I LOVE My Pebble and even got Rebble working on it not long ago to revive it.
However...
If you want to make it TRULY HACKABLE as you claim, you will not encumber it with cloud dependencies like you did last time. Let ME self host my own Pebble server if I choose. Go ahead and default to your servers and sell services and whatever, but let me host my own and switch the base URL to my own domain, preferably with open source software and simple APIs, without requiring me to go through your servers.
That way, even if this attempt also doesn't pan out, those of us willing to do the work will at least still have the functionality we want. I get the whole VC "lock them into required cloud services for life so we can make endless subscription revenue" model, but it's absolutely corrupt.
And, Eric, I know you know that - you have a hacker's heart. Please listen to it.
I'm 100% with you! No VCs this time...no mandatory cloud subscription. But I'm not really sure that this fear is grounded - before we sold to Fitbit we 'unlocked' the Pebble mobile app so you could use it with any cloud you wanted, including self hosted. So...it already meets your definition
Oh! Also: I'd be really interested for you to expand on "I think I’ve learned some valuable lessons[0]".
The 2022 updates gave an interesting insight into how your perspective had changed in regard to your initial thoughts and I'm interested to know if another three years has lead to further perspective changes.
I found Andrew Witte's remark of particular interest with regard to "...we allowed early success [...] to mask the fact that we never gained a good understanding of what our actual customers valued the most. We lucked into having made something people wanted (the original Pebble) and, IMO, never really were able to figure out exactly why it was successful. So it was hard to reproduce that success."
Please, not too many sensors. Long battery life and small size and low weight is more important. All the other smartphones and fitness watches have these sensors so get one of those instead.
Maybe a HW interface to attach other sensor modules could be an option, but could also easily become a distraction and pull down the overall experience.
[Edit] A wireless i/f (bluetooth, LP RF) is of course better to use as interface to any peripheral sensor modules.
Never cared about Pebble's fitness/health tracking and never used it. I don't need my health reported to me in numbers every day, I'm not a performance athlete nor a hospital patient. Living my personal life trying to hit some numbers dictated to me by some app sounds like a horrifying idea, like a second work life at home.
My last watch would measure my heart rate to be in the 140s while sleeping. I have since slept with a chest strap heart rate monitor and do not in fact have a medical condition.
Granted, that was a cheap watch, but I still don't see the use case of a smart watch for health tracking versus phone+100$ chest strap.
I believe the usefulness of these kinds of devices for health tracking is vastly overstated due to lack of accuracy.
Well I for one agree here. Some good sensors would be nice. Otherwise why even have a smart watch? Just get a regular. But there will be a tradeoff, there always is and we cannot have everything. At this point in time I will settle with something that is open and builds a healthy ecosystem.
TL;DR: Succinctness has never been my strong suit? :)
----
> But I'm not really sure that this fear is grounded - before we sold to Fitbit we 'unlocked' the Pebble mobile app [...].
If I'm reading OP's comment & your reply correctly, my impression is there's potentially a fear of either (a) "re-locking"; or, even just (b) "new thing not unlocked"--and, I think, you're saying that (a) isn't going to/can't happen?
On closer reading I think you mightalso be saying that (b) isn't going to happen because "new thing" is still going to use the previous unlocked app and/or maybe a new unlocked app? But, if that's the case, I only really saw that possible interpretation after a much closer re-read.
(Alternatively, maybe I just didn't weight sufficiently strongly the FAQ: "Will it be exactly like Pebble?" "Yes. In almost every way.")
More broadly (outside the positive example of your specific track record with regard to OGPebble & the app unlocking), given the landscape of the past 1.5+ decades littered with even just recent examples such as Spotify's Car Thing, Google's Stadia controller, Bambu Labs, and pretty much everyphoneever[0][0a], I think it would be a stretch to consider the fear to be entirelyungrounded.
Particularly if some portion of the device firmware etc and/or server software is still going to be closed source.
In terms of strength of confidence in the potential of achieving a "desired open outcome/ongoing experience", I imagine the ordering from least to greatest trust required by product purchasers is something like: "completely open & unlocked from the beginning", "legally binding commitment/escrow for open & unlocked on 'exit'", "word/reputation for open & unlocked on 'exit'", through to "amorphous hope for largesse/noblesse-oblige/benevolence/other-fancy-latin-phrase for positive outcome at some unspecified future time".
And, um, trust in general might be slightly lacking these days, for some reason. :)
Anyway, IMO FWIW.
----
On a slightly different note, while reading comments in the various PebbleOS/RePebble threads I've been contemplating what has changed with regard to the consumer electronics hardware market compared to, say, fifteen plus years ago.
Certainly the "hope" of Android bringing the Power & Freedom of "Linux on Desktop" to "Linux on the Phonetop"[1] from the early 2000s seems to have been completely abandoned[2] but on the other hand Framework[3] exists and the Steam Deck[4] exists.
