Repebble: New attempt for Pebble smartwatches
Google has published the majority of PebbleOS as open source. The Pebble founder wants to bring new hardware to the market.
Pebble smartwatches are not only suitable for use on the wrist, but also as a bike computer, for example.
(Image: Pebble Technology Corp)
Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky wants to bring Pebble-compatible networked wristwatches back onto the market. It will be called Repebble. The Canadian announced this on Monday. On the same day, Google released the majority of the PebbleOS source code online as open source. Pebble Technology Corporation sold more than two million smartwatches with ePaper screens between 2013 and 2016, but slipped into insolvency at the end of 2016.
Competitor Fitbit bought intangible assets from Pebble's bankruptcy estate and took on some employees. Google later swallowed Fitbit, meaning that the rights to PebbleOS ended up with the data company. The public launch of Pebble in 2012 was an exceptionally successful crowdfunding campaign. Migicovsky wanted to raise 100,000 US dollars for the first Pebble watch, and raised more than a hundred times that amount in 37 days. After the later bankruptcy, a community under the name Rebble kept servers for Pebbles in operation and set up an app store. As a result, numerous Pebble watches are still in operation today.
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Migicovsky is now making a new attempt to bring new Pebble hardware onto the market. This is much easier and cheaper today than it was a decade ago, he writes on a blog post on the website of the project called Repebble. After all, there are now many “capable factories” and Bluetooth chips have become cheaper, better and more energy-efficient. The man is particularly grateful to Google for releasing the source code. The new watches should use the same operating system so that existing apps and watch faces are compatible.
Re-founder against his will
The revival is apparently taking place reluctantly: “I really really really hoped that someone else would come along and build a Pebble replacement,” writes the inventor, “But no one did. So… a small team and I are jumping back into the hardware world and bringing Pebble back!” He is explicitly not looking for investors for Repebble, and he only wants a few employees. The focus is on sustainability: “I want to keep building cool gadgets and keep Pebble alive for a long time to come.”
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The new Pebble smartwatch will essentially have the same specifications and features as the original Pebble, with “some fun new stuff” thrown in. A date for the market launch has not yet been set. Incidentally, there is an Android app called Cobble as a companion for existing and future Pebble devices, and an iOS version is in the works. According to Migicovsky, his team has also contributed to this. He also invites the whole world to develop their own devices for PebbleOS.
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