10 ms·

Pebble Watch software is now open source

1241 points by Larrikin 11mo ago

apparent 11mo ago
> We are trying our best to get into mass production and ship out at most several thousand Pebble Time 2s before CNY [which starts in January]. > Realistically, at this time we’re forecasting that the majority of people will receive their PT2 in March and April. If the factories close for 3 weeks for CNY, then why will the second batch arrive 2-3 months after the first batch?
- erohead 11mo ago
  Good question! (I am the Pebble founder) When factories restart, not all of the workers who were working there before actually come back to work. Some of them stay in their hometowns or they get other jobs. This means that restarting the production line actually means retraining people on how to assemble the product. There is also an entire supply chain behind the assembly line that takes time to restart. Think of all the sub-components like plastics, metal components, etc. that need to be built at respective factories. It takes time to ship them to the primary factory for final assembly and test. After the product gets assembled, there are several stages of testing, like gluing, environmental testing, final assembly test, and packaging, that take time as well. Then the product has to be shipped to the fulfillment center, packaged, labeled, and then shipped out. Each step time, and the process needs to completely re-start after CNY.
  - apparent 11mo ago
    Thanks for explaining this. Would you estimate that the January units will be more likely to have issues than the later ones, since they'll be first off the line? Or will there be no changes to the components/process that might make the later units more reliable?
    - erohead 11mo ago
      They should be identical.
    - rkangel 11mo ago
      A good manufacturing process (with the appropriate level of testing) should result in yield variations, not quality variations. i.e. if the line is running less well for some reason, then you end up throwing more in the bin rather than shipping bad product.
  - njovin 11mo ago
    Sorry to hijack, but are there plans to re-manufacture the Pebble 2 Duo in black? I was one of the pre-orderers that was offered either a refund or a white version and chose the refund because I really had my heart set on the black and don't want a color screen. I'm also an OG Pebble enthusiast, although sadly my old one is long gone.
    - jmcphers 11mo ago
      Eric has made it clear that the Pebble 2 Duo was always going to be a limited run because it was made mostly of leftover components and there's no reasonable path towards making new copies of those components. > Pebble 2 Duo is sold out! We are not making more. https://ericmigi.com/blog/how-to-build-a-smartwatch-software-setting-expectations-and-roadmap#quick-update-on-pebb https://ericmigi.com/blog/how-to-build-a-smartwatch-software...
      - t0bia_s 11mo ago
        That's really disappointing! I want BW eink screen, I'm not interested in colour version at all.
        apparent 11mo ago
        Out of curiosity, what's the downside of color? The screen on the new watches is also substantially larger. AFAIK there's no discernible battery life penalty for the color watches (even with the larger screen).
        t0bia_s 11mo ago
        Price, durability, battery life, contrast ratio and overall not usability for my needs.
        jmcphers 11mo ago
        It really is, I wish there were a version of the Time 2 that had a BW screen. I did manage to snag one of the Pebble 2 Duos before they sold out and I love it. The contrast and reflectivity is unbeatable.
- small_scombrus 11mo ago
  I may be wrong, but I think they mean ship from the factory to the distribution point so that could add some time between an item being made and shipped to a customer But I've never done anything like this, so ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago
> Yesterday, Pebble watch software was ~95% open source. Today, it’s 100% open source. You can download, compile and run all the software you need to use your Pebble. We just published the source code for the new Pebble mobile app! Except... > Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source. So 100% FOSS, except for the parts that are closed source now, and any that they add later.
- modeless 11mo ago
  The important thing is that all the code written by Core Devices is open source. They can't force third parties to open their code, but they're opening all of their own work. And that proprietary code is not required to use the watches. Most of them don't even have heart rate sensors, and clearly Memfault is not required. They're committing to maintaining a 100% open source version that still allows you to use the watches with minimal compromise.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago
    Then say "Pebble Watch Software written by Core Devices Is Now 100% Open Source", or "Pebble mobile app open sourced" (that seems to be the major actual change?), or something like that. The thing they've actually done should be commended, but that doesn't mean ignoring that they've chosen to make a claim in the headline that isn't actually true.
    - micromacrofoot 11mo ago
      I understand the desire for more literal communication, but it's not the world we live in
janpio 11mo ago
Also includes news about a new Appstore, which can probably be seen as a reaction to the stories from last week: We’ve created our own Pebble Appstore feed (appstore-api.repebble.com) and new Developer Dashboard. Our feed (fyi powered by 100% new software) is configured to back up an archive of all apps and faces to Archive.org (backup will gradually complete over the next week). Today, our feed only has a subset of all Pebble watchfaces and apps (thank you aveao for creating Pebble Archive!). Developers - you can upload your existing or new apps right now! We hope that this sets a standard for openness and we encourage all feeds to publish a freely and publicly available archive. https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-watch-software-is-now-100percent-open-source#:~:text=app%2E-,We%E2%80%99ve,available%20archive https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-watch-software-is-now-100pe...
- oakhaven 11mo ago
  I read the drama last week, and after seeing this, I have to side with Rebble. I think they kept the community alive since Eric M cashed out and Fitbit shut it down. As the stars have aligned in recent years, Eric revives Pebble, but if Rebble wouldn't spend all the effort maintaining the app store, his consumer base would be much smaller and it would be much harder to bootstrap again. With Repebble (Core Devices) and their new appstore (or/and apt-style repository system), Rebble seems obsolete, it's a bit sad. They deserve credit which they won't be able to claim anymore. They should be rewarded somehow for bridging the dark age, otherwise it seems they served purpose all until Eric returned and said "Thank You and fuck off". Also, to me, Eric talking doesn't sound authentic, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's lying. I don't mean to insult though, mad respect for putting project like Pebble together. Hope that there's some place and purpose for Rebble in the future.
  - esrauch 11mo ago
    I'm surprised by this comment; after the drama last week and after seeing this I fully have to side against Rebble. The nature of driving a healthy open source centered ecosystem is that you don't control it under your iron fist: you make good contributions, users _and_ companies are able to use them in all new ways which comply with the licensing terms. And it seems that RePebble is going way beyond the licensing terms requirements, but bending over backwards to honor Rebble here when they aren't actually required to. I just can't imagine what people want from RePebble if not this: they are being maximally open, making it so all of everything would be able to continue if they went out of business tomorrow, while also actively enabling people to continue using Rebble's store and paid offerings. Should they be forcing users to use Rebble's offerings (instead of making things even more open) as a reward for doing a good job bridging the dark age?
apparent 11mo ago
Is it me or is the "Rivian blue" that he refers to in the video not that close to the color of actual Rivians? IMO the watch band/insert color is less green and quite a bit lighter. Not bad, per se, but I feel like this is not the best descriptor since it might make people think it's a different color.
- erohead 11mo ago
  Material color is very tough, especially comparing metallic paint to polycarbonate. Lighting matters, reflections matter. We tried our best, but yes, obviously it's not exactly the same.
  - apparent 11mo ago
    And of course, video adds another layer of complexity. Would you say that the video looks accurate to you, or does calling it "Rivian blue" help people understand what it looks like in real life?
    - erohead 11mo ago
