Category Archives: Gadgets

Sad Day For Pebble

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Black Pebble Time SteelYesterday the rumour from the weekend about Fitbit acquiring Pebble were confirmed. Sadly though, the details made it clear that Fitbit didn’t really acquire Pebble at all. They acquired Pebble’s software platform and are offering some of the engineers jobs at Fitbit. The hardware will no longer exist.

That is very sad as the closest thing Fitbit has to a smartwatch is the Blaze, and to be frank it is perhaps the ugliest smartwatch on the market. As the product page makes clear, it is really a wrist-worn fitness monitor first, second and third (though, somewhat ironically for a fitness device, it isn’t water proof beyond “sweat, rain and splash proof”). Then somewhere, much lower in the priority list they added a watch and some basic smartwatch features (answer/reject phone calls and see notifications). No mention of custom watch faces. No mention of third party apps – my Pebble is configured with one button access to my Nest so I can monitor and adjust the temperature in the house from my wrist. And there any many, many more apps for the Pebble platform that allow people to do what they want to with their watch.

I think Pebble have said it before, but they set out to design a watch first. Something that would look good, and work well as a watch. My current Pebble Time Steel looks like a watch. I’m hoping that as well as the platform, some of the design from the Pebble platform will start to appear in future Fitbit, but it is sad to realize that the features supported by my watch will start to degrade over time (either because of changes to iOS, or, as BoingBoing suggests, because cloud support features get turned off by Fitbit).

Fitbit have missed an opportunity IMHO in not taking the hardware designs forward too. Most of the things that I think put Pebble ahead of everybody, including Apple, were hardware features (water resistance, long battery life, always on screen, simple button based UI that actually works). Sure, there were some software features too (the web based developer environment was fantastic, the new iOS app looks great too, and, of course, the choices of third party watchfaces were amazing).

Over the years they had their bad moments too. Support was always a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes it was great, other times not so much. At the end of the day though, things normally improved (at least until the next iOS update broke them again – which is not Pebble’s fault at all).

Despite its shortcomings, it might actually be time to switch to an Apple watch. After several years of Pebble use (from the original Kickstarter edition, to a Pebble Steel, to a Pebble Time Steel, and I backed the PT2 as well), going without a smartwatch isn’t an option and not having it be waterproof and support basic apps is a non-starter too. So, sorry Fitbit, I’ll be sticking with my One for step tracking, but I don’t need a wrist-worn fitness tracker; I need a smartwatch.

When Cloud Based IoT Dies

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Update November 7, 2016:

It looks like the Lono cloud service is back online. This was not a normal outage however as their domain completely disappeared from DNS. The bigger question of what they will be doing to ensure that the device works locally, even when the cloud is unavailable still deserves an answer (and I filed a support ticket this evening asking both about the outage & about plans for graceful degradation of service should the cloud component fail again).

A while ago now I backed a project on Kickstarter that was creating a more modern sprinkler controller. That actually wasn’t hard to imagine since the user interface of the one our home’s builder attached to wall consisted of a rotating switch, some buttons and an LCD display which could handle numbers & a few other preset things. Like something from the 1980s.

That project was Lono, and, like most Kickstarters, it delivered late & somewhat incomplete. But the hardware looked good, was dead simple to install & seemed to work. The software less so. Over time, things improved a bit though.  I could access the controller, via the iPhone app, from anywhere. Scheduling was added, as was weather and a few other features. I don’t think I saw the truly smart scheduling that was promised, but it was delivering what I needed. Until today.

Cloud Dependency

Today, the Lono died. Well. More specifically, the cloud service behind the Lono died. Now the attractive black & green box on the wall of my garage is essentially useless. Obviously, that is frustrating because I can no longer control my sprinklers, even from home when my phone & the Lono are on the same network. But it frustrates me on another level too. These IoT devices are clearly more powerful when connected to the cloud, but they should not be designed to be dependent on that cloud to do anything. 

