Awesome!!!! They even look good too. I might think about getting one and whip up an Android library for people to use.
Question to anyone reading this. What would be a good use to notify users? There was an article on HN about startups using a visual dashboard: http://mygengo.com/talk/blog/why-your-startup-needs-a-visual...
I think something like that would be cool to have. Hook into your KPI's and have that information right there on your wrist.
The devices look cool from a technical perspective. It could use a few more sensors (GPS, gyro/movement, temp, etc.) but I'm sure that will come.
The only problem, I think, is that they're not very stylish. A bit too large/clunky looking. I'm not sure how to fix that while keeping the display a useful size. But that what geniuses like you guys are for!
If they really take off, I'm sure the design could become much smaller and more elegant over time.
I ordered one to hack about with. If it becomes part of my daily routine I'll probably have my jeweler in Detroit hook up a more attractive case and band for it.
Agree on the sensors, it would be nice to at the very least have a dead-simple accelerometer, but I also know what goes into bringing a piece of hardware like this to market. The $150 price point probably doesn't leave a ton of margin, and it's just on the cusp of not having to be a "considered purchase" for people. Adding more stuff would drive up the manufacturing cost and price into something that starts to become a $399 product and the number of experimenters who will buy one on a whim drops dramatically.
For comparison: Texas Instruments sell something called the EZ430 Chronos watch, which has a much lower-res display, a proprietary RF protocol with a USB transceiver, and a bunch more sensors including 3-axis accelerometers, pressure and temperature.
It is based on the MSP430 microprocessor which is much less powerful than this thing, its capped at 16mhz or something IIRC and only has around 8K of program space. It is however about a third of the price.
We choose one button to keep it simple (and quicker to get to market). You can do a lot of things with just one button, just look at the single button on the iPhone! For example, you can do two actions, like click and click-hold.
I've experimented with using a single button (a Griffin Powermate, actually) to control all of my electronics: one tap toggles the lights, three taps changes lighting scenes, press and hold/five taps turns the projector on or off, eight taps toggles "party mode," ... I'm quite convinced that multiple buttons would be better :).
Hey, I know this must be there in the sdk docs somewhere, but can the knob on the side of the watch be used as an input device? Also, I wish I had more upvotes to give you.
EDIT: Oh, never mind, just saw that its a button, not a knob.
Ah - sorry - I was after physical dimensions - i can kinda figure it from the videos, but I'd like to know if it would actually fit on my writs comfortably.
I really wish there was - I may get around to asking for this info, but I bet you've got to sign some type of license or pay fees. I don't know - I haven't tried.
Are you interested in making a case or something similar?
We're trying to make it as easy as Arduino to develop an app for your watch! To dodge the arm-gcc toolchain issue, we've built a cloudcompile system which allows all platforms Mac/Ubuntu/Windows to have an equally easy time compiling. Simply code your app in C, then run our python script to compile your code and load it onto your watch, wirelessly!
Your python script uploads my code to your server and sends me back a binary in return. What happens when that server goes down?
Getting people up and writing code on devices quickly is awesome; but sending code (unencrypted, even) off is pretty shady, particularly since you're not disclosing it to anyone.
Arduino manages to have a cute little barebones IDE based around an actual compiler; and they provide full hardware docs, links to datasheets, the works. You're doing exactly the opposite of that. Even Apple will let me compile code for my own iOS devices -- after I've paid the $99/year fee or jailbroken, of course...
Also, your terms of service (http://www.getinpulse.com/terms/) states that you claim rights over information I upload to sites run by Allerta. That must include code I upload to be compiled, correct?
From the terms: "hereby grant to Allerta a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to reproduce, distribute, transmit, publicly perform, publicly display, digitally perform, modify, create derivative works of, and otherwise use and commercially exploit any text, photographs or other data and information you submit to the Website (collectively, User Generated Content) in any media now existing or hereafter developed, including without limitation on websites, in audio format, and in any print media format."
As I mentioned, we're releasing the entire SDK with instructions on how to compile using the full arm-gcc, right on your local machine. We just started off with this cloudcompile service to make it super easy for everyone to get Hello, Watch! (http://getinPulse.com/apps/hello_watch) running.
We are developers ourselves and committed to providing the best experience possible. We'll work fast to get the full toolchain out there.
Just a heads-up: we've got a limited supply of the first batch (as some intelligent commenters below have deduced). If you'd like to get hacking soon, I'd suggest picking one up! The first batch starts shipping tomorrow...