      I don't actually own a Rivian. I've seen them from afar. They look cool. I have not held a Pebble Time up to a Rivian yet. Maybe I'll creepily do that in downtown Palo Alto today :)
      - apparent 11mo ago
        I will await your photo post on (where else?) Bluesky.
      - collingreen 11mo ago
        Get your creep on, for science!
        apparent 11mo ago
        No need to creep. It appears there is a Rivian store in Palo Alto. [1] Surely they must have one on hand in their namesake blue. 1: https://rivian.com/spaces/palo-alto https://rivian.com/spaces/palo-alto
Currybongos 11mo ago
[flagged]
- apparent 11mo ago
  These watches have an advertised battery life of 30 days. Perhaps you meant to post this in a thread about Apple Watches.
apparent 11mo ago
I'm excited that the back will screw off so we can replace the battery. I'm curious about waterproofing. Will that hold? Will we need to replace a gasket or other parts, in addition to the battery?
- erohead 11mo ago
  In the video, the green thing is the gasket. It should be reusable, but nothing's guaranteed in the world of waterproofing.
  - ortusdux 11mo ago
    I really like the look of the Pixel watch 4's approach to this: https://www.ifixit.com/News/113620/the-pixel-watch-4-is-the-most-repairable-smartwatch-on-the-market https://www.ifixit.com/News/113620/the-pixel-watch-4-is-the-...
    - erohead 11mo ago
      That is incredibly fantastic feat of engineering!
      - Fnoord 11mo ago
        Exciting, except it runs Android Wear OS by Google instead of a deGoogled OS, and in the comments it says: "Repairability is admirable but only 3 years of security updates isn't near enough" FTA: "We’re also making sure that our new watches are more repairable than old Pebble watches. The back cover of Pebble Time 2 is screwed in. You can remove the back cover and replace the battery." So the battery of the Pebble Time 2 (the watch I bought to replace my Fossil HR Collider which replaced my orig. Pebble 2) is user serviceable. I had to open my Pebble 2 because my buttons were falling off. I bought a second hand donor (Pebble OC, since I ditched my broken Pebble OC at some point) and unfortunately I failed to succeed the transplantation of the buttons. Which made me very sad. I also very much liked you could turn the radios off on the Pebble 2. The HR was useless though. But if I want a good quality of that, I'd go for Garmin or (if I were in the Apple ecosystem) an Apple Watch.
vessenes 11mo ago
Eric, congrats. Typo in the first photo caption: "in all it's glory" -> "in all its glory"
lawn 11mo ago
They've made two big changes that are surely the result of the recent drama: * The companion app is now completely open source, ensuring that the community can continue supporting the watches if Core goes under. * You can subscribe to multiple app stores while optionally paying for services, and Core will maintain their own store. This seems to placate Rebble so they can do their thing and provide their paid services. Seems like very good steps forward overall.
weinzierl 11mo ago
"Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to Core Devices and to recipients of software distributed by Core Devices a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works." A few years from now we will see the usual HN thread were contributors lachrymosely complain about how their precious work was stolen by a good-turned-evil organization.
- MangoToupe 11mo ago
  Pebble was bought a long time ago by google yea? So this already happened
  - rav3ndust 11mo ago
    not exactly, fitbit acquired pebble in 2016, and google acquired fitbit in 2021. so while google did end up with the IP in the end, they did the Right Thing this year and open-sourced PebbleOS. i don't normally praise google, but i am glad their open-sourcing of pebbleOS here enabled this new revival of Pebble devices.
- erohead 11mo ago
  Please note our CLA explicitly include a clause to require Core Devices to distribute all contributions under an OSI-compatible FOSS license (e.g. GPLv3). So no contributions can be 'stolen'. https://ericmigi.notion.site/Core-Devices-Software-Licensing-1c0fbb55ea8480f88d27ccf20fcb84a8 https://ericmigi.notion.site/Core-Devices-Software-Licensing...
  - weinzierl 11mo ago
    I'm the first to agree that contributions can't be stolen in this scenario but read the threads I'm referring to. People feel that way anyway if you stop supporting a component or distribute your focus between a free and a paid tier. What we need is more awareness that looking at the license alone is not enough to make an informed decision if contributing to a project is aligned with the contributors attitude and personal goals. With that in mind: Thank you for putting the CLA right in the repo where it belongs and people can easily find it. Many organizations put a license upfront and bury the CLA. For a particularly bad example try MonoDB.
amwehrli 11mo ago
Wearing my new white pebble right now and am very happy with how open source the comeback has been. Incredibly happy with it and if you want a geeky, simple watch I really can't recommend it enough. The battery life and always on screen alone (especially at this price point) is reason enough. Cheers to Eric for bringing back pebble in the way that he has !
apparent 11mo ago
In terms of long-term market viability, have you considered whether your success could encourage Apple or other large competitors to make a battery life-optimized version of their smartwatches? I understand that some Pebble fans are all about the customization, and will be with you forever. But probably many people care mostly about the battery life, which is severely lacking in watches from Apple, Google, etc. If Apple realized there was a big enough market to justify making a $200 Apple Watch Basic, how much could that undercut your business? Relatedly, when will we learn more about the other "core" devices that you're contemplating, and which you alluded to in the video? Building more of a unique ecosystem could help with the moat.
- jsheard 11mo ago
  > In terms of long-term market viability, have you considered whether your success could encourage Apple or other large competitors to make a battery life-optimized version of their smartwatches? Companies like Garmin, Coros and Suunto already make less-smart-watches with weeks of battery life, and those haven't convinced Apple to budge from only making watches that do everything under the sun but barely last a day. Another long-lasting watch from a tiny brand probably isn't going to move the needle.
  - apparent 11mo ago
    IDK about Coros or Suunto, but the only Garmins with a battery life approaching 30 days cost ~$1,000. This could be competition for AWU, but wouldn't communicate that there is demand for a more basic/long-lasting Apple Watch.
    - jsheard 11mo ago
      30 days is asking a lot of any reasonably sized smartwatch, but if you set your sights a bit lower then a $250 Coros Pace 4 will do ~3 weeks with AOD off, ~1 week with AOD on, and 30-40 hours of continuous GPS recording. That's still a lot longer than any Apple Watch even if it's not hitting the 30 day milestone.
zeta0134 11mo ago
Honestly this feels like the best possible outcome. It's pretty unusual for an appstore implementation to support multiple feeds[0], but it's great resilience to large company failures when they do. This way, users can totally still access Rebble's feed (and pay for a subscription if they like) just as before, but they are free to also use something else. It is the *end user* who decides which feeds to trust, as it should be. And since it's built right into the app as a core concept, it doesn't take massive engineering effort to switch feeds if some sort of drama occurs. [0] I'd normally call these repositories, but I've used Eric's term for consistency with the article.
- infotainment 11mo ago
  Definitely agree that this is the best outcome for everyone! In particular, with multiple repo support, I'm hoping this can open the door for some kind of "F-Droid for Pebble" with automated builds from source repos. So many Pebble apps are open source anyway I think it would be a good fit.
freedomben 11mo ago
Love to see this! I personally find this incredibly exciting. There is a major death of hardware out there that is user-respecting and hacker-friendly, and it warms my heart immensely to see such committments. I'm buying two today (one for me and one for my wife)!
diego_moita 11mo ago
This is precious. Almost every tech company wants to continue the IBM "surrounded by blue" strategy, fencing customers into their "walled garden" surrounded by a Warren Buffet moat and blocking obsessively any competitor that wants to breach in. Google mandates that every Android application must be signed by developers verified by them, Microsoft demands that users open an account with them, ... and just don't get me started with AWS, Apple, John Deere, Nespresso, etc. Meanwhile, I fail to see any real contender in the smartphone arena. But, in wearables, Pebble puts up a fight. The platform/product has proven resilient, mostly because of its users passion and commitment. It is more alive today than Fitbit, the company that bought and buried it. And will only get stronger. Now I'll be anxiously waiting for my PT2. It will be the 5th Pebble in my collection.
