Article 11
Removability and replaceability of portable batteries and LMT batteries
1. Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells or other parts included in such batteries.
A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.
Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those products are accompanied with instructions and safety information on the use, removal and replacement of the batteries. Those instructions and that safety information shall be made available permanently online, on a publicly available website, in an easily understandable way for end-users.
[…]
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
(This is active law; there is however a grace period for products until 2027.)
It’s a niche within a niche within a niche. It’s designed to do solve a problem that only one person has.
You have to:
- want to make voice memos (how many people do that?)
- find your watch insufficient for that purpose
- find your phone insufficient for that purpose
- be willing to wear a ring on a specific finger (this isn’t practical on most of your fingers because it’s hard to press the button)
- commit to custom sized jewelry
But this thread is like pointing out that the cybertruck doesn’t meet EU regulations. It doesn’t matter because the truck is a sales disaster in its most potent market and will probably be discontinued.
“Because this thread is currently higher up the page than the threads talking about what they want to talk about, so they'll get less attention” would be my guess.
I propose we change the subject to how you’re the king of this website and you alone determine the topic of discussion. Would that be okay with you, Dear Leader?
This issue of replaceable battery is not only irrelevant because the product is going to fail, it’s irrelevant because it clearly complies with EU law. If it doesn’t you have to explain how the Apple Watch is legal in Europe with a battery that Apple themselves don’t replace in their stores, opting instead to users an entirely new watch.
Why is that so clear? Multiple other comments in this submission will point you to the exact parts from coming regulations that it doesn't seem to comply with at all, if I recall correctly it'll start being enforced in 2027. So if Apple wants to continue selling their watches in Europe, they'll have to follow that too, and since they've been aware of it for quite some time already, I'm sure they already have plans and actions in motion for doing just that.
Edit: The "other comments" is literally the root comment of this comment chain..... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46209779
--------
[1] Though last time they did that, disabling existing features in response to the app stores decision, they backed down PDQ, so maybe that threat would have no weight.
I don't think it's at all reasonable to expect such a product to have a user-replacable battery without doubling the cost. Sure it'd be nice, but the reality is sometimes it just isn't possible to accommodate.
We want to help people in the EU, but with laws like replaceable batteries, it's going to push us further and further away from being able to do that.
Our product is designed to be refurbished, but not user-replaceable.
At the same time, how many products do people give up on because of battery life, and is this a non-issue with future battery chemistries?
Do people replace their phones because the battery isn't good anymore, or is it more likely they've broken the screen, cameras, etc to the point where it doesn't make sense to replace those anymore? Or they just want the newest thing?
This is why repairability isn't restricted to just the battery. And buying the newest thing every year is kinda frowned upon here in the EU now. I'm sure some people still do it but most people aren't flashing their new phone around anymore. And phones have become boring anyway. The latest Samsung S25 is mostly the same as the S23, exact same form factor, cameras. Just a bit faster and a bit more memory.
But the government sets a baseline here to stimulate sustainability. I really agree with it, this planet has to be usable for a lot longer. And economic growth isn't everything.
We have to move away from consumerism for the sake of it and I think we're making good inroads here in the EU. Not to mention it means there's more money left over for important stuff like doing things with friends.
Is there any evidence that Europeans aren’t buying new phones at the same rate that they used to?
And https://www.unibocconi.it/en/news/disposable-smartphones-tri... has replacement cycles in Italy going up.
Anecdotally, 2023/24 all media in Germany was full of ads for shops trading refurb phones. Most of those talked lower prices, but some mentioned sustainability.
The second article links to a paper which appears to be more informative (though it has not been peer reviewed):
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5117319
Notably:
> For example, in the United States, the average expected life span (replacement cycle length) of consumer and enterprise smartphones was 2.67 and 2.54 years, respectively, in 2023, while in the UK almost 30% of surveyed consumers use their smartphone up to two years and 41% up to 4 years.
and
> Furthermore, evidence shows that European, American and Chinese consumers have reduced the replacement rate of their smartphones, increasing their average life cycle (see Figure 1). These data suggest that consumer preferences are changing, and new opportunities arise for companies who want to find new profitable ways to meet the needs of their customers.
What I don’t understand is why it would be written “USD 448.87 million.” This convention is common in accounting and finance as well, but they usually make an indication of it in a column header.
I bet it is the case, not because it is frowned upon, but because tpeople have less money, the prices of phone increased a lot and the increase of performance and usefulness is plateauing.
We want to help people, but only if and when it’s profitable for us to do so on terms we decide for you.
The terms seem at least, largely influenced by the laws euros seem happy with. Regulation has a cost.
And regulations are here to make businesses internalize this cost instead of letting society as a whole pay it out.
If s/he is running a company and not a charity, this is responsible, understandable, and predictable.
There's more important things than "entrepreneurial creativity". Not everything that can make sense as a business plan makes sense for the world.
We can survive without rings that allow us to mutter voice notes into our fists while walking around.
Pretty much exclusively? The last 4-5 iPhone purchases in my family have all been due to dying batteries (plus a couple of off-brand battery replacements by local cellphone techs).
Nothing else on iPhones really ever breaks, provided you keep some sort of case on it. The only non-battery failure I've ever had was a corroded lightning port (on a iPhone that was regularly used in a salt-chlorine swimming pool). And of course a couple of replacements due to critical banking apps that have drop support for old iOS versions...
People on HN have such a blind spot around old, used phones which thrive in secondary marketplaces. You'd think iPhones are filling dumpsters with the rhetoric here but they actually hold their value remarkably well, which means they have a much longer useful life. A replaceable battery is different from a user-replaceable battery. The former is a sustainability concern, the latter is just a feature.
The ones that aged out of running needed software are still sitting in a cabinet somewhere. A couple of the others were killed off when their battery pack swelled, and another didn't survive a local tech's efforts to replace the battery...