It is interesting to note that the EZ430-Chronos can last about 6 months on a charge if continuously reading BlueRobin data (which is a one-direction wireless data) while this inPulse aparently can only last 2 to 3 days recieving data over bluetooth.
Less powerful processor and cheaper display might be a good thing, depending on your uses.
What is the battery life like?
With aggressive power management (turning the screen off most of the time and leaving bluetooth disconnected), it can be up to 3 days. If bluetooth is constantly connected with the screen turning on periodically for alerts, you can expect 25 - 30 hours. If you have a processor-intensive application and are using the full capabilities of the screen non-stop, you can expect 2 - 3 hours.
So unfortunately it seems that the battery life is the biggest issue with inPulse
The _state_ of battery technology is the biggest issue _for_ inPulse. There's not much they can do, given the lack of viable battery technology available.
They _might_ be able to save a decent amount of battery life by using e-paper, but you lose color, and I'm not sure in practice you'd end up saving much power over the OLEDs they're currently using.
Seriously. When one has a 60x lead in lifetime over the other, you don't blame 'poor battery technology', especially when they use the same 'poor battery technology'!
Blame other interesting things you might want to wirelessly communicate with for standardizing on power-hungry Bluetooth rather than using a lower-power wireless tech (zigbee, ANT, etc) instead/additionally.
I bought 3 EZ430s. While they're interesting concepts, they're not without their problems (most notably not keeping time very well on the default firmware). You do come up against limitations and they're more of a proof of concept than anything else.
I've had this page bookmarked for months, waiting to be able to order it (back when it was just designed as a bluetooth extension to blackberry devices).
Petty about US/CA shipping only, seems a pretty dumb move (unless there's some reason, other than shipping costs which you can make customers pay, for limiting who can buy it).
>(unless there's some reason, other than shipping costs which you can make customers pay, for limiting who can buy it)
Shipping goods for money internationally is a bureaucratic nightmare. A million possible edge cases to do with tax and so forth. This is why hardware startups often only take orders from their home country for their first batch.
I have zero experience in this area, but could it be that the manufacturer has to go through an approval process and/or have liability insurance in each country they ship to?
This is very cool. I own a few Timex Datalink watches which are also programmable. Timex recently discontinued the Datalink and they're already becoming very hard to find. I hoping some company would come up with a suitable replacement but unfortunately nobody seems to build something with a comparable design.
The advantages of the Datalink are that it always shows the time (no button press necessary), the battery lasts an entire year, is water-resistant, and is small and subtle. It also just makes a damn good watch without any of the programmable features. Every other programmable watch available is anything but subtle, with a display that isn't active all the time, and has to be constantly recharged. Those are considerable failings for a watch.
What the Datalink lacks is a denser display (but remaining as 1bit LCD is ok), any sort of wireless (ANT+ would be suitable), and sensors (pulse, altitude, position, etc). It could also use, obviously, a faster processor with more RAM and storage (it also has 32k).
The price for this watch is fantastic but it's still just not quite what I'm looking for.
This is a very hacker-unfriendly device. I wouldn't buy one.
The SDK's compilation tool doesn't invoke a compiler; it uploads your code to a service running off of http://174.129.29.50:8080.
The Arduino is fantastic because the bootloader is open-source, the hardware is open-source, and it's easy to find out full information about the hardware and pull the MCU datasheets yourself.
Hi Guys, Eric from inPulse here. We're trying to make it as easy as possible for people to develop for inPulse. That's why we've built a cloudcompile service. No messing with DLLs, drivers and other annoying parts of embedded coding.
I think we've succeeded! In our beta testing, users were able to go from downloading the SDK zip to loading their first app on inPulse within 5-8 minutes. I think that's pretty impressive for a startup hardware biz.
If you'd like to setup the arm-gcc toolchain and compile your own apps, absolutely no problem! We'll have instructions online shortly. If you need them faster, just email devsupport@getinpulse.com
I've never heard of a cloud compile service, but I think in this case, it's a good idea. Especially since not many people have experience with cross-compiling.
One of the things that make Arduino so popular is the ease of use in getting code a) to compile and b) get uploaded to the device. If this works via a service, then so be it.
But, I would like to see instructions for setting up a local amr-gcc toolchain, just to be complete.
"ARM Cortex-M3 Core running at 96MHz, 512KB FLASH, 64KB RAM and lots of interfaces including Ethernet, USB Device and Host, CAN, SPI, I2C and other I/O."
