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Google open-sources the Pebble OS

opensource.googleblog.com

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Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#51

Post by coldpie »

rpmisms wrote: post #44
coldpie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the Small Android Phone project dead? :)

Would be a great hardware duo. Neo-pebble and Mini-nexus.

Hmm, maybe we can come at this from the other angle. We can't have small phones because bigger is always better, right? So how about a HUGE 5" screen smartwatch that just happens to be a perfectly functional standalone phone if you discard the wristband?? Instant best seller!

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#52

Post by _2d30 »

skort wrote: post #29
spencerflem wrote: post #5

Don't say it often, but this is very nice of Google and they really didn't have to. Credit where it's due

[flagged]

Pebble went bankrupt because no one bought their products. Their assets were acquired by Fitbit. Fitbit did not continue to produce the Pebble products for which there was very limited demand. Google then later acquired Fitbit.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#53

Post by Cieric »

markus_zhang wrote: post #48

Just curious, I'm not good with C. Here in the code, https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/main/src/libc/alloca.c... From what I googled, this is just for stack allocation in gcc. Does that mean Pebble only has stack allocation?

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.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#55

Post by CamouflagedKiwi »

skort wrote: post #29
spencerflem wrote: post #5

Don't say it often, but this is very nice of Google and they really didn't have to. Credit where it's due

[flagged]

Google didn't "vacuum up" Pebble. Fitbit bought them (after they were in financial trouble), Google bought Fitbit later so ended up owning the Pebble source code after that.

As the top voted comment on the article says, Google didn't have to do this. It's probably driven by only a few people internally there, and if everyone's cynical and nasty about it, they're less likely to try doing the nice thing again next time. That isn't a good outcome.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#56

Post by markus_zhang »

Cieric wrote: post #53
markus_zhang wrote: post #48

Just curious, I'm not good with C. Here in the code, https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/main/src/libc/alloca.c... From what I googled, this is just for stack allocation in gcc. Does that mean Pebble only has stack allocation?

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.

Thanks found it,

https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/main/src/fw/kernel/pbl...

Which calls heap malloc:

https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/main/src/libutil/heap....

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#57

Post by tesseract »

Cieric wrote: post #53
markus_zhang wrote: post #48

Just curious, I'm not good with C. Here in the code, https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/main/src/libc/alloca.c... From what I googled, this is just for stack allocation in gcc. Does that mean Pebble only has stack allocation?

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.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#58

Post by organsnyder »

girvo wrote: post #46
cmdtab wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty cool. Have you ever thought about designing pebble to look more like a traditional watch but e-ink based?

That’s basically what the Pebble Time Round was, and it was phenomenal!

I backed a Pebble Time Round Gold on the last Kickstarter, which was cancelled when Pebble was acquired. Somehow the devices ended up on Amazon, and I snagged one there. It's a phenomenally stylish device.

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#59

Post by Alive-in-2025 »

rvz wrote: post #7

Give credit where credit is due, at least Google gives back to the community. Well done.

Well, better would have been investing in it and making it better. At least they didn't produce some awful spy on you thing that had nothing to do with p and called it pebble

Re: Google open-sources the Pebble OS

#60

Post by zamalek »

hexxeh wrote: post #40
9283409232 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which Pebble are you bringing back? I ask because Pebble 2 was the sweet spot for me with a heart rate monitor but the heart rate monitor is not in this repo.

The HRM aspect is mostly a small binary blob that ought to be fairly straightforward to re-integrate. The far larger issue is the lack of a Bluetooth stack.

This is really unfortunate for the existing users, especially given their profound loyalty. However, more modern chips have all of this loaded in a bootloader of sorts (e.g. nRF softdevices), so the project could prevent the RF driver nonsense going forward.
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