With batteries that could be replaced without delaminating the whole device, (and ideally, an open boot loader), I'd be able to make use of most of them.
Currently trying to stretch a Pixel 7 until 2027.
And that's why the EU also mandate a 5-years software support period (and I wish it was even more).
Why?
It'd be hard to design/manufacture a device that reliably remains waterproof after a typical not-specially-skilled owner opens it up to replace a battery. It's really common to hear of people damaging watches due to water ingress after battery replacements, getting seals or orings seated just right isn't something every user is going to be able to do.
I can imagine some medical devices have similar sealing requirements, perhaps even more robust sealing methods since they might need to be exposed to regular disinfection grade cleaning with chemicals harsher then just water. I could easily understand why a company may design a medical device that its heat-glued together for sealing purposes in a way that can only reasonably be done (and redone) at the factory.
I killed an original Pebble when I Dremelled it open to replace the battery, and failed to hot glue seal it well enough and it got wet inside.
Having said that - I dislike this design choice for the Index 01. I can see myself becoming reliant on this right before they sell out to Garmin or whoever and tell all their customers to FOAD again. Trust is very hard to win back.
This product is perfect for that case, though: you have to decide to buy another one each time the battery runs down, which aligns seller incentives with the user/purchaser. The danger cases are mainly when the seller gets up front money and then has to provide something indefinitely.
Yes. I'm not bothered about the latest thing, and every phone I've replaced has been because of two things: the battery has degraded until it's unacceptable, or it no longer gets OS updates.
I understand your point but being safe is not an option
> Do people replace their phones because the battery isn't good anymore
I just had to change the battery of my phone, and I wish that it would have been just a swap to do. Actually because it wasn't, I add to buy a temporary phone the time I needed to have the parts and the tools
My iPhones typically get a fresh battery around the 3-year mark, or whenever the battery health dips below 80%, and do a second tour of duty with someone in the family. In all cases so far, the OS goes out of support and apps stop working before the second battery degrades.
It’s so tragic that people can’t buy your product that will end up in a landfill.
Maybe we don’t have to focus society so much on buying products? What a wild concept.
> We want to help people in the EU, but with laws like replaceable batteries, it's going to push us further and further away from being able to do that.
All I could think of was "Wow, the regulation works better than expected".
It's incredible the other side think of themselves as "We want to help people in this environment we don't understand, but receiving pushback" and yet they don't want to adjust, no, it's the environment that is wrong, even if it's built up by people.
I have a pair of earbuds designed to be as diminutive for sleeping comfortably and I have no idea how you would do that with a replaceable battery even if Airpod sized devices can be done.
Eric said that the lifetime of the product is 'up to years'. Presumably because that's the limitation imposed by a disposable battery.
I wonder if the circular reasoning would fly in the EU.
What has been long considered one of the most wealthy markets is a country descending into a billionaire controlled kleptocracy. And they're pissing off every other country in the world with tariff blackmail and punishment (or extra judicial executions) for any country that fails to bend the knee and fawn obsequiously enough to their leader.
One of the most populous markets is a country that manufactures approximately 100% of all consumer electronics, and will have a hundred versions of this available for 10% of Pebble's price on AliExpress as soon as it shows any signs of gaining market traction anywhere (quite likely stolen or "3rd shift" ones from Pebble's own outsourced production line).
India, who these days has more than enough local skill and experienced ex-H1B tech people to create this from scratch at home (and at least some with a deep resentment over how they were treated by US tech companies while they were there)?
One of the no longer EU markets is suffering post Brexit austerity and isn't likely to be buying a heap if tech toys - even if their fucked up new importing goods paperwork doesn't make it impossible to get your product into the country.
There goes about 40% of the planet's population.
That leaves, what? Manufacture locally and try surviving by selling to the US market at prices driven by US labor costs which'd make the product prohibitively expensive globally? South East Asia, who're likely to buy the Samsung copy over one from a US company? Russia, who (at least for now) is under trade sanctions for a US based company like Pebble? So perhaps Canada (until their southern neighbour make good on their threat to try and make them the 51st state)? South Africa? Australia and New Zealand?
/unjerk out of all the potential mindsets to inherit from the US, the “corporate maximalist” frame of reference is one of the dumbest we have to offer
I'm glad we're reducing e-waste. I'm not thrilled about the idea of saying you can't make a thing until 100% of the bugs are worked out, meaning you can't have a beta version for research and fundraising, meaning, you can't conjure the perfect version into existence.
1: https://assets-ae.rt.demant.com/-/media/project/retail/audik...
Fortunately, your link basically says it doesn't apply to something you wear on your hands or arms:
> By way of derogation from paragraph 1, the following products incorporating portable batteries may be designed in such a way as to make the battery removable and replaceable only by independent professionals:
> (a) appliances specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion, and that are intended to be washable or rinseable;
But the only mention of "medical" comes right after it, and doesn't include hearing aids, future smart glasses, etc.:
> (b) professional medical imaging and radiotherapy devices, as defined in Article 2, point (1), of Regulation (EU) 2017/745, and in vitro diagnostic medical devices, as defined in Article 2, point (2), of Regulation (EU) 2017/746.
So ironically, the law allows disposable "junk devices" people are complaining about here, but doesn't allow factory-only serviceable hearing aids. How 'bout that? We can buy our smart rings and throw them away, but hearing aids will have to remain giant hunks of heavy plastic, or at least the models purchasable by average people who can't fly out of the EU to buy the good ones.
Edit: It's easy to downvote. I cited the relevant law. If I'm wrong, cite other law that explains why.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
If you think people to be able to sell unsustainable and mostly superfluous electronics because any improvements there might eventually trickle down to hearing aids, your argument is basically "we should accept the millions of tonnes of unnecessary e-waste in order to get slighly smaller hearing aids", which think many reasonable people would disagree with.
The law has chosen poor proxies for lifespan and impact.
