alt Hacker NewsPebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
Comments
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 $100.
Imagine I fall asleep with it on my finger and accidentally press the button with my head. It's recording me snore for 3 hours, and 25% battery life gone.
You can buy a rechargeable e-ring with several sensors and even a tiny screen for like 20$ on AliExpress. 75$ for a non-rechargeable, e-waste ring with just a button and a mic is insane.
This sounds kind of cool, but I'm more worried about the e-waste. A device that is cheap, will get "recycled", and sounds cool, will get a tiny amount of use after the initial wow factor wears off or doesn't fit the needs, then gets thrown away or lost. And is this feature in the new repebble watches? I would rather have it there with a bigger battery.
I've been looking for a solution like this for years. I briefly had an iOS shortcut on my Apple Watch working, but an OS update broke it. Now I'm on Android and I don't even know what I'd use for it. And it's exactly for these random thoughts and reminders that otherwise nag me or I forget them. David Allen (GTD) will love this too.
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.
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.
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.
Random note to whoever put the Pebble blog together - you don't need 2-4 megabyte images inline in the article! Since the images are limited to ~544px wide, make thumbnails of that size rather than using the original full-size image inline. They already link to the full size so you're already halfway there.
Hmm does it actually set reminders? Or does it just take a note and you have to manually set the reminder later? I would love this if it actually could create reminders like "remind me when I get home" etc. Otherwise I'm sure I'll never go back and look at notes I took.
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!
(Pebble founder)
Happy to answer any questions you have!
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.
I wanted to use it to capture my musical ideas. They usually come unexpectedly and in bundles. There's a problem though – one of them is 0:40-1:30 min in duration; the ring wouldn't last half a year for me.
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.)
"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." They really don't seem have tested the battery life, so 2 years is probably the best case scenario here. He says there's no subscription but if you need to buy one every 2 years or less, then that's the subscription. The primary reason given for not having an option to charge is just awful: "You would probably lose the charger before the battery ran out". This is seriously a device for reviewers and youtubers to hype, make a video about it, and then it's gone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> since it’s always with you
Isn't my watch always with me? Why not use that instead of have some new device?
I very much enjoy Eric's commitment to new and novel and imaginative hardware.
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!
Battery decision asid, I love this dude's obsession with making unique hardware
Couldn't you, like, build this into the Pebble Watch? I think I might be interested in this but I fundamentally don't want to wear a ring on my finger.
(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.
How are there this many different comments? What is there to say other than a one time use recording product in 2026 is insane!
I'd be willing to pay around $100 for a rechargeable version with a battery life of around 24 hours and 2–3 minutes of usage. However, a single-use battery would only be acceptable to me at a much lower price point, such as $30–$40.
I'd love to have a ring that incorporates Yubikey like NFC functionality, I was worried it could allow login when I didn't intend it, but the idea of a switch might work. Having a USD dongle for hardware that doesn't support NFC but can negotiate the handshake between my ring and the device could work.
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'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.
"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 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.
Does anyone know how open the software and hardware of this thing will be? The announcement doesn't give me a lot of hope.
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!)
I've written many variations of my own "quick, take a note!" app, and they all succumb to the same problem: I can't safely write a note when I'm in a car.
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 is competing with “Hey [voice assistant] remind me of…” or an automation you can assign to the quick action button of your phone.
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.
I think I'm as interested in it from a pure "button that's always with me" perspective. I already have my original Amazfit Bip watch configured to send a "track back" signal to Snipd via Gadgetbridge to snip podcast notes while I'm driving or washing dishes or whatever. And I've configured a basic Bluetooth remote camera shutter to turn pages forward and backward in KOReader on my Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color so I can read it on a stand while riding a stationary bike under my desk.
In other words, I am apparently exactly the kind of weirdo who would use the heck out of something like this!
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!
Oh this is fantastic. Amazon made one but didn’t go beyond limited trials. I loved being able to dictate thought and tasks and even ask Alexa questions and get answers.
Pebble: No software subscription Also Pebble: here is the "hardware subscription" you must buy a new one every ~2 years when the battery dies.
This is 80% of the reason I have an apple watch. I whisper to it for reminders, timers, calendar stuff all day.
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 hope it is as open source as the new pebble watches. A button on my finger seems like it could be useful and fun to play with.
Could this record like a morse code(ish) like clicks instead of speaking? I can find a number of use cases for it:
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.
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.
For me, I'd rather use my Pebble to do this.
> 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.
A perfect simulation of a ring that would appear in a RPG, when the duration goes to 0, you permanently lose it.
No way this made it out of internal vetting without a recharchable battery.
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.
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
I'd be more worried that a replacement product wouldn't be available after 2 years of use. 2 years seems quite good for a small product.
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.
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.
Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2023 concerning batteries and waste batteries
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.)