lrvick 11mo ago
THIS is the post that finally got me to make a pre-order, as a former Pebble engineer. FOSS all the things so my freedoms are never restricted again, and I am happy to pay.
hemmert 11mo ago
Great solution, great example of how open source should be done.
Pfhortune 11mo ago
It's great to see the app open-sourced! Hopefully this can be distributed on F-Droid one day soon! And the ability to choose app repos is also a wonderful development. Nothing against Rebble at all, but more choices and more openness is always better!
DrammBA 11mo ago
(Un)related new post made by rebble today: https://rebble.io/2025/11/24/rebble-in-your-own-world.html https://rebble.io/2025/11/24/rebble-in-your-own-world.html Doesn't address the multiple feed support for the app store, and seems to be calling Eric to action a few times, but it would be too much of a coincidence that these two posts come out so close to one another.
- niwtsol 11mo ago
  Thank you for posting this, it really gave me an answer to the "huh, how did all that drama from last week play out." IMO rebble jumped to some conclusions and felt robbed/cheated by what Eric was doing. With Eric going above and beyond to open source everything, I really feel he is trying to live up to what the original promise of pebble was. It is cool what rebble did to keep the pebble community alive, and I get that they might feel slighted, but if you take all egos out of the equation, what Eric is doing is like the best possible outcome - we get new pebble devices. Isn't that the best possible outcome?
  - user_7832 11mo ago
    > Eric is doing is like the best possible outcome Slight correction, apparently Eric posting one of those WhatsApp screenshots was not okay with the person on the other side (who iirc is a rebble guy), who added that those grievances he had were taken out of context in the screenshot. The pebble (or rebble?) subreddit had this in the comments if anyone wants to read more. As always, the truth appears to lie somewhere in the middle, and while this does appear to be more of miscommunication than malice, it's a bit disappointing to me overall.
    - Valodim 11mo ago
      Eh. imo this is a hard moral high ground to claim if you publicly (and falsely, as we now know) accuse someone of a crime and threaten legal action in a blog post
      - infotainment 11mo ago
Forgeties79 11mo ago
Sitting here with my white pebble 2 duo just glad they resolved all this drama. Was not fun seeing the explosion days after getting it!
riazrizvi 11mo ago
Is there a vibration mechanism? That’s a must-have in a watch for me.
- wlesieutre 11mo ago
  There is, but I would set expectations lower than Apple's "taptic engine" where they designed their own hardware with a team of engineers and a bazillion dollars. One of the recent development updates mentioned adding a global "vibrate on hour" setting which historically had to be implemented as an option by the specific watchface you're using.
  - riazrizvi 11mo ago
    I’ll be comparing to a Timex Expedition Grid Shock, which I’ve been using for years. Have no idea why they discontinued it. Suspect it had something to do with clueless leadership who undervalue customer satisfaction.
Pxtl 11mo ago
[flagged]
- apparent 11mo ago
  Good thing he isn't shipping from the US to Canada then, eh? Only the US-bound watches are shipped to the US. The rest go straight from Asia. Also, I'd be surprised if the Pebble company that was acquired by Fitbit was a Canadian company. I assume it was a US company.
  - Pxtl 11mo ago
    Apparently I misremembered the story, while Pebble was prototyped in Canada by U of Waterloo guys, when they went startup & kickstarter with the product they moved to California.
mkhalil 11mo ago
I'm sure its happened before, but this is the first time i finally get to see some sort of modern hardware in KiCad. Pretty cool to see all 6 layers, paste layers, and adhesive layers as well. I've always wondered how the cake was made and if big projects do/could use KiCad. Seems like a lot more work relative to those Single Layer PCBs on YouTube for things like emulators and custom PCBs. Glad I now know for sure, that I can't do this.
- drunkonvinyl 11mo ago
  Depends on any project ideas, but as a newbie to hardware dev and with my own small scope eurorack module idea, I am having a lot of luck with flux.ai. Even got a small order of 5 PCBs printed for under $200.
- leoedin 11mo ago
  Paste and adhesive are spat out by KiCad as part of the manufacturing outputs. It works pretty much the same way other EDA packages like altium do - the extra layers are part of the part footprint. If you don’t design your own footprints it’s basically no extra work to generate those. You almost certainly could do it - obviously with some time investment. Getting multi layer PCBs made is surprisingly affordable now.
- k1musab1 11mo ago
  The Reform laptop project is open hardware: https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform I encourage you to browse it, I found that while challenging, it does not seem unreachable to get to that level of proficiency in KiCad.
Ninjinka 11mo ago
As someone who has been working on a pair of smart glasses running RTOS, and having to make companion apps for both iOS and Android, I am very interested in reading your approaches to a lot of the same problems I have faced. There's not a lot of information out there on these topics.
whyenot 11mo ago
This is great news! I know the new Pebble has a small team and is focused on being a long term sustainable enterprise. This should help with that goal quite a bit. I received my Pebble 2 Duo about a month ago, and it is awesome. Nice job and thank you! I feel 10 years younger :)
tamimio 11mo ago
My current smartwatch is $7 I got from the thrift store. Not only does it offer everything an Apple Watch offers, but it also measures blood pressure (surprisingly accurate) and has a small flashlight, and I charge it once every 3 weeks. The only issue is its app is limited and you can’t customize anything besides the watch faces and the wrist strap. So having that, it’s really hard to compete if you are just going to offer another smartwatch, which is a great strategy to open source the software and allow customization, even on the hardware level to some degree. Myself and a lot of people would be interested to have that!
- tonetegeatinst 11mo ago
  Do you know what algorithm or sensors it uses to calculate BP?
  - tamimio 11mo ago
    I honestly don’t even know the model, as the Bluetooth pairing name is just some number, the app (iOS) is called “Da fit” if that will help you. I was thinking before about tearing it down but it’s waterproof and I know this process will ruin it and won’t be able to use it while swimming or similar.
bredren 11mo ago
I see a future where FOSS designs for consumer products compete with commercial releases. It will take far more sophisticated micro-manufacturing (like 3d-printing but different tools handling more types of materials). Get the jacket in your exact size with the best materials. Benefit from having incrementally improved from the original (for example under arm vent zipper angle improved). All of it unbranded or custom branded. Seems hard to believe annual released, mass manufacturing will compete.
- pastel8739 11mo ago
  Really? To me it seems hard to believe that small-scale manufacturing could ever meaningfully compete with economies of scale.
  - bredren 11mo ago
    My experience is that consumer products, for example winter jackets, have gone down in quality and way, way up in price. The designs themselves are often just bad. It is almost like consumers are punished for not spending enough with bad color options. (You can see this in running shoes as well) Even if the right aesthetic and function is found, there's no real consideration of body type or shape, you get a few sizes to choose from. I think big brands have consumers over a barrel today. When the design and materials assembly are solved, I think people will pay more to get the thing they want. And I think they're more likely to keep them longer as a result.
dcreater 11mo ago
That's good to hear! If the health monitoring is reliable, im sold. I want to move on from apples clutches despite the pebble hardware not looking particularly attractive to me
ck2 11mo ago
I wish someone would take on an open-source project for a sports watch with full features like vo2max estimation, etc. like a cyanogenmod or lineageos but for an older watch model someone has completely decompiled the firmware for the Garmin Forerunner 245 which is very similar to a Fenix 5 imagine if someone took on making open firmware for it https://github.com/anvilsecure/garmin-ciq-app-research/ https://github.com/anvilsecure/garmin-ciq-app-research/ if taking on a brand name might incur lawsuits there are other watches like the wahoo rival which was completely retired and they got out of the business (it was only $99 too) or there are other ppen hardware options from China