That's not a good justification for more e-waste.
Even if you think this product is a waste of resources, why is THIS waste of resources something we should stop, but not other, bigger wastes? Should we outlaw flying somewhere when you could take a train? The fuel spent on a short flight wastes way more resources and damages the environment much more than this smart ring does. If we are willing to ban this piece of tech because it is a waste, couldn't the same arguments be made about a short range flight?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2024/03/18/spain-sho...
Please, ask more questions.
2. I would expect pet toys to be regulated as well and to contain less environmental toxins and hard to recycle elements than batteries, so I doubt the claim about impact per item sold.
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.
This thing costs $75. Over 4 years, that's $0.05 a day. Let's say you're 40 and plan to buy these until you die at 80. We'll pretend inflation doesn't exist: $750 for 40 years of use.
It feels like backward objection handling where people can't find a use case for something, but feel like they should, so invent a totally irrational objection to it.
That said, if I assume that the company will last long enough, I think $75 USD is worth it even if I only get to use it for 4 years. Although if I end up building workflows around the ring, and then I have to get rid of it, that would be very annoying.
I don't understand this logic.
Do you not go to a restaurant because there's a chance they won't be around in 4 years when you might want to dine there again?
I'll give you another example. A smart TV. A smart TV is more expensive than this ring, but yeah. So a cheap smart TV needs a soundbar for decent audio, and it needs a STB for the OS (streaming) in order to make it a dumb TV. It comes with a computer in it. A computer which you cannot upgrade. They decide to quit support whenever they want to (after 2 years you're generally hosed in EU). Planned obsolescence. We don't like that in Europe. I know, in the USA the current leadership denies climate change even exists. But here in Europe, we follow the scientific method, not BS.
Since you’re the target audience, I’ll ask you: How do you envision you’ll work through all of the captured notes? Do it all at the end of the day? Go back and look for something after you remember making the note?
I’m wondering if this product will have the same problem that many discover after they buy a Moleskin journal and think it will solve specific problems in their life: Recording the thought or idea is the easy part, but it only defers the action. Additional diligence is required to review the notes and act on them.
For a very specific type of person who is both forgetful but also diligent enough to process the notes thoroughly and in a timely manner I could see this being helpful. For the people saying this will help with easily distracted people I’m not so sure. It could easily become a tool which gives a false sense of handling a task when really it just blackholes the thought into an ever growing collection of 3-second notes that are never revisited. Like the person who clicks the “mark as unread” button on every email with the intention of responding later, but then has 100 messages in their inbox by the end of the week.
The advertised use case of recording 20 short thoughts per day means over 100 notes to process every week. For a highly diligent person who clears their inbox (and now audio notes) every day that’s nothing. For all of the commenters thinking this is going to solve their distractability problems, I have my doubts.
I also want it to have the additional capability of setting time-based or geofence reminders, timers, alarms, and calendar events. It will be incredibly useful for me to be able to, while I'm driving to work, say "remind me to take out the garbage when I get home" or whatever. You'd expect Siri or Google Assistant to be able to do this and in theory they can but in practice they suck for this use case.
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
I feel like I’m usually good about being able to imagine a market for different devices even when I’m not the target audience, but I’m having a hard time with this one.
Having 20 different 3-second thoughts transcribed to notes that I have to process every day sounds more like added complications than problem solving. If I stretch, I can think of a few things that flashed into my mind and then I forgot again for a couple days because I wasn’t in a location to immediately pull out my phone and put it on my todo list (which takes about 10 seconds because I put a shortcut in my lock screen). However, those locations weren’t something where I could be “whispering” to a ring, either.
So I don’t know. I hope repebble succeeds with everyone they’re doing, but this product feels like they went too far into the novelty end of the spectrum and neglected some of the actual usability that made the original Pebble popular.
EDIT: On second thought, maybe the lack of recharging is an acknowledgement that they don’t actually expect people to use this product a lot or for very long. Maybe the target audience is people who want to have something new and unique that they can also use as a conversation starter. Once the novelty wears off maybe it doesn’t get worn much. If it does become popular with a niche audience they can release a V2 with charging.
It sounds, though, like it doesn't solve a problem you have. I guess the only recourse you have about its existence is to not buy it.
I don’t get it. I don’t need to have any “recourse”, I’m just discussing the practicality of the design.
I was explaining that I do empathize with the target market they’re trying to reach: People who want to take notes quickly during the day. Yet even I’m having a hard time seeing this as an upgrade in my life as opposed to an added complication in that workflow.
Maybe if someone had a lot of fleeting thoughts and was also highly forgetful?
Would the watch require 1 or 2 hands to record audio?
The ring seems easier to use while biking. Or driving.
Turns out, the number of times I pulled over to return a call or message was precisely never. There was nothing so important that I could do anything about it by the side of the road, or that couldn't wait half an hour till I got to work/home.
Psychologically there's a sort of information hoarding aspect to this. I think a lot of people experience this with browser tabs, where they don't want to read something right now, but also don't want to just abandon it. So you end up with this backlog you feel you have to hold onto.
I've learned to just trust my brain more, where if something occurs to me is important, it'll probably occur to me again when its relevant, vs me treating random momentary insights like they're a priceless treasure.
I could sort of see myself doing this coupled with good speech to text, but I don't know if I'd do it enough that it's worth having special hardware for vs. just recording on my phone or with earphones - or getting a smart watch for this plus other functionality.
They really were worth it if you had a secretary to transcribe the voice recordings.
> When I notice a micro-task like this, my instinct is not to do it, but to put it in the todo list. Then I try to do it immediately. And if I get distracted halfway through, it’s still there, in the todo list.
https://borretti.me/article/notes-on-managing-adhd
The problem with this approach is that recording tasks become a good amount of relative overhead compared to the 'micro-task' if it involves pulling out your phone, and pulling out your phone also introduces a potential distraction. So, having something that is single purpose and as low-friction as possible is appealing.
