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Pebble's next step

blog.getpebble.com

401–410 of 457 posts

Re: Pebble's next step

#401
post #363
post #317

Just read previous posts on https://blog.getpebble.com/ . Man, you really can't tell whether a startup is doing well or not from outside. Everything's AWESOME all the time: * Oct 31, 2016: Get Spooky with Halloween Pebble Faces! * Oct 18, 2016: What’s New in Pebble’s 4.2 Firmware and Apps * Oct 05, 2016: Pebble 2: Fit & Smart * Sep 30, 2016: Pebble 2 Kickstarter Rewards Start Shipping * Sep 14, 2016: Pebble Core = Mo…

Apparently if they don't blog for a while, things are bad.

Actually, I see a Nov 22 post on that page.

Re: Pebble's next step

#402
I'd love to see a P2P style open cloud service created, where companies that use cloud services can use that instead, and then even if their company fails or has to shut down their own support of their services, their products can live on with the P2P cloud.

(Or, even if it's just an auto-graceful downgrade solution, like it hits their servers first, but if that's not available it tries the other).

For example, I once worked on a multiplayer iOS game about collaboratively writing stories based on keywords, and we were going to create a service to do it, but in the end decided to use the built-in asynchronous turn support in iOS GameKit.

Eventually the company folded, and if we had done our own service, the game would be completely unplayable. But because we used Apple's built-in services, it's still playable today, even though the company is gone, and even though the app is no longer on the app store.

That's kind of what I'm thinking, but instead of Apple providing that service, it's an Open Cloud service.

I was even thinking of writing an API to play mobile apps via email, where JSON strings of game turn data being passed back and forth via email, possibly via dedicated email addresses that the apps are given user/passwords to. Since email is a basic protocol that isn't likely to go away anytime soon, it seemed like a good tech to base that on.

Re: Pebble's next step

#403

I'm sad/angry/depressed as any Pebbler right now, so I won't repeat those comments. Instead, since this is HN after all, let me ask - what shall we do? In a year or two, when my current Pebble Time fails, I'd love an equivalent smartwatch to be available. Since the market doesn't seem to want it, how can we make it happen anyway? Features I'm looking for are, in order of priority: - always-on screen, preferably color…

Check out the Vector Watch [1]. It's a monochromatic smart watch with 30 days of battery life. [1] http://vectorwatch.com/

That is an awesome looking watch, thankyou

Re: Pebble's next step

#404
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you buy a company, you don't buy just the assets. You also acquire the liabilities, which include debt, warranties and support contracts.

Which is why they did not buy the company. The company is going bankrupt and sold IP to recover money to pay some of the debts with. If you did that to a healthy company that might be fraudulent, but when the company is going under either way it is probably not.

Agreed, but I didn't see anything about court approval for this deal. If a neutral third party signed off on it being the best deal (for the creditors and customers) possible, then fine.

Re: Pebble's next step

#405

You know, Pebble has garnered one of the best group of loyal customers I know of: well-off techies. Had they came to the community and said, "hey we are losing sales and we need everyone to pitch in $10 / year for software support (maybe a web interface for fitness or something) I guarantee a few hundred thousand people would have done it. Had they shared a coupon with the community (i.e. email add campaign, or add o…

Assuming all of the ~200,000 kickstarter backers would have been okay with the $10/year software, and no duplication of backers between their three campaigns, and that yearly payment kicking in as soon as each of the three campaigns ended (so before the customers even got their devices), that would have brought in a bit shy of $5m, compared to the ~$43m they brought in from their three campaigns. It's a good thought,…

You have to remember the overhead for that $5m in revenue would only be a few engineers let's say 5 at $1m, that's $4m profit.

Whereas on the $43m they still had to manufacture, ship, hire designers, engineers, etc.

That $4m profit would be a LOT more than 10%, that would cover 20 people's salary

Re: Pebble's next step

#406
post #125

This is the most orderly shutdown of a hardware+services company I've seen. Congrats to Team Pebble for that. It has to suck to end this way after 8 years. :( I hope someone builds a product like Pebble Core; I'm not sure how generally viable that is, but I'd love to have it myself.

