[HN Gopher] How To Build A Smartwatch: Software
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How To Build A Smartwatch: Software
Author : teekert
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-11-13 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ericmigi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ericmigi.com)
| ls-a wrote:
| Or "Milking content out of the old dry Pebble well"
| Pfhortune wrote:
| They shipped hardware! They successfully open sourced a beloved
| platform and embraced the community ecosystem that sprung up
| around it. What more do you want?
| ls-a wrote:
| They do business in a very sleazy way
| NewUser76312 wrote:
| I loved Pebble back in the day, and Eric is a great guy and
| friend to entrepreneurs trying to build cool things.
|
| I do wonder how a modern revival of Pebble will compete from a
| product perspective within the current landscape. Obviously
| there's the high-end Apple Watches, but there's also incredibly
| cheap and long battery life products from China that you can see
| on Aliexpress and similar. Fitness tracking is another related
| niche that seems oversaturated, unless you do something really
| unique in biometrics sensing.
|
| So it seems like a hard market to get back into, curious where
| they take things.
| lawn wrote:
| I think they have a very clear niche: nerdy techies (like me).
|
| The question is indeed if it's a big enough market to carry to
| the company. I hope so.
| hellcow wrote:
| The key value of Pebble to me was its incredible C SDK that
| made it super easy to write custom apps for it. I remember way
| back I got full turn-by-turn navigation working on it.
| modeless wrote:
| They sold the whole production run of Pebble 2 Duos, and they
| are keeping the company small to be sustainable this time. I
| think they have a chance.
|
| The Pebble software is second to none in nailing the basics.
| I'll definitely continue to choose Pebble over no-name brands
| on AliExpress.
| jmcphers wrote:
| I used a super-cheap Chinese smartwatch (Amazfit Bip S) for
| years and recently switched to the Pebble. The Bip's battery
| lasted forever and it did check a lot of feature boxes, but
| overall it was clunky to use and not in any way hackable.
|
| I switched to a Pebble 2 Duo recently and while the features
| are comparable on paper (multi-week battery life, reflective
| display, basic health tracking, etc.), everything is just nicer
| on the Pebble. The software is thoughtful and fun and there are
| tons of third-party apps, so it can do all kinds of things the
| Bip could never do.
|
| There really isn't a huge market for this kind of thing; most
| people, including nerds, want a watch with a brightly colored
| screen and tons of health metrics and service integrations. I
| imagine Pebble will stay a boutique brand this time around.
| ianburrell wrote:
| If there is market for long lasting watch, I think it is if
| it looks like a traditional round watch. Or if it can work as
| outdoors watch. Garmin is moving from transflective to AMOLED
| for better colors, and there might be spot for rugged, long-
| lasting, cheap watch.
| holly6k wrote:
| One thing I don't understand:
|
| > Pebble 2 Duo is sold out! We are not making more. If you want
| a Pebble, I recommend pre-ordering a Pebble Time 2 soon.
|
| Is this supposed to be a collector's item? I'm not sure I'd
| want to invest in an ecosystem where damaging the device means
| I'm out or stuck waiting in line for replacement - with no
| guarantee the new device will be similar enough.
| throwaway74354 wrote:
| Pebble 2 Duo were reusing the existing stock of Pebble 2
| housings and displays. This model was intended as a limited
| run from the beginning.
|
| Pebble Time 2 are designed from scratch and expected to be
| still available after the pre-order batches have been shipped
| out.
| holly6k wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification.
|
| I just hope supporting this limited run model will not
| consume too much resources.
| summermusic wrote:
| The Pebble brand name definitely helps them break back into the
| market. Even some of my non-techy friends recognize the name.
| synergy20 wrote:
| except for the apps for those cheap watches, all your data is
| uploaded to servers somewhere all the time I assume.
| ls-a wrote:
| I heard that no one likes him because he has no morals, but
| that's just what i heard
| xeromal wrote:
| Got my duo a few weeks ago and my battery lasted about 3 weeks
| before needing a recharge. It does everything I need. Great
| little smartwatch
| daemonologist wrote:
| Yep, my duo arrived about two weeks ago at 76% charge and is
| currently at 18%; I've only ever plugged it in for a few
| seconds to verify that the charger works. Amazing battery life.
|
| (The buttons, however, are atrocious - mushy, hard to press,
| and literally falling apart. I'll probably do the 3D-printed
| button mod but to advertise this watch as IPX8 water resistant
| is ludicrous. The first button press out of the box put a crack
| in the silicone.)
| comfydragon wrote:
| Did you get it in black like I did? My buttons also cracked
| practically right away (within a day), I suspect because the
| reinforcements were installed poorly (the buttons are VERY
| hard to press). It made the down button unusable.
|
| But kudos to Eric and Claudio, they're shipping me a
| replacement (in white, which, as I understand it and as they
| said in their email, should be less susceptible to the issue,
| something about the white rubber versus black makes it less
| problematic). My only frustration was how quickly it failed,
| since I know it's a new-old-stock case.
|
| Highly looking forward to the Time 2. I only stopped using my
| Pebble Time Steel when the battery life degraded to ~3 days
| (after about 6 years), used a Fossil Hybrid for a few years,
| now a Pixel watch. Measuring battery life in weeks will be a
| breath of fresh air :)
| maufl wrote:
| Does anyone know whether more than one device can connect to a
| Pebble watch at the same time? I'm thinking using it with your
| phone but also sending notifications from your laptop.