<200mA, $59
I want one, but I already have an arduino thats been laying around unused and unloved for some time :(
Appcelerator Titanium, a relatively prominent open source alternative to Adobe AIR, does cross-platform app compilation on a 'cloud compilation' service:
It's certainly easy to use, as long as the server remains up. But do I still have full control over the code that I upload to you, or does it count as "user-generated content" in http://www.getinpulse.com/terms/? What privacy guarantees do you make regarding the code that I upload? (Hopefully very little; it is transmitted in the clear, after all..)
We live in a world where device vendors (even small ones) routinely use technical means to thwart hackers and other tinkerers. Often, this is done under the guise of usability or security (sometimes with some justification, even). Plenty of people don't mind trading away some control for stability or ease-of-use.
This is a forum for hackers, and you just called your device "hackable". I'm saying that it's not, currently; it's a black box with an SDK that does cloud compilation. You don't document that fact anywhere or provide an ready alternative, and there's no information about what's underneath your API, either OS or hardware.
You've made some very good points. We'll strive to improve over time, and you comments/questions here will help guide us. Any and all comments are welcomed to devsupport@getinPulse.com
I encourage you to try out the hardware, throw it on your wrist and wait for the amazed looks from passersby. It's quite awesome having a net-connected terminal (I pair my inPulse with my Blackberry) right on your wrist.
For technical sites like Hacker News (and to some extent, reddit), it seems like marketing speech is actually more likely to turn off potential buyers than attract them. See the IE9 AMA debacle on reddit, for example. We're hackers here, and blunt truth tends to be valued more than softer wording.
I read it as more of a politic answer, there's been a lot of inpulse bashing it seems over what appears to be something that they are doing to try and help, not thwart hackers.
Encouraging us to get one for the Blackberry is all well and good, except its pre-order only, not shipping yet.
I wish the blackberry 'edition' was $99 (for black.) Then I'd get one. It seems disproportionate to the blackberry cost itself at $199
This is extremely important - the claim to user-generated content is either boilerplate and wasn't intended to apply to actual software, or it is specifically intended to apply to the uploaded code due to the cloud-compile service.
The question has been asked a couple times here - is there an answer?
I think it's a pretty good idea, but the ideal solution would be both a CAAS and the opened sourced toolchain that worked on at least one open source platform. Doing that is probably easier than releasing something cross platform like arduino, and for most people is going to be easiest to use.
How can you call it "hacker unfriendly"? The thing is designed to be hacked, that's the whole point of it.
The Arduino and this are two totally different classes of devices.
For staters, this appears to be very much about the hardware. I wouldn't expect it to be open source, just like the iPhone or Motorola Droid you can develop your own apps for doesn't have open source hardware. You don't actually have to be granted access to 100% of the codebase and hardware layout for a product just to develop a neat application around something.
I saw this and immediately thought of 5 or 6 cool uses for it so I bought one. Sure, if I was going to build some kind of a product around this, or develop an app that was going to be my retirement income, I'd want a little more information about the company and their licensing models. But for a $150 hackable gadget, this thing is one of the coolest toys I've seen in a while.
Correct me if I am wrong. I think I have found a way to track sales of both the models on sale.
Depending on how many items you ask for in order screen, it lets you go ahead or displays "stock unavailable".
For the Mettalic Silver, It seems 57 items are available at the time of writing. and for Black Anodized, it is 108. I have to take a reasonable assumption now to get the sales numbers (may be 200 at beginning?).
But when I do upgrade my venerable analog watch, it's probably going to be to a http://lunatik.com + ipod nano 6g. A little more expensive, requires a jailbreak, but a hell of a lot more functional, and doesn't require uploading my code anywhere to compile it once jailbroken.
Has the nano been successfully jailbroken? Last I saw was that some of the images/text could be changed but I wasn't aware of anyone getting actual new code running...?
That was my plan too with the hope that I could do something similar to this and load/write my own apps. I actually received my lunatik kit with a ipod nano 6g about two weeks ago.
1) the ipod nano 6g has not been jailbroken.
2) the ipod nano 6g has no bluetooth built in
This watch is a better fit for what i want to do now - get up and running now with a programmable wrist based terminal.
I love the design of the lunatik but until the nano 6g is jailbroken I'm just wearing a nano on my wrist. The novelty of which has worn off since I can't hack it to do anything special.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 534 ms ] threadQuestion to anyone reading this. What would be a good use to notify users? There was an article on HN about startups using a visual dashboard: http://mygengo.com/talk/blog/why-your-startup-needs-a-visual... I think something like that would be cool to have. Hook into your KPI's and have that information right there on your wrist.
