- 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.)
- 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.
by Aurornis
11 subcomments
- > 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.
- 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.
- 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 $100.
Imagine I fall asleep with it on my finger and accidentally press the button with my head. It's recording me snore for 3 hours, and 25% battery life gone.
- One aspect about e-waste is really the size, this has by volume less than an AA-battery, which means the e-waste is pretty much within this realm. For a decently size powerbank, you could have a lifetime of those rings and probably still create less e-waste.
I think it's an interesting approach, in terms of hack-ability a non-rechargable device is pretty much bad - also just imagining that any sort of software or hardware glitch could easily just permanently render the device useless is not super decent either.
- You can buy a rechargeable e-ring with several sensors and even a tiny screen for like 20$ 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- "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.
- (Pebble founder)
Happy to answer any questions you have!
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.)
- 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
- 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.
by agildehaus
6 subcomments
- > since it’s always with you
Isn't my watch always with me? Why not use that instead of have some new device?
- 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.
by greenwallnorway
0 subcomment
- 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.
- 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!)
by Wowfunhappy
3 subcomments
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- How are there this many different comments?
What is there to say other than a one time use recording product in 2026 is insane!
by Tempest1981
1 subcomments
- Reading this thread on HN made me sad. Massive negativity/cynicism.
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.)
by Ninjaneered
1 subcomments
- 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.
- Even if the battery lasts "years", it still seems wildly irresponsible to make this a single use device. I suspect this thing will get very few sales because it's single use.
- 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!
- This will be really handy for dream journaling. When you just woke up and know that you'll forget the dream as soon as you open your eyes, you can click the ring and record.
by walthamstow
2 subcomments
- This looks fantastic, I've always wanted something like it
Water resistant, like how water resistant? Wearing in the shower OK? That's where I have all my best ideas!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- This could be hugely popular for songwriters who want a zero-friction way to capture melodies or lyric ideas on the go!
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.
- Well, it's no Java Ring.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/javaring-wearable-computer/
- A perfect simulation of a ring that would appear in a RPG, when the duration goes to 0, you permanently lose it.
- I wonder how did we get to this scientific age of magic and wonder and technology when people had nothing but pen & paper. Hell, for 10,000 years before that, we didn't even have pen & paper. Where did all those amazing thoughts go??
Also, I'm counting the days until the battery in one of those things bulges while someone is on an airplane... again...
- 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.
- 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.
- "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.
- I don’t dislike the forever battery and the value proposition, however voice memos never appealed to me?
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.
- 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.
by haritha-j
1 subcomments
- Sorry, you want to sell me a $75 dollar disposable mic with a button? When i could do the same with a phone or a watch that i already own? Just like the humane ai pin, there is no need to create a brand new hardware device to do something an app won't do. And justifying it saying "we're introducing a whole new piece of hardware to save you from the pain of clicking one extra button" isn't going to fly.
by voidUpdate
0 subcomment
- Maybe I'm just weird but I have notes on my phone that I just add stuff to when I want to remember it. Random possible future project idea? Goes in the project ideas note. Something I need to buy? Goes in the shopping list note. The idea of having to tell my hand what my idea is, and by extension everyone around me, feels horrible, when I could privately just add it in and not have to worry about if text to speech actually got what I said right
- 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.
by Feuilles_Mortes
0 subcomment
- What I would really want is for this to be a hardware button that, without requiring input on the phone itself, starts and stops a recording on my iphone which uses my airpods as a mic.
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).
- > When your phone is in range, the recording is streamed to the Pebble app. 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).
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).
by MarkusWandel
1 subcomments
- Wait.. if you need to push a button and then have to get it somewhat close to your mouth to record an audio clip, why not just have a watch app? Pressing the button is still a two-hand thing. Or did I miss something?
by SuperShibe
3 subcomments
- Couldn't the same flow be achieved on a Pebble watch by utilizing something like the "double tap"-gesture Apple Watches Series 9 and upwards have?
This seems like a gadget just for the sake of having another gadget...
by BubbleRings
0 subcomment
- It is not clear if using the ring requires you to wear a Pebble watch. Does it work with an Apple Watch instead? Maybe add that to your FAQ OP.
by allforJesse
1 subcomments
- This could be such a delightful upgrade for my hybrid digital/analog personal task management system. Right now I use an apple watch to capture tasks which then hackily route through a series of apps/endpoints to get to a thermal label printer, but that's just about the only thing I use the apple watch for.