There is absolutely no reason why the Lono, discovering it could no longer reach its cloud based control center, couldn’t have dropped back to a LAN only mode. Whether the outage is caused by the company failing (which seems to be the case here), or other things (maybe an ISP failing, or being temporarily offline), there really is no excuse for these things to stop working based on their last known settings & reverting to more local control.

Kickstarter 

I’ve backed a number of different things on Kickstarter & Indiegogo. Typically, while they may have received firmware updates etc, only a couple were really dependent on a cloud based service & only Lono has failed. It does make me think I will be more wary of cloud backed IoT projects in future. Perhaps such projects will need to explain their plans for this scenario. At the very least, it would be good to see they’ve considered this & have some level of “disconnected” functionality baked in.

If they want to truly impress me, they should have hardware design, firmware & app software in an escrow service, with public (or at least customer) release triggered on company failure. Then, maybe, the community could rally around and perhaps continue support for these devices. 

Micro Suspension Scooter

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Our five year old started Kindergarten this autumn, and since his school is close enough to walk to, I had been planning to walk him every day (at least when it was dry, which is pretty much always in northern California these days). Dropping him off is not just a drop off though; instead they do a “morning read” session where parents are encouraged to stay and read to a group of kids. That was making it hard to get to the ferry on time, so I came up with a solution: the Micro Suspension scooter.

Research

After a lot of online research, I concluded that the Micro Suspension scooter was going to work best for my commute. Additionally, my five year old could scoot it on the way to school with me walking, making his route to school a bit easier too. I was hoping to get it from Amazon, but at the time I purchased it they were not selling the suspension model (they are now). I bought it direct from Micro Kickboard, but oddly I cannot find it on their site any longer.

The Good

We’ve had it for several weeks now, and overall it has been working out really well. The kid loves riding it to school, with the handlebars lowered. When we arrive, I can fold it and carry it into his classroom for the morning read session; then, when it is time for parents to leave, I simply unfold it, raise the handlebars and scoot to the ferry terminal. That ride takes a little over half the time it took me to walk, so I arrive in plenty of time for the boat.

Once in San Francisco, it also reduces my time to get to the office by about as much. The final climb up Bryant St I walk, but the rest of my route I can scoot easily. It is also saving me a fortune since I can’t ride it and drink a Starbucks, so I am bypassing the Starbucks completely and just drinking the office coffee instead (sorry Howard; if it is any consolation, the coffee I drink at the office is normally Starbucks Verona).

The combination of the large wheels & the suspension makes light work of even the bumpy San Francisco sidewalks. While not as smooth as some of the early reviews I read, the suspension helps a lot over the worst of the bumps and does not impact the handling at all as far as I can tell. 

The Bad

There is nothing really bad about the scooter. The only things I would say that could be even slightly negative are: (a) the weight of the scooter, for when you need to carry it, (b) the brake.

The weight was not more than I expected up front, and the suspension model does incur extra weight that could be skipped easily by simply getting something like a Micro Black or White instead, but carrying it too far would be tiring. On & off the ferry, or into my kid’s classroom is not a problem.

The brakes issue might be caused by the long, steep downhill from my office to Embarcadero in SF. Riding down the hill I tend to have the brake partly on to regulate my speed, and that seems to be causing some uneven wear on the rear wheel:


I don’t think it is causing any problems right now, but I was not expecting the brake pad to cause such uneven wear for sure. 

iOS 10 Tone Dialing

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Maybe this is not a common thing for folks to do with their phones these days, but I have a few numbers programmed into my contacts that include access codes, or similar, to be dialed after the main number. Some of them are conference service access sequences, one is a calling card from my home VoIP provider (CallCentric) that lets me make international calls at VoIP rates (a fraction of what AT&T would charge me if I just dialed direct from the phone) and one connects me to my mother’s SIP line in the UK via a service called SIP Broker, giving me free calls to her even when I am on my mobile phone here.

