Wyze $20 Smart Watch • Hacker News Board

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#181

Post by bhupy » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:17 AM UTC

treesknees wrote: post #68

bluGill wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact if you get "good enough" at the low end there is more money there than up top. Sure $200 isn't much compared to me income, but it is still more than an impulse buy. If you can get the $20 market it becomes an impulse buy for a lot more people. If you are good enough they compare with their friends and the friends also buy - those who would never spend $200 on an impulse buy, and those who already have and are…

The low price of $20 actually slows my impulse to buy it. Sure, it's not a lot of money, but how reliable or usable can it be for that price? It makes me think of a cheap knock-off device I'd find at a TJ Maxx store on clearance. What makes it so cheap even compared to a Fitbit?

You might be right, but the current price point of watches could also be inflated.

Let's not forget that once upon a time, pocket-watches were only for the rich. It wasn't until the advent of quartz watches that you could find a solid watch (digital or analog) for under $100. Today, $20ish digital watches are fairly common on the market. One of my favorite watches is a cheap Timex Weekender (a favorite of /r/malefashionadvice IIRC).

Just like one might decide to go for a stylish (but cheap) quartz watch instead of that expensive automatic, one could decide to go for a stylish (but cheap) Wyze watch instead of that $300 Apple Watch. We'll have to see if Wyze (or someone similar) can actually execute and pull that off.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#182

Post by tartoran » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

slezyr wrote: post #121

jerlam wrote: post #85

Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…

PineTime is the only watch that is cheap and can be programmable. However, it's software isn't mature enough for daily use. https://pine64.com/product/pinetime-dev-kit/?v=0446c16e2e66

Do you have one? What are the problems with it so far?

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#183

Post by segmondy » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #147

neolog wrote: post #90

Are there any developer-friendly hackable smartwatches?

Lillygo makes a couple of interesting options built around the ESP32: T-Watch-2020 - $26 - http://www.lilygo.cn/prod_view.aspx?TypeId=50053&Id=1290&FId... T-Wristband - $18 - http://www.lilygo.cn/claprod_view.aspx?TypeId=21&Id=1282&FId...

These are amazing, thanks for sharing!

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#184

Post by jerlam » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:20 AM UTC

MikeKusold wrote: post #156

jerlam wrote: post #85

Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…

Garmin has been crushing it with their smartwatches. * App store with 3rd party apps and faces. * Always on screen * Physical buttons (Vivoactive is mostly touchscreen oriented, but all their "athlete" watches use buttons) * Week long battery life - Even running GPS tracking for 12 hours straight leaves enough battery for the next day. The biggest downside to the Garmin is trying to figure out which watch to buy. The…

I've also switched to a Garmin when Pebble went kaput, and one of my todo list items is to port some of the more fun Pebble faces over to Connect IQ.

However, as you've noticed, each device feature set is determined by overzealous marketing. My Forerunner 245, despite having tons more memory than my ancient Fenix 3 and considerably faster, has less data screens for running. It doesn't have an altimeter, but the cheaper Vivoactive series has an altimeter because fitness users want to count floors climbed. It has Bluetooth but is not allowed to connect to bike power meters, because then it would overlap with Garmin's much more expensive triathlete watches.

This leads to app store problems, because each app and watch face has to be explicitly compiled for each watch - even when the watches have the same display size and feature set. Buying a new device often means that you'll have fewer options than someone with an older one.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#185

Post by robocat » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:25 AM UTC

borgel wrote: post #152

copperx wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off topic, but are there microcontrollers that run Linux?

It's possible, but my impression is that no MMU makes it difficult. Here is an example [1] of Linux on a Cortex M4 (a very boring STM32F4XX) [1] https://elinux.org/STM32

Linux required an MMU at inception[1] and currently requires an MMU. Instead you have μClinux[2] which although it is integrated with the mainline kernel since 2.x, it lacks some important features, like it has neither fork() nor autogrow stacks[3].

[1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/linux.history.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ΜClinux

[3] https://www.eetimes.com/how-uclinux-provides-mmu-less-proces...

