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FOSDEM 2024: PineTime Talk

• pierat 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • candiddevmike 3y ago
    I've been burned twice by Line. First with the PineBook Pro, spent months trying to get it in an acceptable spot with Debian by piecing together reddit posts, obscure forums, kernel mailing lists... Complete disaster. Then I tried the PineTime, this one was less of a mess trying to get it to work, but only because it has been effectively abandoned--waspos is dead, infinitime is getting there, and neither offer an easy on ramp for someone to take them over. Really shows that open source hardware vendors are useless if they aren't also open source software vendors.
    • fooqux 3y ago
      >waspos is dead, infinitime is getting there I'll grant you than waspos hasn't seen much activity in the last few months, but I'm curious what data you're basing your claim of infinitime "getting there". Releases still come about as often as they always have, and looking at the github activity directly refutes your claim.
  • NewJazz 3y ago
    My latest couple gripes are: * revision 2 of the rock64 has an issue with running the ram at the highest speed, but there is no open source implementation of firmware for lower speed ram. So I can't run a full open source TF-A / U-Boot stack. * pinetab 2 has some noname WiFi chipset without any hope for mainline drivers, literally will need an out of tree module for the main networking of the device. Why didn't they just use a replaceable e key m.2 module??
    • bArray 3y ago
      > * pinetab 2 has some noname WiFi chipset without any hope for mainline drivers, literally will need an out of tree module for the main networking of the device. Why didn't they just use a replaceable e key m.2 module?? I was trying to push these guys towards modularity years ago. There is zero upgrade path and you are essentially buying what will become e-waste within 2 years of purchase.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • saidinesh5 3y ago
    Not sure about other things but I like my pinecil so far. It is cheap, well built, works as advertised.
    • squarefoot 3y ago
      Have one as well from the 1st edition and found it surprisingly good for the price.
    • stavros 3y ago
      The Pinecil is the best soldering iron under $150, and it costs $20. I absolutely love it, I bought four.
      • diffeomorphism 3y ago
        I have never seen it for $20, more like $65: https://pine64eu.com/product/pinecil-smart-mini-portable-soldering-iron/ https://pine64eu.com/product/pinecil-smart-mini-portable-sol... Still good, but not quite that cheap.
        • stavros 3y ago
          The last one I bought (two months ago) was $25.99. $11.99 shipping, sadly.
        • thirdtruck 3y ago
          That's the EU price, right? They're $27 in the US: https://pine64.com/product-category/pinetime-smartwatch/ https://pine64.com/product-category/pinetime-smartwatch/.
  • squarefoot 3y ago
    What are you talking about? They're extremely clear when some hardware is aimed at developers and code is not yet ready for users, which for example is the case of the PineNote. https://pine64.com/product/pinenote-developer-edition/ https://pine64.com/product/pinenote-developer-edition/
    • Almondsetat 3y ago
      Their hardware is aimed at developers and yet none of their products has even a decent developing environment? It's not aimed at developers, it's aimed at hackers
      • abbe98 3y ago
        Haven't used the PineTime but for the PinePhone/PinePhone Pro the development experience is the best I have ever had on mobile.
        • fsflover 3y ago
          It seems you missed Librem 5 then.
      • pierat 3y ago
        So is the Flipper Zero. The difference is the Flipper actually fucking works out of the box. Pine shit usually doesn't. And the refrain from Pine is "iTs a HaCkER dEViCe"... so we don't have to actually provide minimally functioning software or not have hardware faults that destroy hardware (read: pinephone pro usb +keyboard/battery usb = fry shit). Pine could actually be top tier. But they chose to cobble the worst shit together, the rarest/weirdest chips that arent even in the linux kernel (read: gongkai stuff found only in shenzhen), and then act like it's great while it's 100% unsupported crap and MAYBE work in 5 years if anyone cares.
  • nalllar 3y ago
    I really like my pinetime. It has way better battery life than android wearos watches - 2 weeks! - and does the few things I actually need, showing the time, alarms and notifications.
• Ologn 3y ago
  Bought a PineTime for $27 plus shipping. Wear it while running to measure my BPM. I send the BPM to the Gadgetbridge Android app via Bluetooth. Upgraded Infinitime via Bluetooth. Have not messed around with the OS code yet. Have been happy so far.
  • ZunarJ5 3y ago
    I love my little PineTime. It's a great little watch. Took a little bit to work through to start up, but after that it's pretty golden. Simple and has the basics. I don't want a watch that can do everything, that's what my phone is for.