While I certainly could remember all the access codes, PINs and even my mother’s SIP number, it is much simpler to just program them into contacts so they are dialed automatically. This has worked beautifully on all my iPhones to date and even on my Android phones. Until iOS 10. When I first upgraded my iPhone 6s to iOS 10 GM, I noticed that the tone replay was much faster. I also noticed that SIP Broker was having trouble understanding it sometimes (I would estimate around 25% of the time). When the iPhone 7 arrived though, that failure rate jumped to 100%. I could not get these numbers to dial at all unless I did it manually.

I believe the tones are long enough on iOS 10, but I suspect the gaps between them are too short. That is somewhat confirmed by the fact that adding a pause between each digit allowed it to work (but it took nearly 30 seconds to dial the number!).

Analyzing the Tones

Since the tone replay is audible, I fired up Audacity on my Mac and simply recorded three phones replaying the tones to access the CallCentric test number via a local SIP Broker PSTN gateway:

(415) 594 0355,*462,17770000001

On the iPhone 7 (running iOS 10.0.2), the trace looked like this:

iPhone 7 / iOS 10

You can see from there that the gap between the tones is very, very short. In fact, just 5-10ms compared to a tone time of around 200ms. This reinforces the belief that it is the gap that is the problem.

For comparison, here is iOS 9 running on an iPhone 5c:

iPhone 5c / iOS 9

This one has slightly longer tone periods (about 250ms), but the gaps are much, much longer at around 100ms. That is 10x the length of the gaps on the iPhone 7.

Finally, I tried my Nexus 5X running Android 7 to see whether they’d had the same idea of reducing the gaps, but no, the Nexus has both longer tones (over 300ms of tone) and longer gaps (around 150ms):

Nexus 5X / Android 7

What Does the Spec Say?

So, there was always a chance that this is something that an engineer at Apple, for whatever reason, decided they could adjust to make their tone replay feature more compliant with a standard specification. Indeed, there is a specification for DTMF (pdf) from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). In that specification there are defined minimum durations for both the tone and the pause between tones.

The tone duration is defined like this:

Where the DTMF signalling tone duration is controlled automatically by the transmitter, the duration of any individual DTMF tone combination sent shall not be less than 65 ms. The time shall be measured from the time when the tone reaches 90 % of its steady-state value, until it has dropped to 90 % of its steady-state value.

The pause duration is defined like this:

Where the DTMF signalling pause duration is controlled automatically by the transmitter the duration of the pause between any individual DTMF tone combination shall not be less than 65 ms. The time shall be measured from the time when the tone has dropped to 10 % of its steady-state value, until it has risen to 10 % of its steady-state value.

So, that iPhone 7 time, looks to me to be well below the minimum pause time!

iPhone 7 Thoughts

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apple-iphone7Disclaimers up front: I do not have one, and have not seen one in real life yet. I have one pre-ordered (but won’t get it until October). These thoughts are mostly based on reviews and articles online.

Up until tonight, it wasn’t clear how successful this iPhone launch was going to be. The hardware design was certainly not significantly different from the previous two generations; something of a diversion from the previous rhythm of a new physical look every other year. Tonight though Apple seems to have announced that the iPhone 7 Plus models are totally sold out in pre-order (all colors), as is the jet black color iPhone 7. That suggests that there was still plenty of demand for the new phone.

There were clues: the jet black 7 was showing delivery into October less than half an hour after pre-ordering opened. The website & store apps were also struggling during that early period of ordering. Of course, the cynical will state that selling out can be a result of having too few available, intentionally or otherwise, as well as because of demand. Unless we get sales numbers from somewhere, there is no way to answer that.

The announcement, while much of it had leaked ahead of time (Apple’s famous security seems to be struggling to contain the details these days), has a few interesting points, some controversial, others less so.

Headphone Jack

Let’s get the most controversial (apparently) issue out of the way first: the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack. Who cares? Really, why are you not using wireless headphones already? For the few occasions when you can’t, use the adapter or the included lightning headset. Apparently, most people just use the included headphones with their phones anyway, so for the majority this is totally a non-issue; for the rest, get a Bluetooth headset or headphones. Using Bluetooth headphones also resolves the charging while listening issue (I do it all the time in the office).