mid-kid 11mo ago
For some of us software freedom enthusiasts it is worth noting that PebbleOS contains some proprietary blobs for some peripherals in the watch[1]. This is not just firmware you upload to the peripheral but also properietary .a libraries that run on the main core. Though to be fair to OpenDevices, this is source code they don't have acces to either. [1]: https://github.com/coredevices/pebbleos-nonfree/tree/57a94e2a8b7236f41f8e60c039a0342652487517 https://github.com/coredevices/pebbleos-nonfree/tree/57a94e2...
- paxcoder 11mo ago
  So not 100% open source. Thanks for the info
  - ddlsmurf 11mo ago
    Well the Pebble specific parts are. This is an unfortunate state of affairs from hardware manufacturers, they are very late to the open source game, if at all.
    - paxcoder 11mo ago
      From the article: >Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source. 100% should mean 100%
      - darkwater 11mo ago
        If they are not mandatory it's 100%. Otherwise according to your standard, Debian is not 100% free software either.
ericd 11mo ago
Don’t have much to add except huge congrats on relaunching. What a move, not only bringing it back from the dead, but also doing it in a way that many people dream that companies would. I just bought an Apple Watch, but this is really tempting.
tylervigen 11mo ago
This is awesome. What a way to do a relaunch. I was a Pebble user in 2013 on first release and saddened when it all broke down. I was so turned off from that experience that I swore off smart watches (I wear a Casio now). This could get me back, though I’ll admit the appeal has gone down since I’ve realized how nice it is to create separation between me and my notifications.
- jwpapi 11mo ago
  At most smart watches you can turn them off. And at your phone too. I like the gamification and some notifications (today its 5 degrees colder than yesterday for example)
Larrikin 11mo ago
A little surprised there has been no mention of the app being Kotlin multiplatform. https://github.com/coredevices/mobileapp https://github.com/coredevices/mobileapp I had heard of many smaller apps using Kotlin for their iOS app, but this may be the biggest all in multiplatform app I've seen. It would be awesome if there may eventually be support for writing Pebble apps in Kotlin.
- farmerbb 11mo ago
  As a Kotlin multiplatform developer myself, this is wonderful to see!
- zorgmonkey 11mo ago
  Pebble watches run on Cortex-M microcontrollers which have less than 1MB of flash storage and RAM, I like Kotlin multiplatform but getting it to run on them is extremely unlikely. I assume that for the foreseeable future Pebble apps will be only written in languages which are traditionally used for MCUs like Rust and C\C++
  - consp 11mo ago
    Calling rust traditional is a bit of a stretch, while it is being done it's pretty much bleeding edge (though if you do not use any of the manufacturer supplied code and libraries to begin with you should be fine).
  - leo_e 11mo ago
    It is honestly refreshing to see constraints like this again. In my cloud infrastructure work (C++), we have gotten lazy. We bloat our containers because 'RAM is cheap'. Seeing a system designed to fit into 1MB reminds me that performance engineering used to be about efficiency, not just throwing more hardware at the problem.
    - 42days 11mo ago
      I find this a little funny because as a firmware engineer the project I regularly work on only has 512kb of flash. This doesn't stop sales from constent new feature requests. Embedded is definitely a fun balance of what we could do and how much we can do.
ls-a 11mo ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 11mo ago
  Please don't post grumbly swipes like this on HN. The guidelines ask us not to be curmudgeonly. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - ls-a 11mo ago
    Ok Rumi. It's my opinion if you don't agree just say I don't agree. Im doing you a favor by giving you an alternative more truthful reality. If you prefer to be in bliss then that's fine but stop acting so sleazy.
    - tomhow 11mo ago
      We don't need a mini-sermon. We just need you, like everyone, to follow the guidelines. Criticism is fine. Emptiness and thoughtlessness is not. You're welcome not to participate here if you're unwilling to put a little effort and substance into what you post.
      - ls-a 11mo ago
        Why didn't you update the title. It's not 100% open source. What's the point of the wrong percentage if it's not to exaggerate a false claim?
        tomhow 11mo ago
        We did that, but the best way to show you want to contribute positively to HN is to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) rather than raising the issue only after you've been pulled up for abuse.
fijiaarone 11mo ago
So is the FORTRAN75 compiler, but it’s still being used.
danjuma 11mo ago
[dead]
RobKohr 11mo ago
I look forward to a year or two from now when there will be dozens of pebble clones just rolling out of factories for the price of a midrange Casio watch. This along with valve's hardware announcement is quite a shot at all the entreched hardware manufacturers.
acka 11mo ago
This title is misleading. As explained in the comments, there are still non-free binary blobs in the firmware. Please reserve phrasing like "100% X" for things that are indeed "0% Not(X)."
- nedt 11mo ago
  They have released 100% of the source they have.
noman-land 11mo ago
I'm very not in the smart watch game but a fully open watch with a bunch of sensors and connectivity sounds very appealing. However, I find square watch faces to be extremely unattractive. What's the latest in open watches with round faces and relatively thin profile?
- apparent 11mo ago
  Eric has hinted at wanting to build a round Pebble (like the Pebble Time Round, presumably), so hopefully things will go well with the initial batches and we'll be graced with the presence of a PTR in time for Christmas 2026.
rav3ndust 11mo ago
I plan on picking one of these new Pebbles up in the next batch. I loved my original Pebbles (I still have my old Time Steel). Before the Pebbles came back and PebbleOS open-sourced, the only real open smartwatch option we had around that I'm aware of is the PineTime, which I currently wear every day rocking Infinitime. Will be fun to pick up one of these again and be able to hop back and forth between it and the PineTime! Great stuff, Eric and team.
ridd0 11mo ago
Love open source
virajk_31 11mo ago
Do they want the community to help fix bugs (Even tho I suppose they don't hv any secret sauce), or enable users to customize the software...
timonoko 11mo ago
Ew open you say? Micropython-watch is actually useful, you can program it do things while on the run. Did not make it perse, but I added webrepl-button to it. https://github.com/timonoko/t-watch-2020-micropython-hacks https://github.com/timonoko/t-watch-2020-micropython-hacks
leo_e 11mo ago
As someone dealing with open-source compliance in distributed systems, the purity tests in these comments are exhausting. Hardware is messy. IP licensing for sensors and radios is a nightmare. Getting a functional OS out with "only" a few binary blobs is a massive engineering and legal victory. I'd rather have a working, 95% open ecosystem that I can actually hack on, than a 100% pure theoretical one that never ships. Kudos to Eric for navigating the legal minefield to make this happen.
- cdibona 11mo ago
  The closest we got to a fully open source android release was probably in the Nexus one days with some 9 proprietary blobs and , worse, user space support programs (IIRC the compass calibration routines, annoyingly.) , all for various chip/radio support.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago
    And look how that ended up.
- yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago
  As one of those commenters: It's actually super easy. It's fine for your product to only be mostly open source. It's definitely completely understandable if you can't open up some of the blobs that you yourself licensed. All I ask is that if you can't actually ship 100% of the software on the device needed to actually provide the advertised features, that you don't make a big headline claiming that it's 100% open source.
  - drabbiticus 11mo ago
    For the sake of easy reference, I'll leave the relevant snippet from the linked article so people can decide for themselves with a bit more information: > Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source.
keraf 11mo ago
Apart from all the awesome annoucements, what really makes me happy is how quickly this went from internet drama to both parties moving towards doing whats best for the community. Props to Core and Rebble for making Pebble what it is today and casting a bright future for theses watches. Been happily wearing my Pebble Steel for the past month after replacing its battery, looking forward to the PT2!
heyaco 11mo ago
kotlin tho lol

