Could we have the same functionality on the pebble watch instead, please?

"What kind of battery is inside?

Index 01 uses silver-oxide batteries.

Why can’t it be recharged?

We considered this but decided not to for several reasons:

You’d probably lose the charger before the battery runs out! Adding charge circuitry and including a charger would make the product larger and more expensive. You send it back to us to recycle. Wait, it’s single use?

Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it’s the best solution to the given set of constraints. Other smart rings like Oura cost $250+ and need to be charged every few days. We didn’t want to build a device like that. Before the battery runs out, the Pebble app notifies and asks if you’d like to order another ring."

Uhhh... Huh... Ok. Welp, that's a nope from me then.

Not sure how I feel about it being a throwaway device for $100. I get they say you can send it back to be recycled, but this feels like you’re just proactively creating e-waste.

Not even an attempt to make a replaceable or chargeable battery?

Also they point out oura rings need to be charged every few days, but that’s because they’re constantly chewing through battery monitoring your health stats. I’m willing to bet if they were in a constant state of deep sleep and only woken up to record short audio clips they’d also last for months at a time.

I know folks around here love pebble, but this feels like a miss to me.

This looks fantastic, I've always wanted something like it

Water resistant, like how water resistant? Wearing in the shower OK? That's where I have all my best ideas!

> since it’s always with you

Isn't my watch always with me? Why not use that instead of have some new device?

> Here’s the best part: the battery lasts for years

I wonder how many years?

> The battery lasts for up to years of average use.

...how many?

> a battery that lasts for years

How many years does the battery last?

> That’s up to 2 years of usage.

Ah.

I guess "2" is the absolute minimum that you could describe as "years".

It's a shame because it does look like an interesting proposition. It might be more compelling if it was "send your ring back to us for recycling - and we'll send you a new one". I doubt the economics would work at this price point though.

Wow I was just looking for finding like this, but.. can't be recharged? It would be one thing if it had like 500 hours of recording, but this has 12-15.

Original title: Meet Pebble Index 01 - External Memory For Your Brain

It's a memo recorder in ring form. Neat idea that seems really obvious but somehow I haven't seen it before

Edit: ah. "No charging: The battery lasts for up to years of average use. After the end of its life, send your ring back to us for recycling." Planned obsolescence

just got my RePebble 2 Duo yesterday, wearing it right now :) was looking forward to the new device, but a voice-memo ring really isn't something i care about. oh well!

I mean, I'll probably ditch the LLM - after all, it's open source so I can just build my own app to receive the messages - but it seems like a neat bit of kit.

No charging: The battery lasts for up to years of average use. After the end of its life, send your ring back to us for recycling.

Apple hire this man.

Couldn't the same flow be achieved on a Pebble watch by utilizing something like the "double tap"-gesture Apple Watches Series 9 and upwards have?

This seems like a gadget just for the sake of having another gadget...

Any know if there are plans to make a new pebble watch that includes both Barometer/Compass plus Heart Rate Monitor in one device? This looks like a useful UI mode, but I'm holding out for a Pebble that doesn't require choosing between two basic (these days) watch sensors.

It's performative to the core. Fits well into the tech bro/dev environment. I bet HN will like it.

the "tech bro independently discovers and creates an existing product" cycle is so fast that we're seeing it happen to tiktok scrolling rings now

My first concern is that this looks very difficult to remove if the battery begins to swell, as silver-oxide batteries are wont to do. Perhaps that's less likely with single use batteries.

>Hold the button, whisper your thought, and it’s sent to your phone. It’s added to your notes, set as a reminder, or saved for later review.

Take the phone, open app, done.

12-15 hours of recording is maybe 2 weeks usage for heavy users. It would've been perfect if it could connect to computers and had a rechargeable battery. Oh well, hope someone else takes inspiration and makes the same thing but can recharge.

Even if the battery lasts "years", it still seems wildly irresponsible to make this a single use device. I suspect this thing will get very few sales because it's single use.

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.

(Pebble founder)

Happy to answer any questions you have!

This seems like one of those devices that seems like "meh" at a glance but grows on you once you used it. In fact just the Bluetooth button feature alone is warranted a second take let alone a mic embedded in to the ring with a crazy battery life. If there's a way to hack the device and pipe the mic features to other apps I think i might get this thing. edit: never mind i just noticed 15 hours recording time with no recharging. yeah bud that's a no go.

I imagine a partial rebate for the returned device to lessen the burden but this does feel like a $5 subscription just for the device.

I generally like the idea. I use my Apple Watch for Siri and needing the other hand to hold Siri is not ideal. I do use “hey siri” a lot but it doesn’t always work, though pretty reliable.

I am SO close to switch to Android to buy and properly use a Pebble watch. I love the hacker attitude, the retro tech, the quirkyness.

Seeing them introducing One More Thing on the other side of the spectrum, deep in big-corp, locked down, consumerist throwaway territory makes me reevaluate that.

I guess they might overestimate the fanboyness of their clientele. I hope enough people find this as laughable as I do and ignore this.

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 heat sink. (Peltier elements work on heat differential right? Not an expert.)

I know they mentioned that they thought of making this just a watch app, but didn't like the two-handed button press or raise to wake gesture. 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.

This hits the same nerve in me as those single-use vapes with screens, except you can't harvest the battery out of this one.

Wait what ? Why can't they add a feature to the watch that is already there on the wrist and especially already bought that will start recording the thought after a hand shake (that triggers the mic) plus magic keyword ?

Someone will make a killing on a rechargeable version of this. The ergonomics are a good idea.

For what it's worth, I 100% perfectly solved this problem for myself MANY years ago and still use it just about every day.