I just checked the specs, "4 days depending on display/Bluetooth use"
Even if its two days of full time use, thats great.
The only problem, I think, is that they're not very stylish. A bit too large/clunky looking. I'm not sure how to fix that while keeping the display a useful size. But that what geniuses like you guys are for!
As for applications, yeh GPS, Gyro would be great.
They raised $941,718 from users, so there's definitely a market for style. It's touchscreen, costly (nano+holder) and non-hackable.
I ordered one to hack about with. If it becomes part of my daily routine I'll probably have my jeweler in Detroit hook up a more attractive case and band for it.
Agree on the sensors, it would be nice to at the very least have a dead-simple accelerometer, but I also know what goes into bringing a piece of hardware like this to market. The $150 price point probably doesn't leave a ton of margin, and it's just on the cusp of not having to be a "considered purchase" for people. Adding more stuff would drive up the manufacturing cost and price into something that starts to become a $399 product and the number of experimenters who will buy one on a whim drops dramatically.
It is based on the MSP430 microprocessor which is much less powerful than this thing, its capped at 16mhz or something IIRC and only has around 8K of program space. It is however about a third of the price.
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos
Also, we're right here on HN to answer your questions!
Why only one button?
Two would have been really nice for most things (like back and forward in powerpoint/itunes).
Edit: Another one:
Why don't you ship outside the US/Canada? I considered buying one, but I'm in Germany :(
EDIT: Oh, never mind, just saw that its a button, not a knob.
Indeed. They are very different propositions. Hence I said "for comparison" :)
(I'd love an accelerometer - sure you guys are well aware of the possibilities)
http://developer.apple.com/resources/cases/
Are you interested in making a case or something similar?
Getting people up and writing code on devices quickly is awesome; but sending code (unencrypted, even) off is pretty shady, particularly since you're not disclosing it to anyone.
Arduino manages to have a cute little barebones IDE based around an actual compiler; and they provide full hardware docs, links to datasheets, the works. You're doing exactly the opposite of that. Even Apple will let me compile code for my own iOS devices -- after I've paid the $99/year fee or jailbroken, of course...
From the terms: "hereby grant to Allerta a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to reproduce, distribute, transmit, publicly perform, publicly display, digitally perform, modify, create derivative works of, and otherwise use and commercially exploit any text, photographs or other data and information you submit to the Website (collectively, User Generated Content) in any media now existing or hereafter developed, including without limitation on websites, in audio format, and in any print media format."
As I mentioned, we're releasing the entire SDK with instructions on how to compile using the full arm-gcc, right on your local machine. We just started off with this cloudcompile service to make it super easy for everyone to get Hello, Watch! (http://getinPulse.com/apps/hello_watch) running.
We are developers ourselves and committed to providing the best experience possible. We'll work fast to get the full toolchain out there.
Looks too big for a woman's wrist? Can't find actual dimensions...
I think I'd still rather wear it like you would a security badge with a lanyard or like the old-school mini-pagers in your pocket with a chain.
Less powerful processor and cheaper display might be a good thing, depending on your uses.
What is the battery life like? With aggressive power management (turning the screen off most of the time and leaving bluetooth disconnected), it can be up to 3 days. If bluetooth is constantly connected with the screen turning on periodically for alerts, you can expect 25 - 30 hours. If you have a processor-intensive application and are using the full capabilities of the screen non-stop, you can expect 2 - 3 hours.
So unfortunately it seems that the battery life is the biggest issue with inPulse
They _might_ be able to save a decent amount of battery life by using e-paper, but you lose color, and I'm not sure in practice you'd end up saving much power over the OLEDs they're currently using.
If that's their optimistic estimate then I'm not sure I want to learn how long it lasts under real world conditions...
Have you considered adding a crank?
(actually only half-joking, although I fear the machinery would not fit into such a small device)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxGZIiyyxrM
(the video is worth it for the 'joke' alone.)
Their price seems eminently reasonable to me.
Give it more buttons and I'll buy it.
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=sony+eric...
If you do get that working, does that mean new hardware?
Petty about US/CA shipping only, seems a pretty dumb move (unless there's some reason, other than shipping costs which you can make customers pay, for limiting who can buy it).
Shipping goods for money internationally is a bureaucratic nightmare. A million possible edge cases to do with tax and so forth. This is why hardware startups often only take orders from their home country for their first batch.
