Battery decision asid, I love this dude's obsession with making unique hardware
What's unique about this ring that has less features than other "smart" rings?
The part where the battery lasts for years? Did anyone see that coming?
Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
161–170 of 615 posts
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#162Hmm... I sort of would've preferred it was JUST a button. I wonder if you could even make it perpetually powered by body heat + buffer battery if it's ONLY job was to emit a couple packets over BLE with some burned in ID that you save on the watch. I don't know how efficient peltier elements are going to be on such a small area, but the cold side would be attached to a big metal ring, which feels like an adequate hea…
You can use it just as a button - that's one of the ways you can hack it. Just hook the button up to whichever action (webhook, Tasker, etc) you'd like. Battery would last for decades just as a button.
I feel like this should be promoted or made clearer on the product page - this is how I think many people would prefer to use it, provided it could trigger voice input on the pebble/device/other watch - for example, as a Siri trigger.
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#163> 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.
I feel like I’m usually good about being able to imagine a market for different devices even when I’m not the target audience, but I’m having a hard time with this one.
Having 20 different 3-second thoughts transcribed to notes that I have to process every day sounds more like added complications than problem solving. If I stretch, I can think of a few things that flashed into my mind and then I forgot again for a couple days because I wasn’t in a location to immediately pull out my phone and put it on my todo list (which takes about 10 seconds because I put a shortcut in my lock screen). However, those locations weren’t something where I could be “whispering” to a ring, either.
So I don’t know. I hope repebble succeeds with everyone they’re doing, but this product feels like they went too far into the novelty end of the spectrum and neglected some of the actual usability that made the original Pebble popular.
EDIT: On second thought, maybe the lack of recharging is an acknowledgement that they don’t actually expect people to use this product a lot or for very long. Maybe the target audience is people who want to have something new and unique that they can also use as a conversation starter. Once the novelty wears off maybe it doesn’t get worn much. If it does become popular with a niche audience they can release a V2 with charging.
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#164Couldn't the same flow be achieved on a Pebble watch by utilizing something like the "double tap"-gesture Apple Watches Series 9 and upwards have? This seems like a gadget just for the sake of having another gadget...
Interesting idea, but those gestures only work on AW when not in low-power mode, meaning they take a non-trivial amount of battery. It would probably dampen Pebble's battery life significantly, and might not even be possible with the chip that it has.
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
from the article: > 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.
Pixel Watch have "raise to talk" to trigger Gemini, so you don't need your other hand. Other watches detect gestures like pinching fingers on the hand wearing the watch.
Pixel watch is an order of magnitude more powerful and expensive than a Pebble though. Raise to wake is not as simple as it may seem considering most big brand smart watches didn't have a decently working implementation of it until only recently. It seems like the author wanted to keep it within the Pebble realm.
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#166As someone who is a female size 3, will "8 US ring sizes: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13" fit at all?
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#167> 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 must be a joke.
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#168Even if the battery lasts "years", it still seems wildly irresponsible to make this a single use device. I suspect this thing will get very few sales because it's single use.
The phrase "single use" applies better to condoms than to wearables that you use every day for 500-1000 days, IMO.
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#169Voice recording on pre-smart phones was my jam forever, and this is right up my alley. But don't say "Privacy," then "data sent to your phone."
Modern smartphones are very private, featuring full disk encryption, sandboxed app data storage, and mandatory lock screens. Why do you think the data stored on your phone isn't private?
Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
#170I don’t dislike the forever battery and the value proposition, however voice memos never appealed to me?
The obvious voice commands that work only half of the time, can’t voice memo in bed with your parters, in the office, or in public. That leaves very limited opportunities for this to be useful.