1241 points by Larrikin 11mo ago

> We are trying our best to get into mass production and ship out at most several thousand Pebble Time 2s before CNY [which starts in January]. > Realistically, at this time we’re forecasting that the majority of people will receive their PT2 in March and April. If the factories close for 3 weeks for CNY, then why will the second batch arrive 2-3 months after the first batch?

erohead 11mo ago
Good question! (I am the Pebble founder) When factories restart, not all of the workers who were working there before actually come back to work. Some of them stay in their hometowns or they get other jobs. This means that restarting the production line actually means retraining people on how to assemble the product. There is also an entire supply chain behind the assembly line that takes time to restart. Think of all the sub-components like plastics, metal components, etc. that need to be built at respective factories. It takes time to ship them to the primary factory for final assembly and test. After the product gets assembled, there are several stages of testing, like gluing, environmental testing, final assembly test, and packaging, that take time as well. Then the product has to be shipped to the fulfillment center, packaged, labeled, and then shipped out. Each step time, and the process needs to completely re-start after CNY.
- apparent 11mo ago
  Thanks for explaining this. Would you estimate that the January units will be more likely to have issues than the later ones, since they'll be first off the line? Or will there be no changes to the components/process that might make the later units more reliable?
  - erohead 11mo ago
    They should be identical.
  - rkangel 11mo ago
    A good manufacturing process (with the appropriate level of testing) should result in yield variations, not quality variations. i.e. if the line is running less well for some reason, then you end up throwing more in the bin rather than shipping bad product.
- njovin 11mo ago
  Sorry to hijack, but are there plans to re-manufacture the Pebble 2 Duo in black? I was one of the pre-orderers that was offered either a refund or a white version and chose the refund because I really had my heart set on the black and don't want a color screen. I'm also an OG Pebble enthusiast, although sadly my old one is long gone.
  - jmcphers 11mo ago
    Eric has made it clear that the Pebble 2 Duo was always going to be a limited run because it was made mostly of leftover components and there's no reasonable path towards making new copies of those components. > Pebble 2 Duo is sold out! We are not making more. https://ericmigi.com/blog/how-to-build-a-smartwatch-software-setting-expectations-and-roadmap#quick-update-on-pebb https://ericmigi.com/blog/how-to-build-a-smartwatch-software...
    - t0bia_s 11mo ago
      That's really disappointing! I want BW eink screen, I'm not interested in colour version at all.
      - apparent 11mo ago
        Out of curiosity, what's the downside of color? The screen on the new watches is also substantially larger. AFAIK there's no discernible battery life penalty for the color watches (even with the larger screen).
        t0bia_s 11mo ago
        Price, durability, battery life, contrast ratio and overall not usability for my needs.
      - jmcphers 11mo ago
        It really is, I wish there were a version of the Time 2 that had a BW screen. I did manage to snag one of the Pebble 2 Duos before they sold out and I love it. The contrast and reflectivity is unbeatable.
small_scombrus 11mo ago
I may be wrong, but I think they mean ship from the factory to the distribution point so that could add some time between an item being made and shipped to a customer But I've never done anything like this, so ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago

> Yesterday, Pebble watch software was ~95% open source. Today, it’s 100% open source. You can download, compile and run all the software you need to use your Pebble. We just published the source code for the new Pebble mobile app! Except... > Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source. So 100% FOSS, except for the parts that are closed source now, and any that they add later.

modeless 11mo ago
The important thing is that all the code written by Core Devices is open source. They can't force third parties to open their code, but they're opening all of their own work. And that proprietary code is not required to use the watches. Most of them don't even have heart rate sensors, and clearly Memfault is not required. They're committing to maintaining a 100% open source version that still allows you to use the watches with minimal compromise.
- yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago
  Then say "Pebble Watch Software written by Core Devices Is Now 100% Open Source", or "Pebble mobile app open sourced" (that seems to be the major actual change?), or something like that. The thing they've actually done should be commended, but that doesn't mean ignoring that they've chosen to make a claim in the headline that isn't actually true.
  - micromacrofoot 11mo ago
    I understand the desire for more literal communication, but it's not the world we live in

janpio 11mo ago

Also includes news about a new Appstore, which can probably be seen as a reaction to the stories from last week: We’ve created our own Pebble Appstore feed (appstore-api.repebble.com) and new Developer Dashboard. Our feed (fyi powered by 100% new software) is configured to back up an archive of all apps and faces to Archive.org (backup will gradually complete over the next week). Today, our feed only has a subset of all Pebble watchfaces and apps (thank you aveao for creating Pebble Archive!). Developers - you can upload your existing or new apps right now! We hope that this sets a standard for openness and we encourage all feeds to publish a freely and publicly available archive. https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-watch-software-is-now-100percent-open-source#:~:text=app%2E-,We%E2%80%99ve,available%20archive https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-watch-software-is-now-100pe...

oakhaven 11mo ago
I read the drama last week, and after seeing this, I have to side with Rebble. I think they kept the community alive since Eric M cashed out and Fitbit shut it down. As the stars have aligned in recent years, Eric revives Pebble, but if Rebble wouldn't spend all the effort maintaining the app store, his consumer base would be much smaller and it would be much harder to bootstrap again. With Repebble (Core Devices) and their new appstore (or/and apt-style repository system), Rebble seems obsolete, it's a bit sad. They deserve credit which they won't be able to claim anymore. They should be rewarded somehow for bridging the dark age, otherwise it seems they served purpose all until Eric returned and said "Thank You and fuck off". Also, to me, Eric talking doesn't sound authentic, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's lying. I don't mean to insult though, mad respect for putting project like Pebble together. Hope that there's some place and purpose for Rebble in the future.
- esrauch 11mo ago
  I'm surprised by this comment; after the drama last week and after seeing this I fully have to side against Rebble. The nature of driving a healthy open source centered ecosystem is that you don't control it under your iron fist: you make good contributions, users _and_ companies are able to use them in all new ways which comply with the licensing terms. And it seems that RePebble is going way beyond the licensing terms requirements, but bending over backwards to honor Rebble here when they aren't actually required to. I just can't imagine what people want from RePebble if not this: they are being maximally open, making it so all of everything would be able to continue if they went out of business tomorrow, while also actively enabling people to continue using Rebble's store and paid offerings. Should they be forcing users to use Rebble's offerings (instead of making things even more open) as a reward for doing a good job bridging the dark age?

apparent 11mo ago

Is it me or is the "Rivian blue" that he refers to in the video not that close to the color of actual Rivians? IMO the watch band/insert color is less green and quite a bit lighter. Not bad, per se, but I feel like this is not the best descriptor since it might make people think it's a different color.

erohead 11mo ago
Material color is very tough, especially comparing metallic paint to polycarbonate. Lighting matters, reflections matter. We tried our best, but yes, obviously it's not exactly the same.
- apparent 11mo ago
  And of course, video adds another layer of complexity. Would you say that the video looks accurate to you, or does calling it "Rivian blue" help people understand what it looks like in real life?
  - erohead 11mo ago
    I don't actually own a Rivian. I've seen them from afar. They look cool. I have not held a Pebble Time up to a Rivian yet. Maybe I'll creepily do that in downtown Palo Alto today :)
    - apparent 11mo ago
      I will await your photo post on (where else?) Bluesky.
    - collingreen 11mo ago
      Get your creep on, for science!
      - apparent 11mo ago
        No need to creep. It appears there is a Rivian store in Palo Alto. [1] Surely they must have one on hand in their namesake blue. 1: https://rivian.com/spaces/palo-alto https://rivian.com/spaces/palo-alto