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?
by poisonborz
0 subcomment
- Huh, I think this is a problem that almost every HN reader solved in their life one way or other.
(Not speaking of the usability of this: if voice works for you, this can still be great for you, however)
- I've wanted exactly this since I first saw spider's note-recorder in the first issue of Transmetropolitan (before the fancy glasses.) Just something with exactly one button, positive confirmation that it's recording, a decent pipeline into my private infosphere, and safe to use while driving.
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?
by sam1234apter
0 subcomment
- Pebble: No software subscription
Also Pebble: here is the "hardware subscription" you must buy a new one every ~2 years when the battery dies.
- Why not just make the electronics removable through a topside opening to have battery replaced at a watch shop? I don't get why the "jewel" part of this has to be resin molded. Normally you do this because smart rings are made by affixing a flexible PCB with somewhat-bendable battery inside a ring and then molding the entire inner part of the ring using clear resin, but the ring part for this one appears to be just a dead ring.
- Oh I love this. I am going to contextually switch the instructions from this to my home trained instruction fine tuned LLM for doing a multitude of things.
by whiskey-one
0 subcomment
- The concept is interesting but without charging it’s a non-starter for me. Also it’s a bit awkward and I’d prefer to use my phone or watch instead of adding a ring.
- Something I've found is quite common: musicians / poets / writers using voice memos to quickly capture "sketches" that pop into their heads before they lose them. Often to share with collaborators.
This seems like a _fantastic_ tool for that.
by pedalpete
1 subcomments
- I wonder why they added this to the finger rather than adding this capability to the watches they are already making? One handed operation is one reason, though I'd think a UX could be designed to make this an app on the watch, rather than a stand-alone device.
Seems like overkill, particularly when other rings do bio-metric tracking, so is this focused on a big enough problem to want to solve?
- Pebble user here - the old ones:).
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
- I was extremely excited for this until I got to the party about the battery. I have wanted something exactly like this for ages.
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.
- 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 was thinking this would find great application at my job (Paramedic) but then I remembered that we are always always wearing protective gloves and this would likely not work as great (if at all) when completely covered like that.
- We have built a new device.
The device is a ring with a button and a microphone.
Pressing the button initiates recording of your voice
captures voice via the built in microphone and saves
it on your phone.
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
by tambourine_man
0 subcomment
- 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.
- For all those people complaining about it being e-waste: With such a relatively long battery life, you will probably lose/misplace the charging cable anyway, and that cable is probably more e-waste than the ring itself.
- This is 80% of the reason I have an apple watch. I whisper to it for reminders, timers, calendar stuff all day.
- "What kind of battery is inside?
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.
- Take my money!
Literally take it, I just ordered.
I have been imagining this exact device existing and now it does, yay, thank you!
by FlamingMoe
0 subcomment
- I think I would use this. I am the kind of person who needs to write things down immediately when they come into my head or I will forget them. I picture wearing it on my ring finger, button down, and use my thumb to press the button, is that realistic or would it be uncomfortable that way?
- As someone who is a female size 3, will "8 US ring sizes: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13" fit at all?
- Any know if there are plans to make a new pebble watch that includes both Barometer/Compass plus Heart Rate Monitor in one device? This looks like a useful UI mode, but I'm holding out for a Pebble that doesn't require choosing between two basic (these days) watch sensors.
- I'd be curious what happens if you're the kind of person who wears a ring a bit more loosely and/or has slippery skin.
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?
- 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.
- I really like a lot of this but I have to agree with the other comments that are complaining about the non-rechargable, non-replaceable battery.
I would actually prefer a device that's twice as expensive but with a battery that you can charge or replace.
by a_wild_dandan
0 subcomment
- Someone will make a killing on a rechargeable version of this. The ergonomics are a good idea.
- Eventually going to end up in a landfill because no part is replaceable or repairable. And if the app/software support ends, it becomes an useless piece of plastic. No thanks.
- 12-15 hours of recording is maybe 2 weeks usage for heavy users. It would've been perfect if it could connect to computers and had a rechargeable battery. Oh well, hope someone else takes inspiration and makes the same thing but can recharge.
by josefresco
0 subcomment
- I.... I kinda love this. Non-rechargeable battery and all. I don't need something else to charge. I understand this is a "luxury" but seamlessly recording "thoughts" is my personal computing holy grail.
by baby_souffle
0 subcomment
- 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.