I'm skeptical that this is actually any better than using a smart watch that you can dictate to though.
That’s the idea, but now it creates a secondary burden of having to act on those notes to translate them into actions.
When it’s time to process your 20 different 3-second thoughts from throughout the day, is the easily distracted person actually going to sit down and work through all 20 of them at the end of the day without also getting distracted?
In my experience, the people who accumulate a lot of micro tasks because they’re too distracted to follow up on them in the moment are the same people who abandon their todo lists after they accumulate 50 items that weren’t important enough to prioritize at the time.
If someone is taking 20 notes a day, that’s over 100 notes in a week. I’m having a hard time squaring the processing of these notes with the idea that it’s for someone who is easily distracted mid task.
I think the idea is that the person would be happy to circle back and finish the first thing they started, but simply forget about it altogether, so they think they are done with tasks and go on to other ("unproductive") stuff. If they can inject the habit of always checking stuff off a list when finishing things, they'll see they never finished the first thing they started, and then take care of that.
Checking off things from the list is much more satisfactory than adding things to a list, so it makes sense to have input be as low friction as possible, while checking off can be a bit more work (pulling out a phone which has the list).
I'm skeptical about the effectiveness of this in reality. Just a thought.
Funny enough I have a pebble core 2 duo from this team. There’s a simple voice app that jots down a short note quickly on the watch, it can support 10 notes total. I love it. I only use it when I really need to throw something down immediately and I can’t clutter it up with nonsense. It also means I check it every day because it’s not daunting.
And the ability to post-process the audio on my own, to transcribe it and then let an MCP server add the transcription to my notes in Obsidian removes all the hassle of micromanaging notes. Let's see how it works, but I think that this can be useful.
Some ideas if you have an app which can be integrated to other services:
* I feel sick today, notify my manager about it, probably I will stay home
* schedule a task to pickup a trash
* something to remember, colleague X told me he is using service A for data clean up
...
...But that battery life absolutely kills it for me. I'd feel like each time I recorded something I was burning lifetime off my device. (Technically also true of rechargeable battery lifetimes, but it's abstract enough and minimal enough I don't think about it.)
Frankly, I'm surprised this is a selling point, because I think it attaches too much importance to our "ideas". If it's a good idea that you'll pursue in earnest, you'll come across it again. And if you don't, so what?
I say this as someone who does quite a bit of reflection throughout the day. I jot down things I find interesting, which can be, paradoxically, a way to move past the musing and onto other things instead of having it nag and pull my attention from other things. So, in all likelihood, this product would likely lead to a bunch of crap being stored in memory that you'll never return to.
It's not just for "ideas", it's for reminders. Most of my remembering happens when I'm driving on the highway, and I don't want to text and drive.
”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.”
I just tried it, and it worked flawlessly. Now, obviously it's not great for privacy per se, but I'm not jotting down my plans for world domination or anything
> Raw audio playback: Very helpful if STT doesn’t work perfectly due to wind or loud background noises
A friend of mine has her phone on her handlebars in a gps mount and she sends me voice messages through her bluetooth headset and those are hardly intelligible. A hand on the handlebar would be even further from the mouth.
And those are pretty good ones with multiple microphones.
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.
And as any study into the effects of parental attention and shared experience will show that kind of behavior would be beneficial to their overall long-term mental health. Requiring them to make themselves heard and to actively “disturb you“ is a very high barrier for children to break through (even if you don’t consider it a disturbance). Children need active mirroring and external guidance when it comes to their needs in order to develop a healthy sense for them. They are “left alone“ as soon as you leave the shared emotional space.
Considering the tiny non-rechargeable battery I can guarantee it's not on 24/7 because then it would literally last a day :)
Unlike a smartphone which often does listen for a wake word all day without much impact on battery life, this really couldn't.
> 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
That's a very narrow conception if the problem—it isn't solely about being "there" for them or trying to get control over (and maintain control over) one's own addictions. The main thing that people have an issue with when they talk about kids and phone use (and TV for that matter) is addiction observed in the kids themselves. It's absolutely about using one's own phone less while they're around as a means of quashing overexposure.
You can show as much genuine interest in them as you want, and it doesn't change anything, because whether the kids feel like the parent is "there for them" not the problem that a parent is is already genuinely interested in them is concerned about and trying to address.
> 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.
"Not much" except that the fingers that are attached to the hand that's attached to the wrist where you're wearing your watch certainly aren't capable of reaching back to press a button on said watch.
> Apart from the yet another device with microphone (24/7 on, I suppose)
The folks in this thread are really committed to just plucking things out of thin air and acting on foregone conclusions, huh?
> That's a very narrow conception if the problem—it isn't solely about being "there" for them or trying to get control over (and maintain control over) one's own addictions. The main thing that people have an issue with when they talk about kids and phone use (and TV for that matter) is addiction observed in the kids themselves. It's absolutely about using one's own phone less while they're around as a means of quashing overexposure.
> You can show as much genuine interest in them as you want, and it doesn't change anything, because whether the kids feel like the parent is "there for them" not the problem that a parent is is already genuinely interested in them is concerned about and trying to address.
I grew up with my father who was really hip. He didn't use his smartphone much. Sometimes, he did this weird thing. Out of nowhere, he'd comment about something seemingly unrelated to the discussion. I didn't understand what he was yapping at. At first, I thought he was talking to mom. One time, I noticed he did it when mom was upstairs. At one point, I thought dad was having imaginary friends. Turns out, dad had this smart ring he'd use to record notes. One day, the ring was gone. Gone from his finger. I guess it broke, or something.
