Pebble, another good Kickstarter project

[FrankBuss]

Just posting some other project, which got shipped:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android

I've got my Pebble some weeks ago and implemented a custom watchface for it:

http://www.frank-buss.de/pebble/index.html

I really like it, but it is a bit expensive. I guess with this many units they make quite some profit, but I don't begrudge it to them, it is a good idea and I'm looking forward that they release an improved SDK, because currently you can't read the accelerometers or send data over the bluetooth connection (at least not with the official SDK, there was someone on hackaday who managed it somehow).

[Rasz]

Did they release any SDK? I read somewhere people complained about lack of  SDK and functionality that was promised when kickstarter ran.

[Keef Wivanef]

Furk me dead!
The Pebble team raised 10 MILLION DOLLARS
It looks like shit!

You can buy a nice smart watch http://www.expansys.com.au/sony-smartwatch-228482/?mkwid=svHjLhmZB&kword=adwords_productfeed&gclid=CPiV3OKMj7cCFYUhpQodIEsApA from Sony or other suppliers without needing to wait 12 months for delivery or put up with mountains of bullshit.
What a freaking joke 

[c4757p]

Furk me dead!
The Pebble team raised 10 MILLION DOLLARS
It looks like shit!

Keef, have you contributed anything here other than always being ready to tell us how awful everything on Kickstarter is? It's just a toy that some people think is worth their money. Nobody is scamming anybody out of anything, and people put a lot of honest work into it.

[Keef Wivanef]

Arnaud 3 days ago
I got an email from Ouya (http://goo.gl/6DlkW) this morning, telling me my Ouya shipped and is on its way, with tracking number and everything.
How can the Ouya people make a console and a controller, complete with full featured SDK, online infrastructure and a bunch of games available on launch day, for LESS than what Pebble raised and what a Pebble costs? While Ouya is sending status updates EVERY


FRIDAY, Pebble is becoming increasingly silent and occasionally hostile with people and, from the looks of the comments here, has stopped providing support.
Every time I see someone defending Pebble saying it's super complicated, I can't help but think about how Ouya managed to do better in less time with less money yet it's more complicated.
I also can't help but think that when they launched their KS campaign, they said "September 2012". I am convinced that they knew there was no way they were going to meet that deadline, it really sounded like the only thing they were missing was funding to launch production. Companies have been sued for false advertising for less than that (I'm thinking about the current Gearbox/Sega lawsuit that could make a big impact to the video game industry).
I am really curious as to how the $10m raised were used. The Pebble project reeks of amateurism at best and as a scam at worst. I'm surprised there isn't more outrage around this. I'm actually surprised that there has not been a class action lawsuit yet.
I also hold the KS people accountable for this, they should make the project owners accountable for their promises. It doesn't make them look good that the most funded ever project also failed miserably and barely delivers a crappy product.


This is a GOOD kickstarter project?
Oh I'm sorry...I must stop BEING NEGATIVE 

[c4757p]

Most people seem quite content. Perhaps they could be doing a better job with customer support, but that doesn't mean it's complete shit. Give it a chance.

This is a GOOD kickstarter project?
Oh I'm sorry...I must stop BEING NEGATIVE motherf-king annoying as hell 

Please do. Lay off the shift key and intentionally misspelled curse words while you're at it, it makes me think you're probably curled into a fetal position around a full pot of coffee.

[Keef Wivanef]

The power of negative thinking.


Why Kickstarter's Ouya Looks Like a Scam
By Sascha Segan July 12, 2012

The entirely imaginary Ouya game console just raised more than $4 million from "funders" on Kickstarter, proving the old Barnum adage. Even at a dollar per person, you need only 7.6 years worth of suckers to be born every minute to pull this off.
Ouya appears to be the latest of many Kickstarter tech projects to attract a long line of suckers. The world of Apple fandom has been cooing for months over Pebble, another set of attractive Photoshop renderings that will purportedly become a smart watch someday. It's like a world full of Wimpys: they'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
Hardware development isn't something that can be done easily in a Silicon Valley garage or a DUMBO loft. Hardware concepts can be done, and Pebble and Ouya are both great concepts. But actually building a reliable, functional product requires expertise in supply chain management, mass hardware QA, and negotiations with component makers and assemblers that these companies by and large entirely lack.
Even Pebble admits this.
"The hard part will be the manufacturing process. There will be things that will come up, and we'll have to solve them," Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky told Wired. "It could be anything. This is our first large-scale manufacturing. There will be some problems, guaranteed."
That quote is the sound of your hard-earned Kickstarter money vanishing into a black hole, never to return.