The advantages of the Datalink are that it always shows the time (no button press necessary), the battery lasts an entire year, is water-resistant, and is small and subtle. It also just makes a damn good watch without any of the programmable features. Every other programmable watch available is anything but subtle, with a display that isn't active all the time, and has to be constantly recharged. Those are considerable failings for a watch.
What the Datalink lacks is a denser display (but remaining as 1bit LCD is ok), any sort of wireless (ANT+ would be suitable), and sensors (pulse, altitude, position, etc). It could also use, obviously, a faster processor with more RAM and storage (it also has 32k).
The price for this watch is fantastic but it's still just not quite what I'm looking for.
The SDK's compilation tool doesn't invoke a compiler; it uploads your code to a service running off of http://174.129.29.50:8080.
The Arduino is fantastic because the bootloader is open-source, the hardware is open-source, and it's easy to find out full information about the hardware and pull the MCU datasheets yourself.
I think we've succeeded! In our beta testing, users were able to go from downloading the SDK zip to loading their first app on inPulse within 5-8 minutes. I think that's pretty impressive for a startup hardware biz.
If you'd like to setup the arm-gcc toolchain and compile your own apps, absolutely no problem! We'll have instructions online shortly. If you need them faster, just email devsupport@getinpulse.com
One of the things that make Arduino so popular is the ease of use in getting code a) to compile and b) get uploaded to the device. If this works via a service, then so be it.
But, I would like to see instructions for setting up a local amr-gcc toolchain, just to be complete.
"ARM Cortex-M3 Core running at 96MHz, 512KB FLASH, 64KB RAM and lots of interfaces including Ethernet, USB Device and Host, CAN, SPI, I2C and other I/O."
<200mA, $59
I want one, but I already have an arduino thats been laying around unused and unloved for some time :(
http://www.appcelerator.com/products/
We live in a world where device vendors (even small ones) routinely use technical means to thwart hackers and other tinkerers. Often, this is done under the guise of usability or security (sometimes with some justification, even). Plenty of people don't mind trading away some control for stability or ease-of-use.
This is a forum for hackers, and you just called your device "hackable". I'm saying that it's not, currently; it's a black box with an SDK that does cloud compilation. You don't document that fact anywhere or provide an ready alternative, and there's no information about what's underneath your API, either OS or hardware.
I encourage you to try out the hardware, throw it on your wrist and wait for the amazed looks from passersby. It's quite awesome having a net-connected terminal (I pair my inPulse with my Blackberry) right on your wrist.
Encouraging us to get one for the Blackberry is all well and good, except its pre-order only, not shipping yet.
I wish the blackberry 'edition' was $99 (for black.) Then I'd get one. It seems disproportionate to the blackberry cost itself at $199
The question has been asked a couple times here - is there an answer?
The Arduino and this are two totally different classes of devices.
For staters, this appears to be very much about the hardware. I wouldn't expect it to be open source, just like the iPhone or Motorola Droid you can develop your own apps for doesn't have open source hardware. You don't actually have to be granted access to 100% of the codebase and hardware layout for a product just to develop a neat application around something.
I saw this and immediately thought of 5 or 6 cool uses for it so I bought one. Sure, if I was going to build some kind of a product around this, or develop an app that was going to be my retirement income, I'd want a little more information about the company and their licensing models. But for a $150 hackable gadget, this thing is one of the coolest toys I've seen in a while.
Also, Python is the language to program apps in? They only language?
Depending on how many items you ask for in order screen, it lets you go ahead or displays "stock unavailable".
For the Mettalic Silver, It seems 57 items are available at the time of writing. and for Black Anodized, it is 108. I have to take a reasonable assumption now to get the sales numbers (may be 200 at beginning?).
But when I do upgrade my venerable analog watch, it's probably going to be to a http://lunatik.com + ipod nano 6g. A little more expensive, requires a jailbreak, but a hell of a lot more functional, and doesn't require uploading my code anywhere to compile it once jailbroken.
Just because it doesn't run iOS doesn't mean you couldn't write code for it :)
1) the ipod nano 6g has not been jailbroken.
2) the ipod nano 6g has no bluetooth built in
This watch is a better fit for what i want to do now - get up and running now with a programmable wrist based terminal.
I love the design of the lunatik but until the nano 6g is jailbroken I'm just wearing a nano on my wrist. The novelty of which has worn off since I can't hack it to do anything special.