I have a set of Tzumi sports buds that I use for calls and listening to music on my commute. In the office, I use a set of AncStudio Noise Canceling headphones which, while not being the best noise canceling headphones out there, seem pretty reasonable to me (our CEO and VP of Engineering play Jenga a few feet from my desk, and the AncStudio noise canceling is good enough to totally mute the sound of collapsing Jenga towers). They claim to be able to work for calls too, but my experience with that has been disappointing (people say it is hard to hear me clearly and I usually switch to the Tzumi ones for calls now).

For more serious listening, I bought a Voxoa BTunes adapter for my Bose QC-3 headphones, though if I was buying headphones today I would probably go for the new Bose QC-35 ones with Bluetooth built in. Both options get you a microphone too, and unlike the AncStudio experience, the BTunes adapter on my QC-3 works well for calls.

What About AirPods?

Seriously? Fancy Bluetooth extensions aside, these seem more than a bit overpriced, especially for something that just looks odd. My Tzumi ones cost me less than $20 (on sale at Old Navy believe it or not), and while I’m sure they don’t sound as good as the AirPods, they were simple to pair with my phone, connect instantly I switch them on and they stay in my ears better than any of Apple’s headphones have ever done. They also sound just fine to me for what I use them for.

Jet Black

This was a tough one for me. My decision was always between black and jet black, but the susceptibility to scratches worried me. In the end though, I fell for the shiny object and plunked for jet black. I keep my phones in sleeve cases, so they are well protected in my pocket, but naked in use. My iPhone 6 & 6s have lived in a sleeve from Joli Originals which has worked really well. The iPhone 7 will start in the same sleeve, but I might treat it to a new one in a month or so 🙂

Cameras

I still believe the iPhone 7 Plus is too large for me, so despite the new dual camera trick being interesting, the camera that I looked for improvements in was the one in the smaller phone. OIS was a nice addition there, as was the new optics.

I do wish they’d remove the bump though (a slightly thicker phone would be fine IMHO), but I notice it more because I use the phone without a case. So, when I put it down I have to remember to place it on the case rather than directly on the desk. (On a positive note, that behaviour pattern, already learned from the 6/6s, will hopefully keep the jet black finish looking good for longer.)

As for the effects available with the twin camera design, I carry my tiny, but exceptionally powerful, Canon S120 almost everywhere. I’m pretty sure it will outperform even the fancy dual camera setup in the iPhone 7 Plus.

Water Resistant

I’m not sure how much I care about this, but I do think it is about time a premium phone like the iPhone was at the very least water resistant. I was shocked when the first generation of Apple Watch was not truly waterproof (something I see they fixed for the second generation). I don’t expect to swim with my phone, so water resistant is fine.

Storage Upgrades

A big factor in my decision to upgrade was the fact that the 128GB storage drops from the top price tier to the middle tier. That means my monthly payments for the new phone will be lower than for the old one, even with the same storage (and I don’t really need 128GB – I still have plenty of space even with the 7000+ photos and videos I have on it).

Wearable Health

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For a few years now I have “worn” a Fitbit One (carried in a pocket at least) most days. Relatively recently, my Pebble Time Steel watch added step tracking too. So, now I am typically wearing two devices that track my daily steps. Comparing them provides some interesting differences.

In a typical week, the Pebble tends to read slightly higher than the Fitbit, mostly because I wear it all night for the sleep tracking feature (sleep tracking is a whole separate article), so it captures anywhere up to 1000 extra steps that the Fitbit misses while I am not wearing it. 

Los Angeles Vacation 

Last week I was on vacation in LA with my family. The week consisted of a few different types of days that really highlight some of the differences. 

Here is the Pebble Health view of the week in Los Angeles:


That’s a pretty consistent number of daily steps. Monday an Friday we were at Disneyland & Disney California Adventure respectively, and we walked a lot. Tuesday through Thursday we were at the Great Wolf Lodge, and spent a lot of time in their indoor water park. While that involved some walking, it certainly didn’t feel anywhere close to the Disney park days. (The Sunday at the start & Saturday at the end were spent driving there & back, but we made several stops.)

