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Google open-sources the Pebble OS

opensource.googleblog.com

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Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#201

Post by pbmonster »

mcny wrote: post #83
Zigurd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better use of flexible screens than folding devices. Fitting under the cuffs of men's shirts is a constraint. I dictate most text entered on my phone, so a squishy typing surface wouldn't be so bad. Camera position could be tricky.

Problem is different people want different things. I for one want at least all day battery while using only about 60% of the capacity so realistically two full days battery from a single charge. I then want to be able to set a max charge limit of 80% beyond which the phone won't charge and have the phone die at 20%. Ideally, I also want the phone to be able to work off the wall meaning if the phone is plugged in to t…

Serious question, when was the last time you degraded the battery of a phone enough to warrant replacement?

I got a Xperia XZ2 compact in 2018, and used it daily util a month ago. It made it through a day of regular use until the very end, when I had to retire it because of issues with software updates.

Modern-ish Li-Ion batteries can take thousands of full cycles.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#202

Post by follower »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #84

People passing cynical comments at Google need to understand that at a big co like Google, something like this doesn't 'just happen'. It probably happened because some passionate L6/L7 engineer wanted to do it and pushed through the bureaucracy to get approvals for it, probably largely on their own time (by which I mean that this was at best a side-project for them and at worst a distraction that was losing them favo…

For visibility (via comment by 1337shadow @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848245):

----

> Instead, we took a more direct route - I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes! Over the last year, a team inside Google (including some amazing ex-Pebblers turned Googlers) has been working on this. And today is the day - the source code for PebbleOS is now available at github.com/google/pebble (see their blog post).

https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back

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Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#203

Post by jsmith45 »

jsheard wrote: post #6

They've open sourced what they can, but these third party bits had to be stripped out: - All of the system fonts - The Bluetooth stack, except for a stub that will function in an emulator - The STM peripheral library - The voice codec - ARM CMSIS - For the Pebble 2 HR, the heart rate monitor driver

Looking though that list:

    All of the system fonts
Presumably the source included the TTF files from which the rasterized bitmap resources were automatically generated. Including the pre-rasterized bitmaps extracted from a previous release should not be a problem as typefaces and bitmap fonts are not subject to copyright in the US, vs vector font files which are eligible for copyright as computer programs.

    The Bluetooth stack, except for a stub that will function in an emulator
This seems unfortunate, and looks to be one of the most critical gaps in the source release.

    The STM peripheral library
You can get this from ST no problem, although it is only licensed for use on STM devices.

    The voice codec
It should be feasible enough to replace this.

    ARM CMSIS
The old versions with non-free licenses are still available from ARM or ST, and the recent versions are Apache licensed (but some porting of code might be required to use to newer versions).

    For the Pebble 2 HR, the heart rate monitor driver
This was probably based on sample code from the vendor which could be replaced.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#204

Post by refulgentis »

kfir wrote: post #188
The_Colonel wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Google understands hardware given its lack of success in it.

The lack of success in hardware is intentional. Hardware is a low margin business that will hurt their bottom line.

No, it's not

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#205

Post by organsnyder »

modeless wrote: post #162
girvo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My white 20mm one with a brown leather band started more conversations than anything else I’ve ever owned and used, which was surprising but neat :) Unfortunately mine got stolen and broken, which is a shame. I wonder how hard they are to buy today, and how difficult battery replacements for them are…

Battery replacement is difficult, not impossible, but bordering on impossible is restoring the waterproof seal. Once you've replaced the battery you basically have to keep it away from water. I wasn't careful with mine and lost two to water damage after replacing the battery, despite re-sealing with permanent adhesive.

Good to know! IIRC the Round didn't have as high a water resistance rating to begin with, and I typically wear a leather band, so this might not be a deal-breaker for me.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#206

Post by Twirrim »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #129
Twirrim wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh this is awesome news. The Pebble was by far the best smartwatch I've ever used. No quirks, just always reliable. The hard work shone through with how quirk free it was.

I never used a smart watch before. Can you share some examples quirks with other watches?