  • hobo_mark 3y ago
    Does it do sleep tracking? How long does the battery last? I still daily drive a Pebble 2HR with over a week of battery life but am looking for a replacement compatible with Gadgetbridge, and there really aren't any that can track sleep in a way Gadgetbridge can understand...
    • Ologn 3y ago
      If I do cardio exercise for an hour and am measuring my BPM the whole time, a little less than 20% of the battery is drained. They changed the BPM algorithm in the latest Infinitime update, not sure what the battery hit was in the old one. I turned off Bluetooth and put the watch on the shelf five days ago, the battery drained maybe 14% over that time. I mainly use the watch to measure my BPM, but it can do other things (measure steps walked, get notifications from an Android phone, stopwatch, tell time of course, a somewhat weak flashlight app, it even has games like 2048 and Pong). On Android there is a Sleep as Android app, which I have never used, which says it integrates with PineTime. Reading what people on the net say, some have been happy with it, some have encountered problems. I have never tried to get sleep readings on Gadgetbridge and don't see any talk about Pinetime and Gadgetbridge for sleep on the net. I know someone who has a Fitbit where the sleep measurement from watch to Fitbit app is very extensive, and even tries to estimate when someone is in REM sleep and such - Pinetime doesn't have anything like this yet. To me it's a $27 (plus shipping) hackable watch that does the main thing I want it to, measure BPM. As people code for it, it will probably get more capabilities - someone already improved how it measures BPM in the latest version of Infinitime by doing some fast fourier transforms and the like. Some of the more expensive watches seem to have more capabilities, but I like it for my purposes.
• geokon 3y ago
  From looking at the slides it looks like a really impressive project. But I can't help but feel like very low cost full-blown Linux devices are right around the corner. Ex: https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/02/08/licheerv-nano-low-cost-sg2002-risc-v-arm-camera-display-board-wifi-6-ethernet/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/02/08/licheerv-nano-low-co... If you can run full blown Debian on your wrist soon, why bother with this severely restricted device that are a pain in the ass to develop for?
  • em-bee 3y ago
    But I can't help but feel like very low cost full-blown Linux devices are right around the corner. why is that a but? i don't think this is a case of, if we had waited longer we could have made them cheaper, but i rather believe that pine64, fairphone, and other projects going all the way back to openmoko were laying the groundwork that make the next generation of cheaper and better devices even possible. so yes, very low cost full-blown Linux devices may very well be around the corner, but that's no reason to dismiss the pine64 products, on the contrary, they should be lauded for being pioneers
    • geokon 3y ago
      I'm not any kind of authority on this, but for the most part the hacker/OSS community is taking cheap chips and repurposing the hardware for other stuff. So progress in the space happens on its own. For instance the chip in the Lychee RV Nano is made for IP cameras. I guess my point is that once you can run Debian on your wrist (which will happen for external reasons), all these complex setups with customs RTOS stacks that people are working on may become kind of irrelevant. It's always a shame to see people's hard work become obsolete You've made a very cool suspension for your carriage, but Ford is about to mass produce the automobile
      • em-bee 3y ago
        i get your point, but i actually think that RTOS solutions will remain interesting as i believe they should be able to run on less power thus enabling uses that devices which need more power can't. (like a wrist watch that doesn't need to be recharged as often)
• spinningD20 3y ago
  it took me two weeks to get the sealed pinetime working back when it launched. for some reason it would get stuck on the initial boot screen, and it would be in a state to where I couldn't update the firmware. eventually in a mindless "flap/spin it in a circle with my hand while I was thinking about work" I felt it vibrate and to my surprise, it booted for the first time ever. It turned out, even with a firmware update months later applied to it, that whenever it gets rebooted, I have to do the above movement until it finally decides to boot, and it's random. Sometimes it takes a few spins/flicks, sometimes I'm doing it for minutes on end. I confirmed this isn't a red herring by leaving it in its frozen state and motionless, and it would never recover, even 24hr later. This was the second Pine purchase of mine, the first being the PinePhone Pro, which A) I couldn't get activated on AT&T (not Pine's fault with the 3g phase out and whitelist approach, but I digress), and when I used TMobile, I couldn't make a call with it without having audio problems or etc. Look, I wanted to support them, and the idea of less expensive open hardware/software, even if it meant rough edges, but completely non functional for even the most basic usages... I might as well just build my own and understand all of the reasons why something doesn't work instead of spending days or months getting it to do what it said it would do on the tin out of the box.
  • jhoho 3y ago
    That pretty much sums up their early adopter experience. The PineTime ecosystem is pretty neat nowadays, just try out InfiniTime: https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/InfiniTime https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/InfiniTime