When I saw rePebble be announced, I signed up for it right away. Only later I realized I actually don't want a smartwatch, I want a dumb watch with vibration notifications.
I know I'm in the minority, but it's a niche that has a few very interested people in it [0] [1] [2]
After wearing the Casio F105 for the past 2 years, I can't go back to something larger, heavier or thicker than this. I could accept weekly battery charging for the benefit of having some bluetooth functionality.
So nowadays I'm looking for a super small bluetooth chip that can power a small vibration motor, which can receive all notifications from my iPhone. I would like to glue that chip, motor and a small lithium battery between the two straps of my F105, because in my tests it seems I don't notice if I add a small weight there.
I still remember when I first used my first Mi Band 1, a forgotten fitness band that had no display, just 3 RGB LEDs that could even get specific colors based on the app that sent the notification. I could know right away when I got a blue Messenger chat that I needed to answer now, or a yellow Google Keep reminder that I could ignore until I got back to my computer.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/9xw2j2/im_looking_f...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/smartwatch/comments/174hq9x/need_a_...
[2] https://tildes.net/~tech/18nf/smartwatch_primarily_for_notif...
Like you, my needs are simple; vibrating alarm, notifications, but with one key factor; I need a display that I can read in broad daylight that plays nice with my far-sighted eyes. The eInk display on the OG Pebbles hits the mark. Being able to read a text without pulling out my phone is also nice.
Plus they can be got on eBay for about $30 USD and a fresh battery is about $15, so they don't break the bank. The Rebble.io community's work is still functioning well enough for my use, as well.
I'm also a bit scared of the many "charging issues" some people seem to have with them after a few months, but I guess every batch has a few bad devices so I could hopefully return it.
Thanks for the recommendation! I might try one soon.
AFAICT, the BLE code is provided as a binary blob. https://github.com/OpenSiFli/SiFli-SDK/tree/6c82a9b15db49871...
Which isn't a problem. But, I wish if something is described as "open source", you could read the source code for it.
mrheosuper•1h ago
mschuster91•54m ago
mrheosuper•30m ago
From the CPU perspective, they are the same
bArray•52m ago
Personally these days I would lean towards the ESP32, they continue to iterate on it nicely and it has great community support. I'm personally developing a smart watch platform based on micropython.
jsheard•45m ago
bArray•18m ago
Getting down to 10mAh is not so bad. If you're not actively driving the display, you can under-clock significantly [1], if you're not using WiFi you can turn the modem off [2].
[1] https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32/...
[2] https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32/...
mrheosuper•15m ago
Also 20 hours of runtime is horrible.
mrheosuper•28m ago
Recently they release ESP32P4, with very strong performance, but like you guess, without Radio