Death is ultimately just a step towards rebirth, at least for Pebble. The defunct smartwatch manufacturer, active between 2013 and 2016, was unable to resist the Apple Watch wave (the first generation was launched in 2015). However, it was not for lack of offering an attractive alternative to Apple and the rest of the market and of having multiplied the successful funding campaigns on Kickstarter.
PebbleOS now open source
At the end of 2016, founder Eric Migicovsky sold his company's assets to Fitbit, which would be bought five years later by Google. While Fitbit took on Pebble's engineers, the brand itself and its software platform never resurfaced. There was indeed an attempt with the Rebble team to keep Pebble alive, but without access to the original source code, the challenge was considerable.
After being approached by Eric Migicovsky, Google has just put online the code of the PebbleOS operating system, available in open source. It is now up to the developer community to get hold of it! It should be noted that the software is purged of proprietary code, and it will not compile as is.
Among the missing pieces are the fonts, the Bluetooth stack, the driver for the Pebble 2 HR heart rate monitor, and the STM peripheral library. In other words, there is still a bit of work to be done before the firmware can be updated and offered to the (probably quite) rare Pebble models still in operation.
Once improved, this source code also opens up, in theory, the possibility of creating completely new smartwatches that work with this firmware. Migicovsky, who has since created the Beeper messenger, is also considering relaunching himself in this niche!
He writes that no other current smartwatch offers the functions he would like to see in such a product: an always-on e-ink screen, long battery life, a "simple and beautiful" user experience, physical buttons and the ability to tweak the software. In order to reinvigorate the Pebble community, a website has been set up to learn more about the project and sign up for a mailing list.
Source: Google
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