Product Launch
anonymous
569 points
568 comments
Posted25 days agoActive22 days ago
Pebble Index
repebble.comlaunchedsaasindividuals, knowledge workers
Key Features
note-takingorganizationtaggingsearch
Tech Stack
Key Features
Tech Stack
or a search for 'voice': https://apps.repebble.com/en_US/search/watchapps/1?query=Voi...
Index 01 uses silver-oxide batteries.
Why can’t it be recharged?
We considered this but decided not to for several reasons:
You’d probably lose the charger before the battery runs out! Adding charge circuitry and including a charger would make the product larger and more expensive. You send it back to us to recycle. Wait, it’s single use?
Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it’s the best solution to the given set of constraints. Other smart rings like Oura cost $250+ and need to be charged every few days. We didn’t want to build a device like that. Before the battery runs out, the Pebble app notifies and asks if you’d like to order another ring."
Uhhh... Huh... Ok. Welp, that's a nope from me then.
I shared your concerns but I read this bit and I think it's all pretty reasonable if you ask me. They're open and upfront about it, and you can very quickly choose not to buy one.
Who's recycling their Oura battery anyway? Probably nobody.
https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/4441437053313...
I can't comment if it's worth the effort to send six grams worth of e-waste across the country and how much actual material can be recovered from it.
The target market might not be exclusively other engineers and tinkerers, but as an engineer and tinkerer, I'm eager for more details about the testing, verification, construction, etc., of such a solution.
On the other hand, cool!
This comes across much more dystopian than I imagine the author intended.
Not even an attempt to make a replaceable or chargeable battery?
Also they point out oura rings need to be charged every few days, but that’s because they’re constantly chewing through battery monitoring your health stats. I’m willing to bet if they were in a constant state of deep sleep and only woken up to record short audio clips they’d also last for months at a time.
I know folks around here love pebble, but this feels like a miss to me.
That's a pretty long life, TBF. I appreciate your concerns, though, and do wonder if there was a better middle ground (maybe a micro sterling engine leveraging the heat gradient from my finger to ambient, ha!).
People are buying Fitbit charge6 products today and those probably have an 18 shelf life and cost more.. so maybe it's not totally left field - although the charge6 isn't advertised to fail so soon lol.
Honestly I can see a niche use but this device strikes me as quite weird and I'm not sure why it isn't a button on their new watch.
it's useful to think of a lot of things this way, I also justify clothing purchases on a rough estimate of cost per wear
TL;dr - There’s no reason to not have a rechargeable battery other than to create e-waste and “a revenue stream”.
The e-waste here is negligible. If you've ever tossed a laptop or phone you've effectively produced more e-waste than a lifetime of these little things. A single disposable AA battery is more waste by weight.
How much of it is even recyclable?
Water resistant, like how water resistant? Wearing in the shower OK? That's where I have all my best ideas!
Isn't my watch always with me? Why not use that instead of have some new device?
> Initially, we experimented by building this as an app on Pebble, since it has a mic and I’m always wearing one. But, I realized quickly that this was suboptimal - it required me to use my other hand to press the button to start recording (lift-to-wake gestures and wake-words are too unreliable). This was tough to use while bicycling or carrying stuff.
Recording a note isn’t high friction in my opinion though: “Hey siri make a note XYZ”. Admittedly I don’t create or use notes like this, but I use reminders a lot and I’ve never felt like there was friction: “hey siri remind me to call Dave when I get home”
Other watches detect gestures like pinching fingers on the hand wearing the watch.
It seems like Pebble is focusing on a niche market and this new product seems completely in line with that. There are plenty of other companies targeting the common folk who have no desire to optimize their life like this.
Pebble serves those people who want to watch or a ring that doesn't require being a slave to a wall wart, who want the watch to last for a long time. Take a look at Garmin, they do that too and they are a successful company. They are much older than Google and they still have a hard time keeping up with Google and it's billions of dollars of of mystery money advertising revenue.
And then there's the support which is zero support. Completely frustrating to post a message and then get some volunteer support Tech, hahaha, saying expect improvements! And it's a volunteer saying that. And they have no authority. And There is no support, it all falls through. Random crashing on both versions of the watch. The first version screen was flickering like an old school television trying to tune in a distant UHF broadcast. Display drivers anyone?
So, pixel watches are in the drawer and I've got a Garmin watch on right now. Garmin is clunky but at least it's reliably clunky.
So it feels like a mis comparison, to me who's had the pixel watches.
I used to own the pebble, a couple versions of it, when they were first announced for several years again. And I found them to be very reliable and lightweight and usable.
I wanted a smartwatch that could talk to Google's home ecosystem and so I traded out of Pebble. And it's just been kind of mediocre misery.
Plus I don't know what Google is doing but recharging the pixel watch every 18 hours, or 36 if you're super lucky and your apps on the pixel watch behave themselves correctly, makes me feel like a slave to Google's naive product manager aspirations.
Like, "it can do everything, and we make money off of you because you are the product!" While at the same time making me miserable.
:-P
Some low effort ideas I cna think of -- a wake word instead of button press; a flick of the wrist; or maybe press the watch to your chin; There must a few more elegant solutions possible if smarter people put their minds to it.
I wonder how many years?
> The battery lasts for up to years of average use.
...how many?
> a battery that lasts for years
How many years does the battery last?
> That’s up to 2 years of usage.
Ah.
I guess "2" is the absolute minimum that you could describe as "years".
It's a shame because it does look like an interesting proposition. It might be more compelling if it was "send your ring back to us for recycling - and we'll send you a new one". I doubt the economics would work at this price point though.
Sure a phone or watch can burst into flames, but at least you’ve got a chance of dropping it or taking it off.
I also don’t see the both of talking to your wrist rather than your hand.