| throwaway74354 wrote:
| Pebble watches can use Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth Classic
| connection profiles simultaneously. It's possible to pair two
| phones this way, but that's considered an undocumented hack.
| Also there's no ready-made desktop OS support, I'd look into
| forwarding your laptop notifications to a phone via KDE Connect
| or something like that instead.
| modeless wrote:
| Connecting to a laptop isn't supported AFAIK. Personally I
| don't have any important notifications on my computer that
| don't come to my phone already. What would you use it for?
| maufl wrote:
| I'm thinking of having Claude send me a notification when it
| needs my input. I already do that sometimes with desktop
| notifications and this way I could water the plants or hang
| the laundry while waiting.
| diego_moita wrote:
| Can't be done, yet.
|
| But I do want to dig into that, someday. There is an open
| source library in Kotlin multi-platform for building
| applications that interact with the watch (libpebble3) and, in
| theory, Bluetooth LE can connect to more than one device. But
| the PebbleOS probably restricts it.
|
| My dream is to use the watch to authenticate to computers,
| websites and IoT devices.
| modeless wrote:
| PebbleOS is open source now, so there are no roadblocks
| preventing anything that is technically feasible.
| desireco42 wrote:
| Yeah, I got burned once, I don't want to be burned again. You
| will sell out at first opportune moment. Which is why I am
| passing on this. (I don't blame you for that, just don't want to
| be part of it)
|
| BTW, Amazfit, rules.
| jmcphers wrote:
| I was bummed to see recently that Amazfit has stopped making
| watches with reflective displays! They're all OLED now just
| like everyone else's.
| ixwt wrote:
| This is a rather bizare take. Pebble turned down a massive deal
| to keep doing their own thing. They sold cheap after they were
| going down because they had too mich staff, and not enough
| sales. Which Eric has said many times, and can even be found on
| his blog.
|
| Then, when they were being sold, instead of shutting down the
| Pebble store and basically bricking all Pebble watches, they
| intentionally opened it up to make it possible for community
| support. Which is where Rebble stepped in.
|
| Bizarre and disingenuous take. That really doesn't take into
| account Pebble's actions, much less their words.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| What's bizarre? Per your own statement, "They sold cheap" as
| soon as they encountered some hardship, so it is quite
| understandable to not trust they'll behave differently this
| time around.
| Pfhortune wrote:
| > "They sold cheap" as soon as they encountered some
| hardship
|
| Nobody is perfect, and running a small hardware startup is
| difficult. I'm not saying Eric and co are perfect, but it
| seems like he's been fairly forthright about the mistakes
| made at Pebble[1] and what Core aims to do better.
|
| Shit happens, people make mistakes, Apple/Google decide to
| compete with you and/or lock you out of parts of their
| garden.
|
| [1] https://ericmigi.com/blog/success-and-failure-at-pebble
| Pfhortune wrote:
| Amazfit is closed, Pebble is open. That's reason enough for me
| to avoid the former.
|
| As enshittification encroaches on every corner of the
| technology ecosystem, a company putting out products in 2025 in
| a way that embraces its community and works in the open is
| laudable.
|
| Maybe Pebble will turn evil one day, but at least the watches
| we have today will still work until they physically wear out,
| not when the company decides they should die.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| Their libc is kind of a mess of various sources. I wonder what's
| going on there?
|
| https://github.com/coredevices/PebbleOS/tree/main/src/libc
| crims0n wrote:
| I like it for what it is, a well-built smartwatch with with a
| SDK, internet connection, and decent battery you can hack on over
| the weekend. It isn't going to replace your Apple Watch, but it
| is significantly more refined than some other offerings such as
| the PineTime, Bangle.js, etc.
|
| (Nothing against those projects, I enjoyed them for what they
| were as well.)
| diego_moita wrote:
| For me, the best that Pebble has to offer is: "it is your
| machine, you can do whatever you want with it".
|
| Apple severely restricts what you can install in the hardware you
| buy from them. Google will soon restrict the installation of
| Android apps not signed by Google. Microsoft restricts you to use
| your computer without a Microsoft account. John Deere restricts
| you from fixing your machines with parts sold by others. Espresso
| machine manufacturers restrict the capsules you can use in their
| machines. AWS makes everything incompatible and hard to migrate
| to other cloud providers.
|
| They all follow the IBM business model: you buy IBM and end up
| fenced in blue in a walled garden that you can't escape.
|
| I don't want that. I don't want to buy machines that come with a
| leach.
| simgt wrote:
| Pebble was exactly what I wanted 10 years ago and exactly what I
| don't want now. I'm very happy to miss notifications when my
| phone is in my pocket or bag and I don't care about fitness
| metrics anymore. However I'd love to leave my phone at home while
| still being reachable...
| teekert wrote:
| I do use pebble for (something like) that. I find that setting
| it up so they certain people can get to my wrist makes me check
| my phone less. So I get sucked in less.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I will buy it if it supports esim so I can be reachable by phone
| and sms all the time, which means some cell phone operator needs
| to buy in first.
| Zak wrote:
| I don't think being a phone-substitute in that way has ever
| been a goal for Pebble. It doesn't even have WiFi.
|
| Its goals are battery life and a simple set of features
| including notifications from the phone via Bluetooth. You seem
| to have different needs, and there are other smartwatches being
| produced which attempt to address them.
| liampulles wrote:
| Looking forward to getting my Pebble Time 2. Its been fun to play
| around building a watchface in the mean time:
|
| https://developer.rebble.io/tutorials/watchface-tutorial/par...
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