[HN Gopher] The future of Rebble
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The future of Rebble
https://github.com/google/pebble
Author : will0
Score : 313 points
Date : 2025-01-27 20:03 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rebble.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (rebble.io)
| dang wrote:
| Well now we have a conundrum - the top 3 posts on the frontpage
| are all about this!
|
| The submitted title of this post was "Google has open-sourced the
| pebble smartwatch operating system" but it actually points to
| https://rebble.io/2025/01/27/the-future-of-rebble.html, so I've
| changed the title and moved the comments from here to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845070, which has the
| Google announcement.
|
| The 3 threads are:
|
| _We 're bringing Pebble back_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845091
|
| _Google open-sources the Pebble OS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845070
|
| _The future of Rebble_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845017 (<-- you are here)
| msolberg wrote:
| DANG SAVE US hahaha
| zamalek wrote:
| Let them them revvel in this glory IMO :), it's rare to see
| this kind of thing happen in the hardware space.
| HaZeust wrote:
| Good exercise of your sequence priority philosophy, but I also
| think they all have their own right to be posted and discussed
| - this is exciting, and different angles and POVs can be
| brought to each thread. One is about Google's affairs with
| Pebble, one is about the community-grown Rebble, and one is
| about the founding team of the original Pebble itself.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| I'm curious if anyone has tried one of the newer e-ink smart
| watches you see on Alibaba, which use ESP-32 or other low-power
| SOCs. I saw one recently at a meet-up and the guy who was wearing
| claimed it was completely open-source and he could run whatever
| he wanted to on it. It did not have heartrate monitoring or
| anything other than clock on it, as far as I could tell.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| What did it look like? All the ones I've seen have been pretty
| ugly - plastic cases, etc.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The original was Watchy: https://watchy.sqfmi.com/
|
| Not only can you run anything you want on it but it supports
| the Arduino IDE and Micropython. I assume all of the Alibaba
| ones are based off of Watchy.
| Avamander wrote:
| The biggest issue is the software. It's mostly abysmal. The
| best effort I've seen so far has been InfiniTime for the
| PineTime. It's very difficult without full-time employees
| working on improving things.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Some commenters mentioned that the e-ink screen (and the
| accompanying battery life) was one reason why the Pebble is so
| beloved, which reminded me of the Basis Peak, which was primarily
| a health tracker watch with some (very limited) smart
| functionality (mostly just some notifications, if I recall), that
| also had an e-ink screen and a nearly 1 week battery life and had
| a sort of similar trajectory:
|
| Bought by Intel, then killed two years later after a battery
| related recall issue.
|
| It was, in my opinion, by far the best fitness tracker watch
| ever, and remains so to this day. Not so much because of it's
| actual features (which were relatively standard), but the
| software paradigm of simple yet effective exercise gamification
| that helped encourage exercise habit formation. 8 years later and
| I still miss it.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Pebble had an LCD screen. It didn't use Eink at all. You can
| look this up, it was an LCD display manufactured by Sharp.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I never had one, but doing some quick googling, it looks like
| at least some models had an e-ink display. Certainly several
| commenters seemed to think it did.
| will0 wrote:
| It was a transflective memory LCD, which Pebble marketed as
| "E-Paper" (not the same as E-Ink)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| No, it had an "epaper" display that visually looked a lot
| like eink but was a different technology
| normalaccess wrote:
| OH HAPPY DAY! I loved my pebble. It was the perfect balance of
| features and battery-life.
|
| My favorite watch face inspired me to get into may e-ink
| projects. Horizon by JR Mobley
| https://store-beta.rebble.io/app/5616d36a6ddd7fea8800001f
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm a little confused at the moving pieces here. We have
| RePebble, Rebble, and PebbleOS. PebbleOS is the easy one. OS
| recently opened by Google.
|
| But how are RePebble and Rebble related? Are they the same thing?
| Is Rebble making hardware as well as RePebble, or are they the
| same effort? Is RePebble also open source and community owned
| like Rebble?
| will0 wrote:
| Rebble is the open source infra that has been keeping Pebbles
| alive since ~2016. See: rebble.io and
| https://github.com/pebble-dev
|
| (Disclaimer: I'm part of the team)
|
| RePebble is a new thing by Eric, the original founder of Pebble
| and is unrelated to Rebble.
|
| > Is Rebble making hardware as well as RePebble?
|
| Potentially! We have always talked about it, but some of the
| announcements today have thrown us for a loop so plans are
| still being discussed.
|
| > Is RePebble also open source and community owned like Rebble?
|
| Remains to be seen, but if I had to guess it's unlikely.
| poisonborz wrote:
| > will accelerate our efforts to produce new hardware
|
| Don't do that. Don't give me hope...
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(page generated 2025-01-27 23:00 UTC)