What you need to know
- The RePebble project, which aims to get PebbleOS running on new hardware, is already well underway.
- Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky has already got the operating system running on a test board with new hardware.
- Migicovsky is traveling to Shenzhen, China to explore new hardware with factories and suppliers next week.
Pebble, the fondly-remembered lightweight smartwatch with basic features and long battery life, is making a comeback. Last week, Google open-sourced PebbleOS, and Pebble’s founder Eric Migicovsky vowed to get it running on new hardware. That effort is already underway, and an update from Migicovsky reveals that the Core Devices team has already gotten PebbleOS working on fresh components.
As you can see in the image below, the open-sourced PebbleOS is running on a test board with a small, monochromatic screen. Migicovsky’s team at Core Devices LLC, a new company, includes a Rebble board member and Cobble developer. Other original Pebble contributors are helping out as part of the project to revive the brand, too.
For hardware, Migicovsky warns smartwatch fans not to get their hopes up. “It’s going to be a Pebble and almost exactly as you remember it, except now with open source software that can you can modify and improve yourself,” writes Migicovsky on his blog. “More hardware details will be shared in the future.”
As of now, the RePebble project team is exploring the nRF52840 chipset for hardware. The silicon has a 64 MHz Cortex-M4 with FPU, 1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM, a 2.4 GHz Transceiver, Bluetooth Low Energy, and Bluetooth mesh, according to a listing for the chip on Nordic Semiconductor.
The next step for Pebble’s revival is for the team to start exploring what it would take to build new hardware for PebbleOS. Migicovsky is traveling to Shenzhen, China to meet with factories and suppliers for the hardware next week. In his original RePebble announcement, Migicovsky wrote: “If enough people are interested, we’ll build it.”
Now that PebbleOS is open-sourced, the community can help with the project. There are small, medium, and big projects listed on Migicovsky’s blog post that developers or tinkerers of any skill level can try out. All updates to PebbleOS are hosted on the Core Devices LLC’s GitHub repository.
It’s all possible thanks to Google’s work open-sourcing PebbleOS. “Thank you again to Google for this huge contribution to the Pebble community,” Migicovsky writes.
If you’ve forgotten about Pebble over the years, or are hearing about it for the first time, check out Android Central’s review of the Pebble Time back in 2015.