IOW, replacing one tool with another, you can't fool people. If social media distracts you, remove it from your smartphone, or limit the exposure to it. My wife when she is done with cooking, regularly uses her smartphone after that when we are eating. Usually to fill in about groceries. We're not overly strict on that, and we don't expect our kids to be strict on it when they got a smartphone later on. But it is about proportion. Using it for a short amount of time is perfectly possible. If you want to have a 'no tech' rule during dinner, fine, but then also smart rings. If you want to allow certain specific tasks, a technical barrier like a smart ring versus a smartphone can work, yes. But you can also decide to limit yourself whilst using your smartphone. IMO that starts with uninstalling all kind of BS apps you don't need, and removing notifications you don't require. Either way, the bottom line is this: the ring doesn't solve the issue of distractions on smartphones. It tries to mitigate the issue. So whenever you do use your smartphone, you are still suffering from the issue.
> "Not much" except that the fingers that are attached to the hand that's attached to the wrist where you're wearing your watch certainly aren't capable of reaching back to press a button on said watch.
This is true, it isn't hands-free, hands-free is superior. Although a device on the bike also works well. You can buy such a tool right now to attach your smartphone to your bike, and it'll last for more than two years. It is a matter of moving your hand once to the other one to enable the mic. A Pebble, too, you can replace the battery yourself and I absolutely despise all these smartwatches where you cannot.
It takes a random length of time to start recording. But it’s always too long. And it’s unreliable.
This would be much more convenient. Though I’m not sure the battery situation would convince me.
Sorry the sarcasm, but not everything should need you to take your phone, unlock, get distracted, open social media on a reflex and forget what you were doing in the first place.
Aside from that, let us assume you won't stop with that (after all, it is free!). Smartphones have a driving mode which you can set, setting them on DnD. I take my smartphone out of my pocket when I wait before a traffic light, and that works, but I only do so when I need to and what I certainly do not need to do at that point is have a look at Facebook or Twitter. I also don't have Bluetooth on 24/7 on my smartphone (one reason being tracking concerns). On a Pebble watch, I can put this off. Sadly a software killswitch, but better than nothing.
No, sir. I'm pretty much on board with anything that reduces the number of times I need to light up that phone screen.
That aside, there's also far more friction to pull out a device, turn it on, unlock it, then open an app.
Funnily enough, I've used my nose to tap my watch when my hands are full
Yes, I've gotten some strange looks
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.
Battery would last for decades just as a button.
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!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time...
It was one of the devices I was most excited about way back when, and I'd still love to see it – button, headphone jack, running Android. I would love a headless (and thus longer-charge-for-smaller-device) Android device like that again.
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.
Exactly. The Pebble already has all the hardware to capture voice notes. There are at least a few third party Pebble apps that do this already. The problem that Eric has is limited to the activation of the feature, not the feature itself, but he overengineered a disposable standalone gadget instead of making an accessory for his already capable platform.
I'd just love the "customizable button on a ring" concept, and that battery could last basically forever.
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.
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.
Is that worth it to you? Perhaps not. But plenty of us pay similar amounts of money for software subscriptions related to productivity, so it's not especially outlandish compared to paying for Standard Notes, Todoist, etc.
When no one’s looking obviously.
Not sure how that would work with the ring. Either lots of small similar notes. Or a dead battery.
But when you're having a conversation with someone and they ask you to pick up milk from the store later, or you're running to the bus and want to just jot down an idea you had briefly, and other moments where the friction is higher...then this seems like the solution.
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
Two years isn’t too bad, but at $99 the price is still a bit high for that.
Even for just the narrow use-case, 2 years is still pretty poor. I generally expect my tech to last a lot longer than that.
At $99 every 2 years it might as well be a subscription.
Edit FTA:
> How long does the battery last?
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
“Two” is not “years” in my opinion. “Years” implies at least 3-5.
“The battery lasts two years”
But I did have a similar thought when I read it was only “two”
I think most people, when told that something will last for "years", would be quite surprised to learn that it will fail after 2 years.
For example, I have motion sensors in my home and I have to replace the batteries from time to time. If the manual said "the batteries last for years, depending on usage" I would not be surprised if it lasted for 2 years.
Here, it sounds like the battery life will vary greatly based on usage. In fact, it sounds like the battery life is almost entirely a function of how much you use it. It would be interesting to know how much the battery will drain over time if you don't use it, but of course we can't know this for certain before this has been in the wild for years.
If someone said “that’s years ago” I’d assume 5+. If someone said “it’ll be years before that’s released” I would again assume 5+.
To be two I would expect “that’ll be out in a couple of years”, or “in a year or two”.
For this ring I would write “battery life is between 12-15 hours of use, which will typically last about two years under normal use”
Even this is misleading. The product hasn't been released yet. So what is it an average of? How do you know how people will use it?
3 years: Few years
4 years: Several years
5+ years: Years
Think of it more like this: If I was selling you a car and said it would last for years, then would you expect it to fall apart after two years? I certainly wouldn’t. When talking about small quantities we tend to specify an exact number (two, three), however as the range becomes larger and less exact we use generalities (years). Because of this “years” would typically refer to a span of at least 3-5 years, and I would argue even longer.
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 love customizing and hacking on my devices. What could I do with Index 01?
> Lots of stuff! Control things with the buttons. Route raw audio or transcribed text directly to your own app via webhook. Use MCPs (also run locally on-device! No cloud server required) to add more actions.
Happy to answer any questions you have!
Example button: https://core-electronics.com.au/self-powered-wireless-switch...
I imagine the reason is reliability, but USD$99 plus international shipping every two years isn’t worth that to me, sorry.
Aside: I loved my kickstarter pebble and my steel, btw!
See: https://core-electronics.com.au/attachments/uploads/TEL0173-...
Even if you shrink it 50% the ring would be mostly power generation button.
In general I really like the idea of a local-first, privacy-first, one-way/low-interaction digital assistant regardless of the form factor. A big frustration I have with Gemini as a voice assistant is that I have to wait out the other half of super simple interactions like setting a timer or making a note.