On Android, it's called "Blitzmail," I'm pretty sure there's an Apple equivalent.

Beautifully simple app; on one touch it pops open a text box (which you can type, dictate to, also do "shares/attachments")

And emails to one and only one pre-specified address, usually "yourself."

From there, pick your poison. I personally have a dedicated address/account for these, and I have some bash scripts that pick them up and move them around, but I imagine for many "checking that email address periodically" would be sufficient.

This specific use case is awesome-- I use an integrated AI notetaker in my self-built notes app for my thoughts and I wonder if I could connect the index to it?

More broadly: Invisible wearable microphones are coming for everyone and perfect memory will follow. I'm incredibly excited about this for myself and simultaneously terrified about everyone else having it.

It's coming fast enough that I'm beginning to assume in any decently sized crowd of tech folks /someone/ is recording everything.

Instead of a stand-alone piece of e-waste, how about this: a device with the same format (a ring and an button) but the only thing it does is trigger the pebble watch to start recording a message. This way the microphone isn't needed, just the radio (and much weaker radio at that), and the battery will last exponentially longer. Then just expose the charging terminals so that we can at least hack the device with custom made external charging controllers, or buy a charger separately.

I'll be honest, after seeing a nightmare situation where a smartring battery inflated and cut off circulation to a finger, I will never ever buy a ring with a battery in it.

Battery decision asid, I love this dude's obsession with making unique hardware

Some harsh comments here. The idea is interesting and the miniaturisation impressive. Successful or not, it's good to see these ideas realised.

Gonna give this a shot. I pre-ordered.

I was typing in my CC info when I went back to read about battery life. This is meant as positive feedback: I won't be ordering a non-rechargeable device with 12 hours of recording for $100.

Imagine I fall asleep with it on my finger and accidentally press the button with my head. It's recording me snore for 3 hours, and 25% battery life gone.

I posted it as a comment as well - but even just giving the opportunity of a diy, at-home battery replacements would be great for a lot of people. I think the disposability aspect is very counter to the kind of people who use a Pebble Steel for half a decade (or more!)

Huh, I think this is a problem that almost every HN reader solved in their life one way or other.

(Not speaking of the usability of this: if voice works for you, this can still be great for you, however)

The concept is interesting but without charging it’s a non-starter for me. Also it’s a bit awkward and I’d prefer to use my phone or watch instead of adding a ring.

One aspect about e-waste is really the size, this has by volume less than an AA-battery, which means the e-waste is pretty much within this realm. For a decently size powerbank, you could have a lifetime of those rings and probably still create less e-waste.

I think it's an interesting approach, in terms of hack-ability a non-rechargable device is pretty much bad - also just imagining that any sort of software or hardware glitch could easily just permanently render the device useless is not super decent either.

The only thing that matters here is how good the transcription is. You absolutely have to save the recording. You also have to enable the user to connect to their own transcription service and preserve the recording for that if yours sucks or is not trusted. People have accents. Third party transcription vendors can sell data. Do not mess this up. Enable users to add their own trusted transcription.

If we want to give this to grandparents to save their stories, we can want to have the stories too. If we want it for ourselves, we have to trust it.

I'm sold enough on this form factor to take a flyer on a pre-order. I've been hunting for ways to minimize friction when quickly capturing random thoughts and this is a novel idea that seems to go further than anything else I've tried.

The lack of battery charging/replacement is a bummer, but slimness is far more critical for a ring than just about any other device so I understand the tradeoff. I've also seen stories of injuries from battery expansion in fitness rings, so if the risk of this is significantly reduced by eliminating charge cycles, I personally consider that a notable benefit.

Even though, IMO, there are enough legitimate benefits to warrant this product's trade-offs, I imagine its disposable nature will ultimately make it unsuccessful. Off the cuff, it's easy to look at this as "saying the quiet part out loud" vis-a-vis planned obsolescence, and I understand why many would find that extremely off-putting.

Is it just a Bluetooth mic in a form of a ring? Or is there something more to this device?

I'm not sure what other people's hands are like, but mine are pretty big and I can just barely push my thumb against the part of my index finger where I would wear a ring, and doing so renders my thumb useless for any of the opposable things that I usually use my hand for. It's also extremely uncomfortable for my hand and thumb. I've managed to press buttons on my watch with my hands full, but it would literally be impossible to activate this thing with my hands full.

I've worn rings, and they can rotate in place on the hand if they're not perfectly sized, and there aren't any half sizes here, so this would definitely rotate on my finger, making no guarantee that I can even reach the button without adjusting the ring with my other hand, or maybe awkwardly spinning it with my thumb until the button is in reach again.

And it only lasts for 10-15 hours of recording time. And there looks to be a cloud services upsell for better STT than the open source offering on device.

This seems like an early alpha version of something that might be a good idea, but as it is I can't imagine buying one.

I think I would use this. I am the kind of person who needs to write things down immediately when they come into my head or I will forget them. I picture wearing it on my ring finger, button down, and use my thumb to press the button, is that realistic or would it be uncomfortable that way?

I.... I kinda love this. Non-rechargeable battery and all. I don't need something else to charge. I understand this is a "luxury" but seamlessly recording "thoughts" is my personal computing holy grail.

Voice recording on pre-smart phones was my jam forever, and this is right up my alley.

But don't say "Privacy," then "data sent to your phone."

[delayed]

I think the design is bad: my girlfriend would never wear it. Maybe they know already and that's why the webpage contains only picture of male hands.

Given the many smartwatches on the market which can do so much more, are lightweight and some of them with acceptable battery life (Garmin, Suunto, Amazfit), a smartring is of very little interest to me. But I often struggle to understand why certain products fascinate people, so I may be totally wrong and I wish the makers best of luck.