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407046,00.asp

[c4757p]

Dude, I understand that a lot of these look scammish. I'm suspicious of many of them myself. But if all you ever do is prance about the Crowd Funded Projects section declaring that everything in sight looks like shit, you're not helping. If you could be replaced by a short script written in Perl, you're not helping. We all know that Keef Wivanef thinks it's shit, because Keef Wivanef thinks everything is shit. Why not contribute something else?

[Keef Wivanef]

I don't think everything is shit.
I think some things are total bollocks.

[c4757p]

Yes, and you forgot the other two categories: SHIT and BOLLOCKS, with liberal capitalization.

[Keef Wivanef]

Lots of lovely looking (Maxwell) Smart watches here
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=smart+watch&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=ntyOUenOF6aXiAeom4CIBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CIMBELAE&biw=1366&bih=681

They don't all look like SHIT!

[c4757p]

I agree, some of them look like BOLLOCKS!

[lemmegraphdat]

I like the thing, it's not garish. Yea, that's the word.

[FrankBuss]

Did they release any SDK? I read somewhere people complained about lack of  SDK and functionality that was promised when kickstarter ran.

Yes, they released the SDK: http://developer.getpebble.com The documentation could be better, but I've seen worse. With the docs and the examples it is easy to write your own watchfaces or applications.

Arnaud 3 days ago
I got an email from Ouya (http://goo.gl/6DlkW) this morning, telling me my Ouya shipped and is on its way, with tracking number and everything....


This is a GOOD kickstarter project?
Oh I'm sorry...I must stop BEING NEGATIVE 

Well, that's one comment from http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/comments , most of the other commenters are happy with it, like I. It is a good project because it delivered what was promised, no more, no less. But some comments are right, customer support might not be perfect, and as with most Kickstarter projects, the deadline was not met.

The Sony SmartWatch looks interesting, too, but a bit clunky compared to the slim Pebble and it has no accelerometer. But nice that Sony provides an SDK for it as well.

[pikuorguk]

My other half received her pebble a few weeks ago. She thinks it's fantastic.

I think... it's a bit expensive, isn't it and it doesn't seem to do much. I don't need a thing on my wrist to tell me I have an SMS, I have my phone in my pocket. The "magsafe" style charger is a bit wank though - needs stronger magnets.

But it works, she's not broken it yet and hasn't got bored of it. Compared to some of the nerd-gadget crap I've wasted my money on over the years, it's probably not that bad!

[Rasz]

How is the battery life?

[FrankBuss]

Depends on the watchface. With my program it works for 4 days. If there is less graphical update, e.g. not every second but just every minute, it can last up to 7 days.

[free_electron]

Pebble had some teething problems as they use an e-ink style display.

[c4757p]

My other half received her pebble a few weeks ago. She thinks it's fantastic.

I think... it's a bit expensive, isn't it

Such is marriage, no? 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Pebble had some teething problems as they use an e-ink style display.

No they don't , and their publicity has been somewhat dishonest in this respect - it's a Sharp memory LCD.
I don't know if they initially planned to use e-ink and changed to the LCD.

[GeoffS]

Seems someone thinks Pebble is a good idea, they've just stumped up $15M to help out.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/business-technology/canadians-smartwatch-startup-matches-record-15-million-in-vc-funding/article11965214/

[Rasz]

Seems someone thinks Pebble is a good idea, they've just stumped up $15M to help out.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/business-technology/canadians-smartwatch-startup-matches-record-15-million-in-vc-funding/article11965214/

VC is NEVER "helping out". They show up to swoop >80% of future profit. This seems strange in case of Pebble because those guys already
-have product
-have money
-have customers
-were able to secure manufacturing without VC
There is nothing apart from additional quick cash that VC can offer them.

[FrankBuss]

In http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/posts/ they wrote why they needed the VC money: They were hiring people. I still wonder why they need the money, because production costs can't be high and I guess they made already millions of dollars profit. In this article there is another good news for developers: finally they enhanced the SDK, so that you can write your own apps on iPhone and Android and communicate with your own apps on the watch via Bluetooth.