Also, I love the idea of providing 3d models for something like this that needs to be perfectly sized
Is that an existing feature, or is that something possibly planned for future?
Best of luck with your project, Eric.
Can we flash our own firmware to the device?
You can definitely assign different actions to button presses, that's handled by the phone side
Google's Recorder app makes this a big PITA if I don't want to enable upload to cloud storage, there is a very tedious manual way to export recordings.
I really just want plain old data and to be able to copy or delete files via the filesystem. And not be required to use some cloud service.
2. Can we pick our own transcription service or export audio to transcribe elsewhere if you transcription is not reliable or privacy is needed?
3. Is it waterproof? Can I wash my hands without taking it off?
1: size 4 is the smallest
2: the transcription happens on your phone for free (or via subscription to a slightly better transcription model, not sure about privacy for the paid model)
3: ok to wash hands or shower, but just 1 foot of depth (so no swimming)
That said, I absolutely cannot buy a device like this without a replaceable battery. I don’t actually care about the recharge, I get what you’re trying to do with it, but given the state of the e-waste world and, bluntly, the history of hardware brands - a big, big part of the sales pitch for the pebble is the OSS nature of the device because we need to hedge against any one company for longevity. I’d seriously consider this if I knew the battery was replaceable, but I can’t bet on you being around in 4, 6, or 8 years, and I’m not willing to buy intentionally disposable tech anymore.
All consumer tech is intentionally disposable. That's life. Especially for tiny smart rings that are water resistant. It's a ring, it's going to get banged up, you'll lose it or smash it. It's new tech - there will always be a new version, etc.
Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
/s
Edit: "It’s converted to text on-device, then processed by an on-device large language model (LLM) which selects an action to take (create note, add to reminders, etc)." This is perfect!
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.
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 emerges somewhat spontaneously from an emotional state, and repetition always loses some important part of it. This ring could be an always-on photocamera for these spontaneous, naturally arising states.)
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.
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.
There is no risk of swelling with Index 01
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wont
Also: I agree with your concern
Bought and am loving my Pebble 2 Duo etc - still yet to charge it once in fact!
This device doesn't quite hit the mark for me, but I love the commitment to thinking about what's novel and useful, and putting a prototype out into the world. To use an Irish phrase, "more luck to them" - and hope we see many more projects from them!
Apple hire this man.
I suppose the problem is that there are no standard for tiny magnetic chargers/cables. Every watch comes with their own, and they need be custom designed. For a device this large as much of the charging electronics should be outside the ring.
And another (small?) problem is that you'd need to electrically protect those external pins.
I very likely wouldn't have bought it anyway but I am surely not going to buy disposable tech.
Not sure how long my iphone can record for, but it's probably close to that. Afterwards I get to charge my phone instead of recycle it, though.
Apple, don't hire this man.
Edit for the downvoters: can my iphone not record that long or something? iphones can't recharge? Just hate Apple and love e-waste rings? Enlighten me.
Contrast to a phone that, though it has far more capability, you'd have to remember where it is before even reaching for it wherever, and usually has to be on a charger for anywhere from 30 minutes (with super charging) to a few hours daily. Or even being at a laptop/desktop, and at least having to open the relevant app, type/talk into it and then close again to return to primary task. The ring is an instant win for 24/7/365 convenient presence.
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 replace the battery and send you a your existing ring back.
Fancy enough, it's from the article!
Right under the "How long does the battery last?" heading.
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.
It’s easy to make a battery last years if it doesn’t do anything. You can send your devices to Apple as well for recycling.
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.
Isn't my watch always with me? Why not use that instead of have some new device?
> Initially, we experimented by building this as an app on Pebble, since it has a mic and I’m always wearing one. But, I realized quickly that this was suboptimal - it required me to use my other hand to press the button to start recording (lift-to-wake gestures and wake-words are too unreliable). This was tough to use while bicycling or carrying stuff.
Recording a note isn’t high friction in my opinion though: “Hey siri make a note XYZ”. Admittedly I don’t create or use notes like this, but I use reminders a lot and I’ve never felt like there was friction: “hey siri remind me to call Dave when I get home”
Some low effort ideas I cna think of -- a wake word instead of button press; a flick of the wrist; or maybe press the watch to your chin; There must a few more elegant solutions possible if smarter people put their minds to it.
Other watches detect gestures like pinching fingers on the hand wearing the watch.
And then there's the support which is zero support. Completely frustrating to post a message and then get some volunteer support Tech, hahaha, saying expect improvements! And it's a volunteer saying that. And they have no authority. And There is no support, it all falls through. Random crashing on both versions of the watch. The first version screen was flickering like an old school television trying to tune in a distant UHF broadcast. Display drivers anyone?
So, pixel watches are in the drawer and I've got a Garmin watch on right now. Garmin is clunky but at least it's reliably clunky.
So it feels like a mis comparison, to me who's had the pixel watches.
I used to own the pebble, a couple versions of it, when they were first announced for several years again. And I found them to be very reliable and lightweight and usable.
I wanted a smartwatch that could talk to Google's home ecosystem and so I traded out of Pebble. And it's just been kind of mediocre misery.
Plus I don't know what Google is doing but recharging the pixel watch every 18 hours, or 36 if you're super lucky and your apps on the pixel watch behave themselves correctly, makes me feel like a slave to Google's naive product manager aspirations.
Like, "it can do everything, and we make money off of you because you are the product!" While at the same time making me miserable.
:-P
It seems like Pebble is focusing on a niche market and this new product seems completely in line with that. There are plenty of other companies targeting the common folk who have no desire to optimize their life like this.
Pebble serves those people who want to watch or a ring that doesn't require being a slave to a wall wart, who want the watch to last for a long time. Take a look at Garmin, they do that too and they are a successful company. They are much older than Google and they still have a hard time keeping up with Google and it's billions of dollars of of mystery money advertising revenue.
