying OSS software to run on it, it's not really profitable to add additional software maintenance costs like producing an SDK or offering English-language software support. I'm 100% sure there are Chinese companies who offer software and English-language support, but I am also 100% sure those Chinese companies charge similar prices to Western companies, negating the benefits of Alibaba products. You certainly do have Chinese companies who attempt this: Huawei and Xiaomi come to mind. But their products sell at prices very comparable to Western companies. For the true "Chinese prices" companies who only sell on Alibaba etc... if they're offering Western support and Western innovation, there's no way they're selling at Chinese prices.
- monocasa 7y agoThere's tons of innovation occurring in the Chinese hardware market. For consumer devices, I'd say there's much more innovation happening in Shenzhen than in San Fran. The issue is that they have their own ecosystem for software that doesn't really play nice with western IP, so you sort of get stone walled if you come in talking English. https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
- freehunter 7y ago
- leggomylibro 7y agoNice! Multi-day battery life and an NRF52 sounds like a great starting point. I really miss Pebble, which this sort of evokes. Their 'Time' series of watches were incredible, with awesome battery life and a great C SDK. How has Pine's recent hardware and software support panned out? I remember people saying that the original PineBooks bordered on unusable, but I'm sure they've made a lot of progress since then and I keep meaning to try one of these libre hardware platforms.
- Avamander 7y agoThe nRF52 is quite good in terms of the vendor's software support, I can't wait to try and turn the watch into a U2F key.
- xorcist 7y agoWhy isn't e-ink perfect here? A watch is perfectly usable in monochrome and is used in bright daylight which would favor high contrast and viewing angles. Plus battery life is good. Turns out there has been a few on the market but nobody really wanted them. Strange.
- linux2647 7y agosigh that is what I loved about Pebble
- wvenable 7y agoThe Pebble screen is hard to read in regular room light -- which, sadly, is the kind of light that most of us are in most of the time. When Pebble went under I switched to a Samsung watch with an AMOLED screen and the difference in view-ability is stunning.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoDid you have a Pebble Time or a Pebble Classic / Pebble 2? I agree with you with regard to the Pebble Time, but the Pebble 2's screen is fantastic. I can see the time even in an abnormally dim room, without the built-in light. (The trade-off, of course, is that the Pebble 2's screen is black and white, but I think that's fine on a watch).
- wvenable 7y agoI had a classic and a Time.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoAnd you found the Classic hard to read in dim rooms? I’m just surprised. I’ve admittedly never owned a Classic (only a Time and P2), but I thought the Classic was supposed to be almost as good as a Pebble 2. And I find my P2 as easy to read as a normal watch.
- grizzles 7y agoI think I had one of these kicking around and gave it to my mother in law. I'm developing a smart watch product. I'm working with a Chinese company that does the firmware dev. If there's someone out experienced with SWD etc and might be interested in collaborating on this device please drop me a line. As far as I'm concerned the more open the hardware the better.
- imglorp 7y agoWhat do you have in mind?
- grizzles 7y agoI'm making a health game that runs on a tv. I can currently gather data via bluetooth but it would be nice to have better control over the bracelet ui.
- ypcx 7y agoPut a Rust SDK for the watch on Github, tell people about it here and on Reddit and send interested people dev kits. Then start preparing the next model because this will be a massive success.
- dmitrygr 7y ago> If there's someone out experienced with SWD There seems to be no way to contact you other than something called "twitter" as per your profile here?
- MartijnBraam 7y agoPine64 has email, irc, discord, telegram and matrix I only know it's #pinetime:matrix.org
- kjaftaedi 7y agoWould have been helpful to know that you only use twitter so I wouldn't have wasted time trying to find contact information.
- frabbit 7y agoA bit OT, but related: there are no cheap, simple, FOSS mp3 players. It used to be that you could get a Sansa which was flashable with Rockbox¹, had a decent battery life, cost around US$30 and would take SD cards. Those options have now disappeared and been replaced with devices that do not have enough memory to be flashed with Rockbox. The default OS on these is terrible compared to Rockbox. Would love it if someone would make a simple player which was controllable by the user. 1. https://www.rockbox.org/ https://www.rockbox.org/
- xtagon 7y agoAgreed! My Sansa Clip+ is still going strong (magically, the battery still works after all this time) and thanks to Rockbox it can do hundreds of things it couldn't do originally.
- squarefoot 7y agoI have the exact same problem: two (Rockboxed) Sansa Clip Zips I've taken everywhere for years, from snowy mountains to the beach; one is already dead and one about to take its final breath. They're not available anymore for purchase and the few used ones remaining in still good condition are sold ridiculously overpriced. To me there's only one solution: Either develop a a player from scratch or port a subset of Rockbox (no games, FX, etc.) on a small SBC plus added display, DAC, SD and LiPo circuitry. The SBC could well be the ESP32 which would add wireless functionality; *Pi and other Linux boards would be tremendously overkill for the task. Shouldn't be that hard for skilled developers, and it would surely sell among those of us who don't want to use a cellphone.
- andai 7y agoWhy don't you want to use a cellphone? Privacy/surveillance and/or stimulation addiction? I miss my old mp3 players and RockBoxed iPod classic, and I've been meaning to get rid of my cell phone as well. Really I'd prefer a pocket computer to a cell phone, surprised there isn't anything like that for sale.
- serf 7y ago
- syntaxing 7y agoThe watch housing is almost exactly like a Fitbit Versa. Kinda curious if the housing is made by the same manufacturer.
- Scoundreller 7y agoIs there a difference if another manufacturer got hold of the exact same tooling?
- blankcheque 7y agoAh yeah, 2019 the year of the Linux Phone.
- ReverseCold 7y agoEvery year is the year of the Linux Phone because Android exists :)
- thomas536 7y agoHas anyone come across good smartwatch hacks to add a hackable microphone to your wrist?
- geokon 7y agobetter yet would be a mic array. I don't think this Nordic chip can have multiple i2s inputs
- fit2rule 7y agoThis is a for-sure buy for me. I have everything from OpenMoko to Creative Zii, to Pandora and back again in my 'utility drawer', and if .. someone .. who is not the Oscilloscope Watch guy .. will make a nice smart watch, without all the bloat and fancy spy'ing, and with 100% open source, then I am IN. It just seems like a no-brainer. A Linux Watch. Please won't someone just make it. (Bonus points if it has probe inputs...)
- AriaMinaei 7y agoMe too. I just want a hackable smartwatch. I want to customize it so that when I press one of its hardware buttons, it'll start recording a memo, and later syncs it to my laptop when in the same network. I need the recording to start in sub-second time, so there is no barrier to start, which makes my use-case unsuitable for Android-level "hackable."
- megous 7y agoThis thing has 512/256 KiB Flash + 64/32 KiB SRAM. It most probably doesn't even has a mic.
- megous 7y agoJust a note: it's not a Linux watch.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- crispyporkbites 7y agoThis looks pretty similar to the Amazfit BIP, which gives about 45 days (DAYS not hours) of battery life with an always on e-ink screen. What the Amazfit is really missing is an open SDK or way of running apps on it, then it would be pretty much perfect.
- alfiedotwtf 7y agoIf this thing is a hackable watch, I’d be more than happy to even pay $1000 for it. I miss my Pebbles, and being open makes me exited to not be chained to Apple or Google
- gossamer 7y agoI was hoping it ran the Pine email client.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- newnewpdro 7y agoAnyone here use a pinebook? I've been thinking about getting one of the 11" 1080p models @ $99, but really want to see one in person first. It seems very likely to just be e-waste on arrival.