Currybongos 11mo ago

[flagged]

apparent 11mo ago
These watches have an advertised battery life of 30 days. Perhaps you meant to post this in a thread about Apple Watches.

apparent 11mo ago

I'm excited that the back will screw off so we can replace the battery. I'm curious about waterproofing. Will that hold? Will we need to replace a gasket or other parts, in addition to the battery?

erohead 11mo ago
In the video, the green thing is the gasket. It should be reusable, but nothing's guaranteed in the world of waterproofing.
- ortusdux 11mo ago
  I really like the look of the Pixel watch 4's approach to this: https://www.ifixit.com/News/113620/the-pixel-watch-4-is-the-most-repairable-smartwatch-on-the-market https://www.ifixit.com/News/113620/the-pixel-watch-4-is-the-...
  - erohead 11mo ago
    That is incredibly fantastic feat of engineering!
    - Fnoord 11mo ago
      Exciting, except it runs Android Wear OS by Google instead of a deGoogled OS, and in the comments it says: "Repairability is admirable but only 3 years of security updates isn't near enough" FTA: "We’re also making sure that our new watches are more repairable than old Pebble watches. The back cover of Pebble Time 2 is screwed in. You can remove the back cover and replace the battery." So the battery of the Pebble Time 2 (the watch I bought to replace my Fossil HR Collider which replaced my orig. Pebble 2) is user serviceable. I had to open my Pebble 2 because my buttons were falling off. I bought a second hand donor (Pebble OC, since I ditched my broken Pebble OC at some point) and unfortunately I failed to succeed the transplantation of the buttons. Which made me very sad. I also very much liked you could turn the radios off on the Pebble 2. The HR was useless though. But if I want a good quality of that, I'd go for Garmin or (if I were in the Apple ecosystem) an Apple Watch.

vessenes 11mo ago

Eric, congrats. Typo in the first photo caption: "in all it's glory" -> "in all its glory"

lawn 11mo ago

They've made two big changes that are surely the result of the recent drama: * The companion app is now completely open source, ensuring that the community can continue supporting the watches if Core goes under. * You can subscribe to multiple app stores while optionally paying for services, and Core will maintain their own store. This seems to placate Rebble so they can do their thing and provide their paid services. Seems like very good steps forward overall.

weinzierl 11mo ago

"Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to Core Devices and to recipients of software distributed by Core Devices a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works." A few years from now we will see the usual HN thread were contributors lachrymosely complain about how their precious work was stolen by a good-turned-evil organization.

MangoToupe 11mo ago
Pebble was bought a long time ago by google yea? So this already happened
- rav3ndust 11mo ago
  not exactly, fitbit acquired pebble in 2016, and google acquired fitbit in 2021. so while google did end up with the IP in the end, they did the Right Thing this year and open-sourced PebbleOS. i don't normally praise google, but i am glad their open-sourcing of pebbleOS here enabled this new revival of Pebble devices.
erohead 11mo ago
Please note our CLA explicitly include a clause to require Core Devices to distribute all contributions under an OSI-compatible FOSS license (e.g. GPLv3). So no contributions can be 'stolen'. https://ericmigi.notion.site/Core-Devices-Software-Licensing-1c0fbb55ea8480f88d27ccf20fcb84a8 https://ericmigi.notion.site/Core-Devices-Software-Licensing...
- weinzierl 11mo ago
  I'm the first to agree that contributions can't be stolen in this scenario but read the threads I'm referring to. People feel that way anyway if you stop supporting a component or distribute your focus between a free and a paid tier. What we need is more awareness that looking at the license alone is not enough to make an informed decision if contributing to a project is aligned with the contributors attitude and personal goals. With that in mind: Thank you for putting the CLA right in the repo where it belongs and people can easily find it. Many organizations put a license upfront and bury the CLA. For a particularly bad example try MonoDB.

amwehrli 11mo ago

Wearing my new white pebble right now and am very happy with how open source the comeback has been. Incredibly happy with it and if you want a geeky, simple watch I really can't recommend it enough. The battery life and always on screen alone (especially at this price point) is reason enough. Cheers to Eric for bringing back pebble in the way that he has !

apparent 11mo ago

In terms of long-term market viability, have you considered whether your success could encourage Apple or other large competitors to make a battery life-optimized version of their smartwatches? I understand that some Pebble fans are all about the customization, and will be with you forever. But probably many people care mostly about the battery life, which is severely lacking in watches from Apple, Google, etc. If Apple realized there was a big enough market to justify making a $200 Apple Watch Basic, how much could that undercut your business? Relatedly, when will we learn more about the other "core" devices that you're contemplating, and which you alluded to in the video? Building more of a unique ecosystem could help with the moat.

jsheard 11mo ago
> In terms of long-term market viability, have you considered whether your success could encourage Apple or other large competitors to make a battery life-optimized version of their smartwatches? Companies like Garmin, Coros and Suunto already make less-smart-watches with weeks of battery life, and those haven't convinced Apple to budge from only making watches that do everything under the sun but barely last a day. Another long-lasting watch from a tiny brand probably isn't going to move the needle.
- apparent 11mo ago
  IDK about Coros or Suunto, but the only Garmins with a battery life approaching 30 days cost ~$1,000. This could be competition for AWU, but wouldn't communicate that there is demand for a more basic/long-lasting Apple Watch.
  - jsheard 11mo ago
    30 days is asking a lot of any reasonably sized smartwatch, but if you set your sights a bit lower then a $250 Coros Pace 4 will do ~3 weeks with AOD off, ~1 week with AOD on, and 30-40 hours of continuous GPS recording. That's still a lot longer than any Apple Watch even if it's not hitting the 30 day milestone.

zeta0134 11mo ago

Honestly this feels like the best possible outcome. It's pretty unusual for an appstore implementation to support multiple feeds[0], but it's great resilience to large company failures when they do. This way, users can totally still access Rebble's feed (and pay for a subscription if they like) just as before, but they are free to also use something else. It is the *end user* who decides which feeds to trust, as it should be. And since it's built right into the app as a core concept, it doesn't take massive engineering effort to switch feeds if some sort of drama occurs. [0] I'd normally call these repositories, but I've used Eric's term for consistency with the article.

infotainment 11mo ago
Definitely agree that this is the best outcome for everyone! In particular, with multiple repo support, I'm hoping this can open the door for some kind of "F-Droid for Pebble" with automated builds from source repos. So many Pebble apps are open source anyway I think it would be a good fit.

freedomben 11mo ago

Love to see this! I personally find this incredibly exciting. There is a major death of hardware out there that is user-respecting and hacker-friendly, and it warms my heart immensely to see such committments. I'm buying two today (one for me and one for my wife)!

diego_moita 11mo ago

This is precious. Almost every tech company wants to continue the IBM "surrounded by blue" strategy, fencing customers into their "walled garden" surrounded by a Warren Buffet moat and blocking obsessively any competitor that wants to breach in. Google mandates that every Android application must be signed by developers verified by them, Microsoft demands that users open an account with them, ... and just don't get me started with AWS, Apple, John Deere, Nespresso, etc. Meanwhile, I fail to see any real contender in the smartphone arena. But, in wearables, Pebble puts up a fight. The platform/product has proven resilient, mostly because of its users passion and commitment. It is more alive today than Fitbit, the company that bought and buried it. And will only get stronger. Now I'll be anxiously waiting for my PT2. It will be the 5th Pebble in my collection.

lrvick 11mo ago

THIS is the post that finally got me to make a pre-order, as a former Pebble engineer. FOSS all the things so my freedoms are never restricted again, and I am happy to pay.

hemmert 11mo ago

Great solution, great example of how open source should be done.