Perhaps the two most surprising things related to this "control over personal devices" topic from recent history:
(1) the discovery 1-2 years ago that it wasn't just irascible curmudgeons like me wanting to have control over the devices in their lives[5] but a much younger generation was also looking to "dumb phones" in a conscious effort to exert some control over the impact of such devices on their lives.
(1.1) aside: the attraction of similar demographic(s) to audio cassette tapes on the other hand, I totally don't "get" but by now I'm starting to suspect this state may now be primarily driven by the desire to not accidentally make cassettes uncool by "getting" it. :D
(2) noting over the past year or so the significant increase in the number (or even the mere presence) of YouTube comments from gamers remarking that they have just, or, want to, move from Windows to Linux. Gamers. GAMERS! The same demographic who previously would ruthlessly mock anyone who dare suggest such a move might be possible[6] let alone desirable...
This might all just be the biased perspective of a jaded idealistic optimist[7] but it's not nothing. Unless it is.
Approaching consumer electronics hardware with this trend as a guiding force may also not be the way to run a financially sustainable hardware business but on the other hand, what if?
* "(which purchased Fitbit, which had bought Pebble)"
and in another it states:
* "before the company's IP was sold to Fitbit in 2016".
I mention this because the difference is a nuance that has seemed to be significant in other times/places, so thought it might have unintentionally slipped through proof-reading--even if of no real consequence now. :)
----
Also: Hello! (Again. :) ) This was unexpected news, for sure.
[3] I so want to know what category Framework's "Next Thing" is in--primarily because what's seemingly the "most obvious" category for them to move into also seems the most "unlikely" by any reasonable measure. So to find out would be to either be surprised by a category I hadn't considered or surprised by the audaciousness of their next goal.
[4] Hand-waving away for now any problematic aspects of its current context.
So much this. Learn from Framework: Sell the hardware at a price point that makes your business sustainable without needing a cloud component to push you over into profitability.
Yes, it will lock out people for whom that price is unacceptable, but now more than ever your real customer is serious hackers, and we are collectively more than fed up with the cloud and subscriptions. Framework and Nabu Casa need to be your models here, because your customers are overwhelmingly their customers.
I second this. I'll be very hesitant to buy in if it's locked to a cloud service. And people are waking up to this, with the Bambu controversy and all. Please don't make this mistake.
I keep looking for a decent watch. And phone. And there is just nothing available. Everything gets encumbered with this and that cloud. This and that app. Mandatory policies, apps, surveillance and eventually subscriptions or selling of your personal data.
I don't think we will be getting this in our "free market". It would need to be mandated by state for manufacturers to use open APIs. There is just no incentive for them to offer those otherwise.
I came to say exactly this. I could not have stated it better.
As a Pebble power user back in the day, who owns 3 watches and pledged in the Kickstarter to get the new Pebble that sadly never saw the light of day, the only way I'm coming back is if every piece of this puzzle is open source. And by this I mean:
- Servers: I agree with you. Make a default "cloud" owned by Pebble, but give us the ability to self-host it. NO SUBSCRIPTIONS, NO ADS, NO PRIVACY INVASION, PLEASE.
- PebbleOS: This is already a reality, and I'm very happy that it's happening.
- Mobile apps: Make them open-source! Let us play with them and you'll benefit of the fixes, improvements and innovation of the community.
- Hardware: It would be fine for me if the hardware was not open. As long as I can install my own firmware on it and have full control of it, I'm happy.
I think I speak for most of us when I say that I'm sick and tired of not owning my stuff. In the dystopic world we're living in, with enshittification at it's peak, an open, hackable, and truly owned device would feel like a breath of fresh air.
You have a real opportunity here, Eric. Please use it :)
Best of luck!
Remember: PG&E is a for-profit company. The CPUC consists of folks pretty much entirely in bed with PG&E.
I also love California - it's beautiful here, and the people are generally wonderful. But our state government, despite claiming to be blue, is pretty damned conservative across the board. Corporations first, then - if we still have time - the people.
Currently using SvelteKit for a project, and I dig it. I've used Vue in the past and tried to get on the React train, but both felt a bridge too far from good ol' HTML, JS and CSS. Granted, I'm mostly using the packaging and reactivity in SvelteKit - most of my server side code is written in Node using Express to better separate concerns, with some existing in SvelteKit mainly for BFF purposes.
I feel like if, down the road, I decided to ditch a framework altogether, writing it in Svelte may help seeing as there are very,. very few framework specific elements in it. I may also be deluding myself.
I bought it in the hopes of causing mostly harmless mischief, but its capabilities in that realm are oversold.
That said, I knew very little about UART communication or SPI until I started playing with this and an ESP32 device. I also knew very little about bluetooth, RF, and RFID/NFR type stuff until I started exploring the world with this. It's been a fun journey that's rapidly advanced my understanding of quite a few things.