> This is the most orderly shutdown of a hardware+services company I've seen. Congrats to Team Pebble for that. Oh, then you wasn't aware of the shitstorm that was happening on Reddit, Pebble forums and Kickstarter. The company basically went silent a month or so ago. Then, after the news of the acquisition broke early, they slowly progressed from total silence to completely unprofessional behaviour (i.e. posting stu…

Maybe you're right -- I didn't see that. I was mostly concerned w/ refunds on pending KS (which they don't have to do) and with them not shutting down the servers.

It's not ideal, but I suspect they have limited resources. I wish there were a way for companies to pay into an escrow/bond/whatever to keep their HW products alive in case of failure. I was really sad when Zeo (sleep tracking EEG thing) died; couldn't get the website or replacement consumables :(

Re: Pebble's next step

#407
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This last kickstarter raised $12million while only requiring $1million to fund. I'm really unsure how they managed to get 12x the "required" funding but still fail to deliver.

It's pretty common for Kickstarter projects to ask for a lot less than they actually need. Hence the reason for all the stretch goals and such. Companies like the story to be that they blew their goal out of the water, not just barely creeped over the funded line.

Which is super shady in my opinion. I've seen video game Kickstarters cancel their KS when they have a bit over 100% funding and a few days left. Clearly they are short of their real goal. Another common warning sign is when it fails to fund the first time and relaunches a few months later with a lower goal.

Re: Pebble's next step

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on a DIY watch off and on a bit. One of the bigger obstacles for me personally has been bluetooth notifications. I have found surprisingly few examples online of people getting it to actually work, and if you read through their work more closely, it only very barely works. I've tried to reproduce what other people have done and had it actually work even less than that. I was thinking of selling a pr…

You might want to reverse engineer the current Pebble app and see what they do?

Apple and Android have docs on how you're supposed to subscribe to notifications over Bluetooth. It's just the Bluetooth implementation + drivers + hardware module nitty gritty on an embedded system that's the hard part.

Re: Pebble's next step

#409
post #268

I'm sad/angry/depressed as any Pebbler right now, so I won't repeat those comments. Instead, since this is HN after all, let me ask - what shall we do? In a year or two, when my current Pebble Time fails, I'd love an equivalent smartwatch to be available. Since the market doesn't seem to want it, how can we make it happen anyway? Features I'm looking for are, in order of priority: - always-on screen, preferably color…

There are Chinese companies working on similar products, for example WeLoop[0], Goclever[1]. People are already working on open-source firmware for some of these watches[2], so I think there's a reasonably good chance that either some of these companies will create a decent alternative to pebble, or at least good enough hardware which can be used with community-developed firmware (and even more importantly: apps on t…

One problem for open source HW watch is that a lot of other folks will just use their factories in ShenZhen to clone the HW sell it for cheap without any R&D and marketing.

Similar to how OrangePI leverage Raspberry Pi situations.

It becomes race to the bottom ($5-10 pi zero) and no one can make $ in the market in both short and long term.

There seem to be a lot of sub $20 watch base on following links - not sure how good/bad are they.

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...

Re: Pebble's next step

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They genuinely believed they were going to change the world, drank too much of their own kool-aid and eventually ran out of money. Pretty sure they feel terrible right now and I don't think they slept well for the past 6 months. Could someone reasonable see this coming before KS? Most likely yes. Would they get this far without taking big risks? Most likely no. You feel angry you didn't get your pebbles, I feel angry…

You can take the "going to change the world" too far. They are bankrupt and still believe they're "Making Awesome Happen". Investors lost their money. Suppliers will not get paid. Employees are losing their jobs just before Christmas. Customers will not get their orders. Current customers are left without support and - in the near future - a limited functioning device. How is that "Making Awesome Happen"? A more humb…

Are you sure investors lost their money, considering the Fitbit transaction and the usual liquadition preferences et al
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