>No charging: The battery lasts for up to years of average use. After the end of its life, send your ring back to us for recycling.
this is ridiculous...
Edit FTA:
> How long does the battery last?
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
“Two” is not “years” in my opinion. “Years” implies at least 3-5.
Think of it more like this: If I was selling you a car and said it would last for years, then would you expect it to fall apart after two years? I certainly wouldn’t. When talking about small quantities we tend to specify an exact number (two, three), however as the range becomes larger and less exact we use generalities (years). Because of this “years” would typically refer to a span of at least 3-5 years, and I would argue even longer.
“The battery lasts two years”
I think most people, when told that something will last for "years", would be quite surprised to learn that it will fail after 2 years.
For example, I have motion sensors in my home and I have to replace the batteries from time to time. If the manual said "the batteries last for years, depending on usage" I would not be surprised if it lasted for 2 years.
Here, it sounds like the battery life will vary greatly based on usage. In fact, it sounds like the battery life is almost entirely a function of how much you use it. It would be interesting to know how much the battery will drain over time if you don't use it, but of course we can't know this for certain before this has been in the wild for years.
If someone said “that’s years ago” I’d assume 5+. If someone said “it’ll be years before that’s released” I would again assume 5+.
To be two I would expect “that’ll be out in a couple of years”, or “in a year or two”.
For this ring I would write “battery life is between 12-15 hours of use, which will typically last about two years under normal use”
3 years: Few years
4 years: Several years
5+ years: Years
But I did have a similar thought when I read it was only “two”
Even this is misleading. The product hasn't been released yet. So what is it an average of? How do you know how people will use it?
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
Two years isn’t too bad, but at $99 the price is still a bit high for that.
At $99 every 2 years it might as well be a subscription.
Even for just the narrow use-case, 2 years is still pretty poor. I generally expect my tech to last a lot longer than that.
Apple hire this man.
Not sure how long my iphone can record for, but it's probably close to that. Afterwards I get to charge my phone instead of recycle it, though.
Apple, don't hire this man.
Is that based on anything, or is that just a guess?
Anyway, 12 hours' worth of 30 second recordings is a total of 1440 recordings. I guess three a day for a year does seem a little low?
> Just hate Apple and love e-waste rings? Enlighten me.
What e-waste? You send it in for recycling; they might just replace the battery and send you a your existing ring back.
Fancy enough, it's from the article!
Right under the "How long does the battery last?" heading.
I guess there's a market for it and in the scale of things it isn't so bad: you could make 10 disposable vape sticks from the materials in one of these rings. And they're expensive enough that they'll never sell more than 100k or so of them. Relatively speaking it's no measurable impact.
For me it's more a matter of principle though. As a society we frown on disposable gizmos these days and for good reason.
Contrast to a phone that, though it has far more capability, you'd have to remember where it is before even reaching for it wherever, and usually has to be on a charger for anywhere from 30 minutes (with super charging) to a few hours daily. Or even being at a laptop/desktop, and at least having to open the relevant app, type/talk into it and then close again to return to primary task. The ring is an instant win for 24/7/365 convenient presence.
I suppose the problem is that there are no standard for tiny magnetic chargers/cables. Every watch comes with their own, and they need be custom designed. For a device this large as much of the charging electronics should be outside the ring.
And another (small?) problem is that you'd need to electrically protect those external pins.
I very likely wouldn't have bought it anyway but I am surely not going to buy disposable tech.
It’s easy to make a battery last years if it doesn’t do anything. You can send your devices to Apple as well for recycling.
This seems like a gadget just for the sake of having another gadget...
Unless you specifically are after a barometer, in which case I don't think the PT2 has that.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wont
Also: I agree with your concern
There is no risk of swelling with Index 01
Take the phone, open app, done.
Do you use Apple Pay or Google Pay? Or tap-to-pay instead of grab-your-wallet-find-your-card? If so, you're being disingenuous here.
The difference between these is obvious:
Without ring:
* Stop washing dishes
* Find towel
* Dry hands
* Find phone
* Where the hell is that thing I just had it
* Oh, there it is.
* Unlock phone
* Swipe around for recording app
* Open recording app
* Record
* Go back to washing dishes
* Hit button
* Record
* Go back to washing dishes
If their goal truly is "New Pebble", then surely something that could connect to a phone could connect to a computer, granted you have the available radios connected to your computer. Seems to be BT in this case.
> and had a rechargeable battery
Yeah, seems like a weird thing to do, but I guess trying to solve this would make the device a lot harder. Hoping at least there will be a DIY route to replace the batteries, I don't have the will to be sending back an electrical device every second month because the battery died, and then waiting for a new device to arrive in the mail.
Edit: I was just about to ask if you think they'll send the replacement device before you've sent in the one that had the expired battery, but now I realize it isn't even clear if they expect us to buy a brand new device when the battery runs out, or if they provide a replacement? The former would be an absolutely bananas proposition.
> Before the battery runs out, the Pebble app notifies and asks if you’d like to order another ring.
Happy to answer any questions you have!
Also, I love the idea of providing 3d models for something like this that needs to be perfectly sized
Example button: https://core-electronics.com.au/self-powered-wireless-switch...
I imagine the reason is reliability, but USD$99 plus international shipping every two years isn’t worth that to me, sorry.
Aside: I loved my kickstarter pebble and my steel, btw!
See: https://core-electronics.com.au/attachments/uploads/TEL0173-...
Even if you shrink it 50% the ring would be mostly power generation button.
It's a memo recorder in ring form. Neat idea that seems really obvious but somehow I haven't seen it before
Edit: ah. "No charging: The battery lasts for up to years of average use. After the end of its life, send your ring back to us for recycling." Planned obsolescence
408 more comments available on Hacker News
Not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator. We simply enrich the public API with analytics.