- Could we have the same functionality on the pebble watch instead, please?
by braincat31415
0 subcomment
- An interesting idea, but I look at it as yet another thing to make my life more complicated than it needs to be.
A pen and paper, plus a mechanical watch have served me well so far.
by websiteapi
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- I wish there was a device that just recorded and transcribed all the time and sent it to my phone, with time stamps, and then you could take action on that.
by gnoll_of_gozag
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- this is a joke right?
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?
- There are dozens of different watch batteries in various sizes available everywhere. Why not make the ring slightly larger and allow for battery replacement?
by luis_journey
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- I think that this is different than the products we had before like bee. Because it's more only when you really need it and not the whole time.
by liampulles
1 subcomments
- 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.
by hahamrfunnyguy
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- Something like this isn't very practical for me. I just pull out my phone and dictate or type when I need to take notes. If I can't pull out my phone, I probably have gloves on or am in a loud environment.
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.
- Would love to have these go to my Tana or another PKM. Will that be possible or will it have to go to the Pebble app?
- Looks very nice and I'm tempted. Can you disable Bluetooth while not in use?
- I like the idea and would use it. Though I would put it in place of my wedding band, and still access it via thumb.
- I use my Apple Watch the same way
- Oh look it's a Humane AI Pin without the AI, or rechargeable battery, or ...
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.
- Oh it's not even rechargeable???? That vastly changes my opinion of this.
- Is it just a Bluetooth mic in a form of a ring? Or is there something more to this device?
by nowittyusername
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- This seems like one of those devices that seems like "meh" at a glance but grows on you once you used it. In fact just the Bluetooth button feature alone is warranted a second take let alone a mic embedded in to the ring with a crazy battery life. If there's a way to hack the device and pipe the mic features to other apps I think i might get this thing. edit: never mind i just noticed 15 hours recording time with no recharging. yeah bud that's a no go.
by VikingCoder
1 subcomments
- Can I ask for a Starfleet Commbadge form factor?
- Or I could do the same with my smart watch?
- Goooshhh, just f.. give me a watch that a) last at least a month b) visible in a daylight
Also accurate Hr activity and sleep tracking wouldn’t hurt.
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?
- I really don't see the benefit of this over, say, pixel buds.
- From Pebble watch to inspector gadget
by paweladamczuk
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- Does anyone know how open the software and hardware of this thing will be? The announcement doesn't give me a lot of hope.
by DeathArrow
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- >Hold the button, whisper your thought, and it’s sent to your phone. It’s added to your notes, set as a reminder, or saved for later review.
Take the phone, open app, done.
by Sporktacular
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- Some harsh comments here. The idea is interesting and the miniaturisation impressive. Successful or not, it's good to see these ideas realised.
- Gonna give this a shot. I pre-ordered.
- Isn't that a spying device
- prefer rechargeable design like oura
- E-waste is still e-waste, no matter how small it may be. Shame.
by bluerooibos
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- Now this is cool. Combined with localLLMs and some nice Obsidian integration of some sort, all away from Google and other Big Tech - this is the future of tech I want to see - not some centralized bullshit from Google or Meta.
- Wait what ? Why can't they add a feature to the watch that is already there on the wrist and especially already bought that will start recording the thought after a hand shake (that triggers the mic) plus magic keyword ?
- Honestly a button on the watch seems like the way to go for me.
by infotainment
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- Wow, uh, it’s kind of astounding how poorly Eric is reading the room there.
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.
by baumschubser
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- I am SO close to switch to Android to buy and properly use a Pebble watch. I love the hacker attitude, the retro tech, the quirkyness.
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.
- I mean, I'll probably ditch the LLM - after all, it's open source so I can just build my own app to receive the messages - but it seems like a neat bit of kit.
by da_grift_shift
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- Title change please: "Meet Pebble Index 01 - External Memory For Your Brain"
Also,
>Wait, it’s single use?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
by starkparker
0 subcomment
- the "tech bro independently discovers and creates an existing product" cycle is so fast that we're seeing it happen to tiktok scrolling rings now
by matteason
4 subcomments
- > Here’s the best part: the battery lasts for years
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.
- > 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 must be a joke.
- Voice recording on pre-smart phones was my jam forever, and this is right up my alley.
But don't say "Privacy," then "data sent to your phone."