Pfhortune 11mo ago

It's great to see the app open-sourced! Hopefully this can be distributed on F-Droid one day soon! And the ability to choose app repos is also a wonderful development. Nothing against Rebble at all, but more choices and more openness is always better!

DrammBA 11mo ago

(Un)related new post made by rebble today: https://rebble.io/2025/11/24/rebble-in-your-own-world.html https://rebble.io/2025/11/24/rebble-in-your-own-world.html Doesn't address the multiple feed support for the app store, and seems to be calling Eric to action a few times, but it would be too much of a coincidence that these two posts come out so close to one another.

niwtsol 11mo ago
Thank you for posting this, it really gave me an answer to the "huh, how did all that drama from last week play out." IMO rebble jumped to some conclusions and felt robbed/cheated by what Eric was doing. With Eric going above and beyond to open source everything, I really feel he is trying to live up to what the original promise of pebble was. It is cool what rebble did to keep the pebble community alive, and I get that they might feel slighted, but if you take all egos out of the equation, what Eric is doing is like the best possible outcome - we get new pebble devices. Isn't that the best possible outcome?
- user_7832 11mo ago
  > Eric is doing is like the best possible outcome Slight correction, apparently Eric posting one of those WhatsApp screenshots was not okay with the person on the other side (who iirc is a rebble guy), who added that those grievances he had were taken out of context in the screenshot. The pebble (or rebble?) subreddit had this in the comments if anyone wants to read more. As always, the truth appears to lie somewhere in the middle, and while this does appear to be more of miscommunication than malice, it's a bit disappointing to me overall.
  - Valodim 11mo ago
    Eh. imo this is a hard moral high ground to claim if you publicly (and falsely, as we now know) accuse someone of a crime and threaten legal action in a blog post
    - infotainment 11mo ago

Forgeties79 11mo ago

Sitting here with my white pebble 2 duo just glad they resolved all this drama. Was not fun seeing the explosion days after getting it!

riazrizvi 11mo ago

Is there a vibration mechanism? That’s a must-have in a watch for me.

wlesieutre 11mo ago
There is, but I would set expectations lower than Apple's "taptic engine" where they designed their own hardware with a team of engineers and a bazillion dollars. One of the recent development updates mentioned adding a global "vibrate on hour" setting which historically had to be implemented as an option by the specific watchface you're using.
- riazrizvi 11mo ago
  I’ll be comparing to a Timex Expedition Grid Shock, which I’ve been using for years. Have no idea why they discontinued it. Suspect it had something to do with clueless leadership who undervalue customer satisfaction.

Pxtl 11mo ago

[flagged]

apparent 11mo ago
Good thing he isn't shipping from the US to Canada then, eh? Only the US-bound watches are shipped to the US. The rest go straight from Asia. Also, I'd be surprised if the Pebble company that was acquired by Fitbit was a Canadian company. I assume it was a US company.
- Pxtl 11mo ago
  Apparently I misremembered the story, while Pebble was prototyped in Canada by U of Waterloo guys, when they went startup & kickstarter with the product they moved to California.

mkhalil 11mo ago

I'm sure its happened before, but this is the first time i finally get to see some sort of modern hardware in KiCad. Pretty cool to see all 6 layers, paste layers, and adhesive layers as well. I've always wondered how the cake was made and if big projects do/could use KiCad. Seems like a lot more work relative to those Single Layer PCBs on YouTube for things like emulators and custom PCBs. Glad I now know for sure, that I can't do this.

drunkonvinyl 11mo ago
Depends on any project ideas, but as a newbie to hardware dev and with my own small scope eurorack module idea, I am having a lot of luck with flux.ai. Even got a small order of 5 PCBs printed for under $200.
leoedin 11mo ago
Paste and adhesive are spat out by KiCad as part of the manufacturing outputs. It works pretty much the same way other EDA packages like altium do - the extra layers are part of the part footprint. If you don’t design your own footprints it’s basically no extra work to generate those. You almost certainly could do it - obviously with some time investment. Getting multi layer PCBs made is surprisingly affordable now.
k1musab1 11mo ago
The Reform laptop project is open hardware: https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform I encourage you to browse it, I found that while challenging, it does not seem unreachable to get to that level of proficiency in KiCad.

Ninjinka 11mo ago

As someone who has been working on a pair of smart glasses running RTOS, and having to make companion apps for both iOS and Android, I am very interested in reading your approaches to a lot of the same problems I have faced. There's not a lot of information out there on these topics.

whyenot 11mo ago

This is great news! I know the new Pebble has a small team and is focused on being a long term sustainable enterprise. This should help with that goal quite a bit. I received my Pebble 2 Duo about a month ago, and it is awesome. Nice job and thank you! I feel 10 years younger :)

tamimio 11mo ago

My current smartwatch is $7 I got from the thrift store. Not only does it offer everything an Apple Watch offers, but it also measures blood pressure (surprisingly accurate) and has a small flashlight, and I charge it once every 3 weeks. The only issue is its app is limited and you can’t customize anything besides the watch faces and the wrist strap. So having that, it’s really hard to compete if you are just going to offer another smartwatch, which is a great strategy to open source the software and allow customization, even on the hardware level to some degree. Myself and a lot of people would be interested to have that!

tonetegeatinst 11mo ago
Do you know what algorithm or sensors it uses to calculate BP?
- tamimio 11mo ago
  I honestly don’t even know the model, as the Bluetooth pairing name is just some number, the app (iOS) is called “Da fit” if that will help you. I was thinking before about tearing it down but it’s waterproof and I know this process will ruin it and won’t be able to use it while swimming or similar.

bredren 11mo ago

I see a future where FOSS designs for consumer products compete with commercial releases. It will take far more sophisticated micro-manufacturing (like 3d-printing but different tools handling more types of materials). Get the jacket in your exact size with the best materials. Benefit from having incrementally improved from the original (for example under arm vent zipper angle improved). All of it unbranded or custom branded. Seems hard to believe annual released, mass manufacturing will compete.

pastel8739 11mo ago
Really? To me it seems hard to believe that small-scale manufacturing could ever meaningfully compete with economies of scale.
- bredren 11mo ago
  My experience is that consumer products, for example winter jackets, have gone down in quality and way, way up in price. The designs themselves are often just bad. It is almost like consumers are punished for not spending enough with bad color options. (You can see this in running shoes as well) Even if the right aesthetic and function is found, there's no real consideration of body type or shape, you get a few sizes to choose from. I think big brands have consumers over a barrel today. When the design and materials assembly are solved, I think people will pay more to get the thing they want. And I think they're more likely to keep them longer as a result.

dcreater 11mo ago

That's good to hear! If the health monitoring is reliable, im sold. I want to move on from apples clutches despite the pebble hardware not looking particularly attractive to me

ck2 11mo ago

I wish someone would take on an open-source project for a sports watch with full features like vo2max estimation, etc. like a cyanogenmod or lineageos but for an older watch model someone has completely decompiled the firmware for the Garmin Forerunner 245 which is very similar to a Fenix 5 imagine if someone took on making open firmware for it https://github.com/anvilsecure/garmin-ciq-app-research/ https://github.com/anvilsecure/garmin-ciq-app-research/ if taking on a brand name might incur lawsuits there are other watches like the wahoo rival which was completely retired and they got out of the business (it was only $99 too) or there are other ppen hardware options from China

mid-kid 11mo ago

For some of us software freedom enthusiasts it is worth noting that PebbleOS contains some proprietary blobs for some peripherals in the watch[1]. This is not just firmware you upload to the peripheral but also properietary .a libraries that run on the main core. Though to be fair to OpenDevices, this is source code they don't have acces to either. [1]: https://github.com/coredevices/pebbleos-nonfree/tree/57a94e2a8b7236f41f8e60c039a0342652487517 https://github.com/coredevices/pebbleos-nonfree/tree/57a94e2...