The pixel hardware is a battery draining nightmare, in my personal experience having pixel watches for years and being a long-term pixel phone user. Even today the pixel phone that I have, after having I think five of these things, drains battery probably 20 to 40% faster than .. the competitor that I would next buy if I weren't feeling like I wanted some of the features that Google has bundled in with their phone and home and other like mnvo and messaging products. So, it seems like a mis comparison there, in my opinion. I don't want a smartwatch that lasts 25 hours and then has to be recharged. Or a smartwatch where the screen turns into a UHF channel just going out of tune and there's no tech support on Earth literally that is willing to help me. Volunteers on Google's support forums are lying to themselves that they have any power or sway with Google. It's a waste of time in my experience.
So, you can use it for 30 seconds a day to get 2 years of usage. They also mention using it to control your music, the lights in your home and are assuming STT accuracy of 100% using a local model. The fallback of having to manually transcribe it from the audio recording if the STT fails is going to happen often enough that it'll get annoying. You're not going to be sending any messages to people as that will take a lot longer than 30 seconds a day.
I suspect the battery will last about 3 months if you just use it how you'd think it can be used. You would need to really discipline yourself to keep to a limit of 30 seconds of use a day.
I think they will need to end up adding some charging contacts to the surface once they start sending these things out into the wild or sales will be very limited.
How do you know how much time you have left on the ring's battery? Do you have to keep checking the app? Why not just use your phone for notes then.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Songwriting/comments/yd8jsv/what_do... is illustrative, as are EJAE's press comments on how she relied on voice memos for her now-quintuple-platinum melodies for K-Pop Demon Hunters.
Driving by myself and listening to podcasts is when I have so many thoughts I want to write down.
I'll give this a serious consider.
This would actually be super helpful in the lab, dictating notes on a protocol ("I did something weird in this step") without needing to stop to write things down (sometimes protocol is quite time-sensitive).
I suggesting triggering input on a watch, not voice recording on the ring. In my suggestion the ring would be a ‘dumb’ input device.
Your use case would be another product, likely with a different audience.
(Also, I do really want an excuse to switch from my Apple Watch to a new Pebble.)
The blog post says:
> Initially, we experimented by building this as an app on Pebble, since it has a mic and I’m always wearing one. But, I realized quickly that this was suboptimal - it required me to use my other hand to press the button to start recording (lift-to-wake gestures and wake-words are too unreliable). This was tough to use while bicycling or carrying stuff.
I don't understand how the ring makes any of this better.
You press the button with your thumb on the same hand.
In other words, I am apparently exactly the kind of weirdo who would use the heck out of something like this!
This seems like a _fantastic_ tool for that.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/javaring-wearable-computer/
I'd buy a ring with just authentication, if it was rechargeable and did a few other things (pulse, sleep monitoring, etc.) even better, but the bare bones would be amazing so I could have something I wear for my authentication.
I would buy that oura-security ring in a heartbeat.
Where have all the hackers gone? Those who enjoy discussing technology, or appreciate something clever. Discussion of CPUs and sensors, or miniaturization and packaging.
Any other good forums where people discuss engineering and technology? Or even design and usability?
(I'm not against sustainability, but long discussions on EU regulations get tiresome. Yes, I collapsed them, leaving almost nothing.)
Commenters are discussing the design and usability. Not all of that is going to be positive.
If you’re looking for a positivity-only environment where no critical questioning is socially acceptable, maybe try LinkedIn or Product Hunt? There are forums where negativity is not allowed or not socially acceptable, but those forums are not good sources for actual critical thinking or discussion.
My only wish is that I hope it preserves the audio file, in case the transcription is wrong, so you don't lose the thought. Google Keep does this well and it's a life saver sometimes, when the transcription comes through as "Eat the cat" or something ridiculous.
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.
might mean more accidental presses though
I use the todo app to speak to create my shopping list before going to the store. I look into the fridge and little room to check whats needed. In the shop I tick off stuff.
It is life changing? No, but one central place that is intelligent would be nice:
- remind me off - add to shopping list - etc
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.
That's a pretty long life, TBF. I appreciate your concerns, though, and do wonder if there was a better middle ground (maybe a micro sterling engine leveraging the heat gradient from my finger to ambient, ha!).
People are buying Fitbit charge6 products today and those probably have an 18 shelf life and cost more.. so maybe it's not totally left field - although the charge6 isn't advertised to fail so soon lol.
Honestly I can see a niche use but this device strikes me as quite weird and I'm not sure why it isn't a button on their new watch.
it's useful to think of a lot of things this way, I also justify clothing purchases on a rough estimate of cost per wear
TL;dr - There’s no reason to not have a rechargeable battery other than to create e-waste and “a revenue stream”.
How much of it is even recyclable?
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
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.
> Initially, we experimented by building this as an app on Pebble, since it has a mic and I’m always wearing one. But, I realized quickly that this was suboptimal - it required me to use my other hand to press the button to start recording (lift-to-wake gestures and wake-words are too unreliable). This was tough to use while bicycling or carrying stuff.
I guess I don't bicycle or carry stuff enough for this to matter. And often when my hands are full, I have my AirPods in and can just ask Siri (and cross my fingers that she'll understand).
This seems neat, but I try to keep my life as simple as possible, which means not having a ring when I can use my watch/earbuds to do the same thing about 99% of the time.
The obvious voice commands that work only half of the time, can’t voice memo in bed with your parters, in the office, or in public. That leaves very limited opportunities for this to be useful.
It increases the surface area of your day where "I am able to take a note right now (because I don't have anything stopping me)" is a true statement.
1. Distress/Emergency makes you Unable to speak.
2. While doing vipassana meditation to record how strong the feeling attached to a thought was.
3. Repeat previous action.
So does this mean that my lists have to be managed within the Pebble app? Or can the Pebble app interact with my Notes and Reminders apps? If I'm limited to the Pebble app's features, that would be more limiting. But I can't see how it would be able to break out and give instructions to other apps (at least beyond a preset list, via programmed Shortcuts).
