Comment by graypegg
18 hours ago
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.
You can use it just as a button - that's one of the ways you can hack it. Just hook the button up to whichever action (webhook, Tasker, etc) you'd like.
Battery would last for decades just as a button.
Any chance of diy, at-home battery replacements? That would definitely let me consider it. I don't mind if it's a 10 hour process to replace the battery. Just the option to have a device that lasts is great.
Waterproofing, tiny batteries, yadda yadda... it's either "charge it weekly", or "recycle" every year or two (eg: $9.99/mo)
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!
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I feel like this should be promoted or made clearer on the product page - this is how I think many people would prefer to use it, provided it could trigger voice input on the pebble/device/other watch - for example, as a Siri trigger.
This reminds me of Pebble Core. Does anyone but me remember that?
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.
Yes! The ring reminded me of the Core too. Perhaps with voice processing and the infrastructure around MCP (which I haven't used myself, but Eric brings up in the blog) a fully headless, voice-based device like this is more feasible now than in those days
> 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.
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.
There are battery-free switches for Hue light systems and, presumably, other similar systems. They're pretty large, though, and pushing the button has a lot of travel, which can be used to generate electricity.
Plus, even if you wear the watch on one arm and the ring on the opposite hand, they're only ever a maximum of your wingspan apart when in use.
I'd just love the "customizable button on a ring" concept, and that battery could last basically forever.
> I sort of would've preferred it was JUST a button
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.
Like the oldschool tv clickers? Piezo should be enough.
As long as the receiver is always-on and always listening. Easy when plugged into the wall, like a TV. Not so easy when it's on battery.