paxcoder 11mo ago
So not 100% open source. Thanks for the info
- ddlsmurf 11mo ago
  Well the Pebble specific parts are. This is an unfortunate state of affairs from hardware manufacturers, they are very late to the open source game, if at all.
  - paxcoder 11mo ago
    From the article: >Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source. 100% should mean 100%
    - darkwater 11mo ago
      If they are not mandatory it's 100%. Otherwise according to your standard, Debian is not 100% free software either.

ericd 11mo ago

Don’t have much to add except huge congrats on relaunching. What a move, not only bringing it back from the dead, but also doing it in a way that many people dream that companies would. I just bought an Apple Watch, but this is really tempting.

tylervigen 11mo ago

This is awesome. What a way to do a relaunch. I was a Pebble user in 2013 on first release and saddened when it all broke down. I was so turned off from that experience that I swore off smart watches (I wear a Casio now). This could get me back, though I’ll admit the appeal has gone down since I’ve realized how nice it is to create separation between me and my notifications.

jwpapi 11mo ago
At most smart watches you can turn them off. And at your phone too. I like the gamification and some notifications (today its 5 degrees colder than yesterday for example)

Larrikin 11mo ago

A little surprised there has been no mention of the app being Kotlin multiplatform. https://github.com/coredevices/mobileapp https://github.com/coredevices/mobileapp I had heard of many smaller apps using Kotlin for their iOS app, but this may be the biggest all in multiplatform app I've seen. It would be awesome if there may eventually be support for writing Pebble apps in Kotlin.

farmerbb 11mo ago
As a Kotlin multiplatform developer myself, this is wonderful to see!
zorgmonkey 11mo ago
Pebble watches run on Cortex-M microcontrollers which have less than 1MB of flash storage and RAM, I like Kotlin multiplatform but getting it to run on them is extremely unlikely. I assume that for the foreseeable future Pebble apps will be only written in languages which are traditionally used for MCUs like Rust and C\C++
- consp 11mo ago
  Calling rust traditional is a bit of a stretch, while it is being done it's pretty much bleeding edge (though if you do not use any of the manufacturer supplied code and libraries to begin with you should be fine).
- leo_e 11mo ago
  It is honestly refreshing to see constraints like this again. In my cloud infrastructure work (C++), we have gotten lazy. We bloat our containers because 'RAM is cheap'. Seeing a system designed to fit into 1MB reminds me that performance engineering used to be about efficiency, not just throwing more hardware at the problem.
  - 42days 11mo ago
    I find this a little funny because as a firmware engineer the project I regularly work on only has 512kb of flash. This doesn't stop sales from constent new feature requests. Embedded is definitely a fun balance of what we could do and how much we can do.

ls-a 11mo ago

[flagged]

tomhow 11mo ago
Please don't post grumbly swipes like this on HN. The guidelines ask us not to be curmudgeonly. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ls-a 11mo ago
  Ok Rumi. It's my opinion if you don't agree just say I don't agree. Im doing you a favor by giving you an alternative more truthful reality. If you prefer to be in bliss then that's fine but stop acting so sleazy.
  - tomhow 11mo ago
    We don't need a mini-sermon. We just need you, like everyone, to follow the guidelines. Criticism is fine. Emptiness and thoughtlessness is not. You're welcome not to participate here if you're unwilling to put a little effort and substance into what you post.
    - ls-a 11mo ago
      Why didn't you update the title. It's not 100% open source. What's the point of the wrong percentage if it's not to exaggerate a false claim?
      - tomhow 11mo ago
        We did that, but the best way to show you want to contribute positively to HN is to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) rather than raising the issue only after you've been pulled up for abuse.

fijiaarone 11mo ago

So is the FORTRAN75 compiler, but it’s still being used.

danjuma 11mo ago

[dead]

RobKohr 11mo ago

I look forward to a year or two from now when there will be dozens of pebble clones just rolling out of factories for the price of a midrange Casio watch. This along with valve's hardware announcement is quite a shot at all the entreched hardware manufacturers.

acka 11mo ago

This title is misleading. As explained in the comments, there are still non-free binary blobs in the firmware. Please reserve phrasing like "100% X" for things that are indeed "0% Not(X)."

nedt 11mo ago
They have released 100% of the source they have.

noman-land 11mo ago

I'm very not in the smart watch game but a fully open watch with a bunch of sensors and connectivity sounds very appealing. However, I find square watch faces to be extremely unattractive. What's the latest in open watches with round faces and relatively thin profile?

apparent 11mo ago
Eric has hinted at wanting to build a round Pebble (like the Pebble Time Round, presumably), so hopefully things will go well with the initial batches and we'll be graced with the presence of a PTR in time for Christmas 2026.

rav3ndust 11mo ago

I plan on picking one of these new Pebbles up in the next batch. I loved my original Pebbles (I still have my old Time Steel). Before the Pebbles came back and PebbleOS open-sourced, the only real open smartwatch option we had around that I'm aware of is the PineTime, which I currently wear every day rocking Infinitime. Will be fun to pick up one of these again and be able to hop back and forth between it and the PineTime! Great stuff, Eric and team.

ridd0 11mo ago

Love open source

virajk_31 11mo ago

Do they want the community to help fix bugs (Even tho I suppose they don't hv any secret sauce), or enable users to customize the software...

timonoko 11mo ago

Ew open you say? Micropython-watch is actually useful, you can program it do things while on the run. Did not make it perse, but I added webrepl-button to it. https://github.com/timonoko/t-watch-2020-micropython-hacks https://github.com/timonoko/t-watch-2020-micropython-hacks

leo_e 11mo ago

As someone dealing with open-source compliance in distributed systems, the purity tests in these comments are exhausting. Hardware is messy. IP licensing for sensors and radios is a nightmare. Getting a functional OS out with "only" a few binary blobs is a massive engineering and legal victory. I'd rather have a working, 95% open ecosystem that I can actually hack on, than a 100% pure theoretical one that never ships. Kudos to Eric for navigating the legal minefield to make this happen.

cdibona 11mo ago
The closest we got to a fully open source android release was probably in the Nexus one days with some 9 proprietary blobs and , worse, user space support programs (IIRC the compass calibration routines, annoyingly.) , all for various chip/radio support.
- yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago
  And look how that ended up.
yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago
As one of those commenters: It's actually super easy. It's fine for your product to only be mostly open source. It's definitely completely understandable if you can't open up some of the blobs that you yourself licensed. All I ask is that if you can't actually ship 100% of the software on the device needed to actually provide the advertised features, that you don't make a big headline claiming that it's 100% open source.
- drabbiticus 11mo ago
  For the sake of easy reference, I'll leave the relevant snippet from the linked article so people can decide for themselves with a bit more information: > Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source.

keraf 11mo ago

Apart from all the awesome annoucements, what really makes me happy is how quickly this went from internet drama to both parties moving towards doing whats best for the community. Props to Core and Rebble for making Pebble what it is today and casting a bright future for theses watches. Been happily wearing my Pebble Steel for the past month after replacing its battery, looking forward to the PT2!

heyaco 11mo ago

kotlin tho lol