Others have said its overpriced or that you can build your own or whatever, but it's actually just the right price for a cool little educational tool that also works beyond the educational stage. It may even inspire me to build my own advanced version at some point.
If you're already a hardware hacker or EE, this is probably not much more than a toy for you. If you've always wanted to explore some of these topics but had no idea how to start, the Flipper is a good introduction. I immediately flashed it with custom firmware and it was easier than flashing my BIOS.
The social pressure to "be interesting" is one of the factors that I think leads to a lot of our collective misery. I think the problem is one of scale - if you're not engaging with other people because they don't share your interests, you may be hanging out with the wrong people, but you may not have a choice. You may be required to hang out with them because they are co-workers, neighbors, etc. - members of communities to which you may belong but may not have willingly chosen (i.e. if you're lucky enough to have been able to choose your job and your position and the team you work with, you are in a very fortunate minority).
So much of our self worth is wrapped up in "being important" or "being interesting". We don't ask the question enough, "To whom"? As someone else mentioned here, you should be important to the communities you have explicitly chosen and built - your wife and kids, the friends you choose to keep in your life, etc. If they find you interesting and important, that really ought to be enough for just about all of us. I do feel like an awful lot of this pressure to be interesting stems from people who have not cultivated such communities of choice and are left with a dire need to feel important to anyone who will pay attention to them. It's a sickness that I think a lot of people have been able to muster into the wrong kind of attention building, which makes it seems better than it is (e.g. parasocial relationships through social media, etc.)
All of this is to say: Are you happy? Do the people who matter to you find you interesting and fun to be around? Focus on them and be happy. Our lives are enriched by the people we let into them. So long as everyone in our circles are well fed, well loved, and well rested - ourselves included - we can find peace and happiness. Excitement means different things to different people - you'll never catch me bungee jumping, but I get a rush when a delicious meal I had planned turns out exactly as I intended. Find what excites you, surround yourself with people who love and appreciate you - and whom you love and appreciate in return - and work toward your own sense of happiness without the judgement of the chattering classes.
"I do feel like an awful lot of this pressure to be interesting stems from people who have not cultivated such communities of choice and are left with a dire need to feel important to anyone who will pay attention to them."
Really good comment. While I am somewhat concerned about people in general finding me interesting, the real concern is that I don't think my family finds me all that interesting. I am available and attentive but I don't think I bring all that much to the table in terms of fun.
No - the clapper will kill the power to it, so it won't be able to respond. You need to add a Google Nest device that will respond to your request for claps.
I've been feeling this way for a while. So much human effort spent on producing human suffering and death. No wonder everyone feels like everything is falling apart.
If the org has a software development team, there's really no reason not to roll your own. As stated previously, this is a pretty well solved and well documented problem. A lot of development teams outsource this under the idea that authx is not their core competency, but I'd argue protecting customer data ought to be among every development org's core competency, otherwise they;re asking for trouble.
If you're talking about orgs that don't have a dev team and buy everything off the shelf / through SaaS... well, this is unfortunately part of the risk those orgs run. If you're manufacturing and shipping widgets in boxes, and your box supplier starts using cheaper materials that don't hold up to shipping, the only option is to switch box providers. Same here - if you're org relies on an IAM tool to allow employees to log into SaaS or other hosted software platforms and the IAM leaks data, the only real options are to switch providers or work with the existing provider to fix the damage.
Your solution of "write your own" is fraught with so many problems.
Why not write your own OS? Then you can control the vulns!
Why not design your own hardware? You can secure the hardware comms channels better.
Why not invent your own coding language? You can ensure it's written with zero vulns.
Why not invent a new base-30 numbering system? With out extra efforts, they can't even read your excel spreadsheets!
Your solution works in a select few companies that have monster dev farms, but everyone else cannot implement this and it's silly to tout it as a solution.
There are zero perfect solutions.
The way we do this in the real world, is patch, read up on vulns that might affect us, monitor, control access, and audit.
It's still not perfect, since nothing is, but in 30+ years of managing Healthcare IT and being senior technical, I've had exactly 1 breach and she did it with pencil and paper, at an HIS workstation, who's job is to look at many medical records, daily.
I agree mostly with this observation, but would add to it - people are willing to work when they own their work. There are definitely a lot of jobs and likely entire industries that would disappear tomorrow if we stopped optimizing for money and focused on optimizing for humanity, but a lot of necessary work - farming, construction, distribution of goods, etc. - would still need to happen, and I honestly believe there are a number of folks who would be happy in those jobs if they owned their work.
In a job, you sell a huge chunk of your waking life for a discount to faceless owners and investors who care less about employee and customer happiness than they do about their own bottom lines. In a truly cooperative setting - one where the work and proceeds are as equally shared as possible among all participants - everyone would have greater control over their work and would have full ownership over it. Such companies would necessarily run smaller and leaner with a tighter customer focus, which I think would improve the experience for everyone.
I truly believe switching from corporate hierarchies to radical cooperatives would solve a LOT of societal issues.
