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Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain

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Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain

#201

Post by realo »

ulbu wrote: post #192

I wanted to use it to capture my musical ideas. They usually come unexpectedly and in bundles. There's a problem though – one of them is 0:40-1:30 min in duration; the ring wouldn't last half a year for me. I'm sure other musicians would love it as well, but are disqualified completely from the userbase. That's a shame as I think for us it would be really, really useful. (The first iteration of a musical idea usually…

This is a great example of use outside the box they got themselves in.

The solution is simple: market this as a trigger for the pebble voice. Only thatz. Nothing else. Make the electronics as simple and cheap as possible. Sell it as an option to the watch. Less than 30$ would be ideal.

Voila.

Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain

#202

Post by maeln »

crimsoneer wrote: post #155
maeln wrote: post #61

You can buy a rechargeable e-ring with several sensors and even a tiny screen for like 20$ on AliExpress. 75$ for a non-rechargeable, e-waste ring with just a button and a mic is insane.

but probably not a microphone, right.

Sure, but I don't think that ditching the combo O2 blood & heartbeat sensor, charging chip and the screen, and adding instead a mic is worth a 55$ upcharge.

Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain

#204

Post by wkat4242 »

oniony wrote: post #150
pavel_lishin wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Years of average use" is great until you realize that it actually means "Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording". 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 repl…

You have to trust it will actually get recycled though. I struggle to believe they'll be swapping out the batteries and reselling these as reconditioned. (I struggle to believe many people will even send them in for recycling tbh.)

The environmental benefit of sending it in for recycling is probably negated by transporting it all the way back to them for starters. Better to just drop it at the local ewaste collection facility. They'll be less specialised but there isn't a lot of material in it.

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.

Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain

#206

Post by ramses0 »

user_7832 wrote: post #103
erohead wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any chance of diy, at-home battery replacements? That would definitely let me consider it. I don't mind if it's a 10 hour process to replace the battery. Just the option to have a device that lasts is great.

Waterproofing, tiny batteries, yadda yadda... it's either "charge it weekly", or "recycle" every year or two (eg: $9.99/mo)

Thinking through: many people in the pebble-verse (back in the day) were super-hot about wanting the voice-control stuff/microphone responses to text messages. Instead of thinking about this as a standalone "ring", think of this as a "remote button + mic" for the pebble watch.

As a (former) avid biker, being able to spam: "How much longer until sunset (and how far away am I from home [and will I get home before sunset])?" and having a rough answer "on the wrist" is super useful.

On the Home Assistant front, the Apple ecosystem is waaaay too universal for Siri-isms. We have 3-4 home pod's (upstairs, downstairs, kids bedroom, guest room), along with phones (car-play), and airpods. All of them can be used as "Hey Siri, set a timer, turn on/off the lights, what's the weather, etc".

Looking at the HA voice controls, it's utter garbage trash (unfortunately) until The Hackers(tm) get around to fixing things up, BUUUT we're still screwed b/c HA speakers/mic's will be worse than Apple's, and HA will never come out with AirPods or CarPlay integration (and likely: Apple will never support a "non-Siri" voice connection via their microphone relationships).

This ring is an incredibly interesting way to sidestep all of that!

You have the ring (mic input, 2yr battery), you have the watch (text display, 1 month battery), and your phone (cellular + storage + compute, 1 day battery), all of which are nominally "every day carry" items.

In the home automation world, having your star-trek communicator pin (quite literally!) on your finger at all times w/ a 2yr battery life is VERY VERY intriguing!

Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain

#207

Post by angiolillo »

graypegg wrote: post #74

Hmm... 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…

> Why not just optimize for removing the gesture entirely? The microphone has to be better on a full size watch on your wrist vs the tiny ring further away on your finger.

Agreed, let the ring just be a button that can trigger recording on a watch or phone (among other tasks) rather than squeezing in a microphone and audio transmitter.

> 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...

Neat! Or maybe a tiny solar cell? Perhaps the button itself is piezoelectric, like a wearable version of the EnOcean Nodon line of battery-free wireless switches -- a BLE advertising event costs less than 100 microjoules which a button press should be able to provide, though ensuring 100% reliability over BLE with such a tiny energy budget would be hard.

Alternately it could communicate with the watch using IR, but the knuckles might occlude line of sight. The button press could mechanically emit an ultrasonic tone, but that requires an always-on mic in the watch/phone and would be susceptible to shenanigans. Maybe pressing the button causes a specific vibration that a watch accelerometer can reliably recognize?

Now I want someone to find a way to make this work... but long term I expect that the real solution will be making hand gestures work reliably 100% of the time with no ring at all.

Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain

#208

Post by allforJesse »

This could be such a delightful upgrade for my hybrid digital/analog personal task management system. Right now I use an apple watch to capture tasks which then hackily route through a series of apps/endpoints to get to a thermal label printer, but that's just about the only thing I use the apple watch for.

Having an affordable single purpose device like this could be much better -- how straightforward will it be to post transcriptions of the recorded messages to a webhook via the Index 01?

Re: Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain

#210

Post by Fnoord »

mikestew wrote: post #132
kwanbix wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or better yet. Use your cellphone wich most of us carry 90% of the time?

The cellphone that’s buried in my handbag? I think you missed the expressed use case (admittedly, a few paragraphs into TFA): ”Before, I would take my phone out of my pocket to jot these down, but I couldn’t always do that (eg, while bicycling). I also wanted to start using my phone less, especially in front of my kids. ”

Stop using your phone less in front of your kids.

Start using your ring/watch/whatever_else more in front of your kids.

Honestly, it isn't about what you use (that is just hype). You can read the paper all day if you want. I grew up with a father who was listening to radio and watching TV all the time (to be fair: he was disabled, including legally blind). It isn't about using your phone less in front of your kids. It is about being there for your kids when they need you; showing genuine interest in your kids; interacting with them. Right now, as I am writing this to you, my kids are watching Peppa Pig before bedtime. Instead of writing this, I could sit next to them and watch an episode with them.

As for cycling, with a ring you'd have to move your hand towards you or not, but it isn't much different compared to a watch, except perhaps when you'd wear a sweater over your watch.

It is also very typical that in-ear buds are expensive, small, yet hard to repair because the battery isn't user replaceable. And guess what, exactly the same for this device.

Apart from the yet another device with microphone (24/7 on, I suppose) and Bluetooth (the wireless spaghetti protocol) and it not being user serviceable the device costs 100 USD. For such a price, I expect it to last longer than two years. I mean, I'm sick of devices lasting only a few years. I wouldn't need yet another one.

TL;DR hard pass, do better.

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