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#186

Post by chaostheory » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:28 AM UTC

chabes wrote: post #87

patentatt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what do you base that off of? I can’t think of a way to prove the negative, that I’m not the product, that overcomes the assumption that the hardware prices are so low that they will have great incentive to monetize in other ways.

I got the feeling that the price was too good to not be something else as well. I might be mistaken, but it appears to me that they might have ways of monetizing user data. From the privacy statement: > We allow others to provide analytics services and serve advertisements for us across the web and in mobile applications. These entities may use cookies, web beacons, device identifiers and other technologies to collec…

I agree. It has to be like how smart TVs are so amazingly cheap. They are going to monetize your data.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#187

Post by bpye » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

Wildgoose wrote: post #179

jerlam wrote: post #85

Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…

I have a Fossil Hybrid HR. It has an always-on e-ink display with physical watch hands, back light, Heart Rate monitor, and a 10 day battery life. It's great, and probably the closest thing to a successor to a Pebble watch.

I've been tempted but I do use some of the smart features on my Apple Watch. It's a tough tradeoff.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#188

Post by woofie11 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:43 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #54

umeshunni wrote: post #27

How is Wyze churning out so many new hardware devices so rapidly? I hadn't heard of them till this year when I saw their camera on sale, but now they have a full suite of hardware products with ~50 employees. Are they essentially rebranding some Chinese manufacturer?

When it comes to their webcam: absolutely yes. You can get the exact camera they sell on Alibaba. That said, the software on the Alibaba versions is awful. I think their business model makes sense here: buy commodity hardware, make your own, better, software. (though to be honest their iOS app isn't great. But still)

I'd pay good money if I had Chinese hardware with secure, privacy-guaranteeing software. I'd buy the smart watch right now if it was either open-source, it came with a strong privacy policy.

As is, I see no reason to upload my health information to a random corporation.

Indeed, I can see plenty of business models where I could give away smartwatches and cameras for the wealth of data I'd collect. Selling still makes more sense; you want people to have a vested interest in them.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#189

Post by jaredhansen » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

I bought one of these during the early-access program, as my old Charge 3 had recently died. I really wanted to like it.

Sad to say, it's terrible. Mostly what it did was remind me how much I appreciate stuff that actually works well (e.g., wrist position sensing, so that it turns on when it's supposed to, a reliable touch interface, etc). I ended up buying a Fitbit Sense when they came out a month or so later. I don't regret it, even at >10x the price. I have my gripes with the sense but most of the time it is vastly more usable.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#190

Post by bigiain » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

jerlam wrote: post #184

MikeKusold wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garmin has been crushing it with their smartwatches. * App store with 3rd party apps and faces. * Always on screen * Physical buttons (Vivoactive is mostly touchscreen oriented, but all their "athlete" watches use buttons) * Week long battery life - Even running GPS tracking for 12 hours straight leaves enough battery for the next day. The biggest downside to the Garmin is trying to figure out which watch to buy. The…

I've also switched to a Garmin when Pebble went kaput, and one of my todo list items is to port some of the more fun Pebble faces over to Connect IQ. However, as you've noticed, each device feature set is determined by overzealous marketing. My Forerunner 245, despite having tons more memory than my ancient Fenix 3 and considerably faster, has less data screens for running. It doesn't have an altimeter, but the cheap…

I had 3 Pebbles, and a Kickstarter pledge in for a fourth that they cancelled and refunded me when they sold out.

I spend the refund money on a small but fun collection of old soviet mechanical watches. The kinda ubiquitous Vostok Amfibia, a "Big Zero", and a pretty poor fake of the Sturmanski Yuri Gagarin wore.

I get much "more joy" from these - even the fake Yuri watch - than I ever got from a "smart watch".

My usual story about smart watches was that I jumped on the very first Pebble Kickstarter, because I thought it'd be useful while riding a motorcycle to be able to see who's calling/texting my phone when it was vibrating in my pocket, so I could decide whether I wanted to stop and answer it. Turns out, the answer was _always_ "No!". Even if it _was_ someone I'd normally pick up for, I was either gonna arrive at my destination in 10 or 20 mins and would deal with it then, or I was on a trip and wasn't gonna be stopping until the tank was empty - possibly at a place with no reception - and I'd deal with it late that evening or in a few days when I got back to town.