I had the OG pebble, which I only stopped using due to suffering the screen corruption bug that plagued a small percentage of the original models. Other than that it was smooth as silk. It'd last close on a month on a single charge. I literally charged it up before going on a 2 1/2 week vacation, didn't take my charger with me, and had no problems.

Then had an Asus ZenWatch 3. WatchOS was frustrating at the time over the ability to customise what notifications would actually get to the watch, and the battery life of the device was terrible, getting worse over the space of a couple of years. Even had some reliability issues with the messages actually reaching the watch at all.

Wanting to go back to e-ink displays and longer battery life, I've got a Amazfit Blip, who's software was just awful. Even "simple" things like sleep tracking wouldn't work properly, dying out or flat out not being accessible from "Sleep for Android", heart rate monitoring wouldn't sync reliably to anything, notifications would just randomly stop working. It also had no ability to disable certain apps from sending notifications to the watch, even if the notifications are set to silent on the phone.

There was an open source app that I used to have to use alongside their own app that was necessary to actually fix everything wrong with the original software and make the device work with anything approaching reliability.

The recent overhaul of their own app (seems like a ground up rewrite to me) has actually fixed most of the issues that I've had with it. It still occasionally just craps out and requires me to turn the whole bluetooth stack off and on again.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#207

Post by tadfisher »

Avamander wrote: post #97
tadfisher wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sold 2 million units, which is nothing to sneeze at for a Kickstarter-funded project. What they miscalculated was the demand for the Pebble Time, for which they spent too much money on R&D and marketing to justify the results. They should have iterated on the original design, making it cheaper, smaller, and longer-lasting. Instead they tried to go upmarket and compete with the Apple Watch, with predictable resul…

Eric has described in-depth what went wrong: https://ericmigi.com/blog/success-and-failure-at-pebble

Yes, I was paraphrasing that.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#208

Post by modeless »

organsnyder wrote: post #205
modeless wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery replacement is difficult, not impossible, but bordering on impossible is restoring the waterproof seal. Once you've replaced the battery you basically have to keep it away from water. I wasn't careful with mine and lost two to water damage after replacing the battery, despite re-sealing with permanent adhesive.

Good to know! IIRC the Round didn't have as high a water resistance rating to begin with, and I typically wear a leather band, so this might not be a deal-breaker for me.

The PTRs weren't diving watches for sure, but the original waterproofing was easily good enough to withstand submersion, as long as the battery hadn't started swelling yet.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#209

Post by markus_zhang »

tesseract wrote: post #57
Cieric wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alloca is allocations on the stack, seems the kernel might be stack based, but the os itself has it's own implementation of malloc. Which is heap based. https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/main/src/libos/include... I'm also seeing references to rtos as the true underlying os though.

It was based on FreeRTOS, but FreeRTOS at the time was extremely bare bones and only provided a preemptive scheduler, task management, and synchronization primitives. Everything else (memory management, I/O, ...) had to come either from whatever libc implementation was in use, or be built from scratch.

Thanks, does that mean early FreeRTOS is a good beginner project for OS study?

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#210

Post by talldayo »

dcreater wrote: post #133
andybak wrote: post #69

This, Google Wave, Tilt Brush (and more recently Blocks). And probably others I've forgotten. This really does help mitigate the damage done by "Killed by Google" and people are genuinely grateful (personally in my case). But even better would be to fix the dysfunctional internal dynamics that cause this syndrome in what appears to be disproportionally more frequently compared to other corporations.

That's what happens when you don't have to play by the rules of reality. Googles monopoly allows them to act like this. It's unfair and generally bad for everyone involved. Thankfully it seems that that era is finally going to end

Sorry, what? Depreciating a product has never been illegal in America. Consumer protections are an afterthought, and that applies to Google as much as it applies to Apple and Microsoft. You aren't owed shit.

The rules of reality are written the moment you click "agree" on the EULA. Like the other comment says; the only way to win is to refuse buying things you don't own. Otherwise you're just a sucker who has a hard time living down their mistakes.

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