This seems like a gadget just for the sake of having another gadget...
But in 2025, the disposable aspect is a crime... and wouldn't you be able to use the body of the ring to interface with an inductive charger?
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?
Sounds like the device will natively support sending the audio or transcription to any service you like.
(Not speaking of the usability of this: if voice works for you, this can still be great for you, however)
Seems like overkill, particularly when other rings do bio-metric tracking, so is this focused on a big enough problem to want to solve?
"Initially, we experimented by building this as an app on Pebble, since it has a mic and I’m always wearing one. But, I realized quickly that this was suboptimal - it required me to use my other hand to press the button to start recording (lift-to-wake gestures and wake-words are too unreliable). This was tough to use while bicycling or carrying stuff."
This interacts directly with the Pebble App, so I would be shocked if the watches never get an equivalent app.
As a tangential question, how do people find the new pebbles? I prefer a smartwatch that lasts more than a couple of days between charges. And want one with a screen that stays on. The Fitbit Charge 3 I had never detected raising my arm.
Open source hardware is very cool but phones have already taken most of our portable needs. It needs to be extremely compelling to justify another thing to carry, charge, update, etc.
Water resistant, like how water resistant? Wearing in the shower OK? That's where I have all my best ideas!
I think it would take a lot of heavy software to process and index the voice notes for the claim "Meet Pebble Index 01 - External Memory For Your Brain" is honest
why would a ring need a whole ass microphone and a non rechargable battery like yeah dude gotta have a $100 dongle you just throw away once in a while
if it's already compatible with the watch then why not just make it emit some sort of signal that turns on the watch's mic? or put the button on the watch itself?
Man, if I even suggested this over lunch with my old Sparkfun colleagues, I would have been shot down before I finished chewing my bite of open-faced turkey sandwich.
That button isn't always going to be facing your thumb. Maybe you rotate it back with your thumb? Or you need to use your other hand anyway to rotate it?
If their goal truly is "New Pebble", then surely something that could connect to a phone could connect to a computer, granted you have the available radios connected to your computer. Seems to be BT in this case.
> and had a rechargeable battery
Yeah, seems like a weird thing to do, but I guess trying to solve this would make the device a lot harder. Hoping at least there will be a DIY route to replace the batteries, I don't have the will to be sending back an electrical device every second month because the battery died, and then waiting for a new device to arrive in the mail.
Edit: I was just about to ask if you think they'll send the replacement device before you've sent in the one that had the expired battery, but now I realize it isn't even clear if they expect us to buy a brand new device when the battery runs out, or if they provide a replacement? The former would be an absolutely bananas proposition.
> Before the battery runs out, the Pebble app notifies and asks if you’d like to order another ring.
or a search for 'voice': https://apps.repebble.com/en_US/search/watchapps/1?query=Voi...
A gesture on the watch that just starts the recorder seems a lot more practical, this ring just adds an unnecessary complication. Plus, $100 is a lot for something that they don't want you to service.
I'd rather much have a lot of big programmable buttons on the watch itself and have a smaller display or a separate BLE remote with lots of buttons.
Literally take it, I just ordered.
I have been imagining this exact device existing and now it does, yay, thank you!
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.
The target market might not be exclusively other engineers and tinkerers, but as an engineer and tinkerer, I'm eager for more details about the testing, verification, construction, etc., of such a solution.
On the other hand, cool!
I shared your concerns but I read this bit and I think it's all pretty reasonable if you ask me. They're open and upfront about it, and you can very quickly choose not to buy one.
Who's recycling their Oura battery anyway? Probably nobody.
https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/4441437053313...
I can't comment if it's worth the effort to send six grams worth of e-waste across the country and how much actual material can be recovered from it.
This comes across much more dystopian than I imagine the author intended.
It's an app. It's an app that will run on somebody else's platform. Putting that in a ring has so marginal benefits (you can't find a phone or computer or notepad or... to record ideas and do it better) and has so many limitations. It's a non-starter.
"Why buy a watch, it just shows the time on my phone" "Why buy a car, I can just use uber" "Why buy headphones? My phone has speakers."
The context of where something is changes the idea of what it is. Just become something tells the time, for example, doesn't mean it is the same thing as a watch.
That’s it.
Nobody gives a single bit about your fancy ai-blockhain-voodoo features. How blind are you to real demands of normal people?
This is terrible. This is literally e-waste. They are literally asking people to buy a product that is discardable.
Besides, why not just put a dedicated button on the pebble to do exactly this? I don't even get the purpose of this device when the device they ideally want it to live with, could do exactly the same thing but much better in every way without carrying a ring around: At least in some cultures, men don't usually wear rings without a clear significance.
But I wont pay you $75 for a product I can’t use anymore when the battery dies. I’d pay twice as much if I could change the battery myself, but this consumer-hostile, anti-ownership design is not something I will support.
It's unlocked though, so maybe a software toggle will let you turn off the mic and just have it activate your watch's mic. This would presumably extend the battery, which seems to be a focus of discussion.
I would actually prefer a device that's twice as expensive but with a battery that you can charge or replace.
Unless you specifically are after a barometer, in which case I don't think the PT2 has that.
A weird disposable(!) voice recorder ring seems to go against pretty much all of the “open and repairable” image that the Pebble brand has been cultivating.
This product should probably have been “Core” branded and kept on a different website entirely. Its very existence seems kind of toxic to the Pebble brand, IMO.
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.
Take the phone, open app, done.
Also,
>Wait, it’s single use?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
But don't say "Privacy," then "data sent to your phone."
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.
Sure a phone or watch can burst into flames, but at least you’ve got a chance of dropping it or taking it off.
I also don’t see the bother of talking to your wrist rather than your hand.
>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.
this is ridiculous...
This must be a joke.