The Fitbit captured a very different view of the week:


The most obvious difference is the much higher values for Monday and Friday, but also notice Tuesday through Thursday are lower on the Fitbit. 

Why the Differences?

The three days with low numbers while at the water park hotel are the easiest to explain: the Fitbit One is not waterproof, so it spent all the time we were in the pool areas locked in our hotel room. So, all the walking between pools and around the pools with the kids were missed. The Pebble is waterproof and I wore it the entire time we were in the pool. Not being waterproof is, in my opinion at least, a big limitation for a health tracking device. It is also pretty important for a watch!

The huge discrepancy on the Disney days might have had me puzzled if I hadn’t seen this before. The Fitbit is in my pocket, but the Pebble is on my wrist. While we were at Disney we had a stroller for our two year old and for some of the time each day I was pushing her around in it. Anchoring my wrist. I have seen this before with strollers as well as shopping carts. It seems to be a limitation of wrist worn step trackers.

Regular Weeks

On regular weeks, the differences are mostly irrelevant though. Here is the Pebble’s view of this week:


And the Fitbit saw this:


The first three days of this week have been regular commute days for me, walking between home/office and either the ferry terminal or bus stop. Tuesday I took the bus in to work (the bus terminal in SF is much closer to our office than the ferry terminal). 

Smarthome; Forgetful Inhabitant

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Red Flashing LightA few weeks back I forgot to close the garage door. Not when we were leaving the house, but when we were already at home. A long time ago I upgraded lots of our house to have Insteon switches and sensors. The garage door has a switch/sensor combo on it so that I can both open & close the door from anywhere with Internet connectivity, and also see the current status on my phone. I also have it send me push notifications when the door opens or closes. When we leave the house, I am now trained to expect the closed message on my Pebble, and if I don’t get it, check.

We did that because I can’t count the number of times I was asked whether the door was closed when we were half a mile from the house, and we had to turn around and go back to check. But, when we’re at home, I don’t pay as much attention to the notifications. Hence the garage was left open one night (and my wife’s car, which was unlocked, was rifled through as were some boxes on a shelf near the open door – nothing was taken though, so I guess we don’t have anything valuable out there, or they were disturbed).

My Solution?

Since the garage door announces over the Insteon system when it opens and closes, my solution was simple: get a giant red flashing light (the one shown above) and an Insteon On/Off module to switch it on and off. Place this in the kitchen and “connect” the on/off switch to the garage door sensor via the Insteon network. Now, all the time the garage door is open, the red light flashes in the kitchen. As soon as the door closes, it goes off.

Smart home saves forgetful owner (again).

Pebble Thoughts

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Black Pebble Time SteelIt is always a sad day when a company needs to trim staff, but at the same time it is sometimes very necessary to make sure expenses are inline with expected revenue. Today Pebble announced they were cutting 40 people from their workforce (25%). That’s a deep first cut, so hopefully for those left it will be the only one. The smart watch market is a strange one though. Even with the Apole watch (or perhaps partly because of it), the mass market adoption has been slow. 

What Pebble Does Well

Full disclosure here, I’ve had three Pebbles now (an original, from the first Kickstarter campaign), a Steel and now a Time Steel. For me the Time Steel is still my preferred smart watch. It isn’t perfect, and we’ll come back to that later, but it does everything I need. 

Battery life is top of the list for me. Even with plenty of notifications each day, I am getting over s week between charges. That is fantastic for somebody who carries two phones always (and sometimes more if I am testing things for work). Less devices to forget to charge every night is better. 

Close second would be the always on screen. I don’t want to have to make a conscious effort to look at the time. A quick glance gets me the time, and it is even clearer in sunlight than not. At night, I do still need to move my wrist to get the backlight, but a gentle twist works.

Notifications are the “killer app” for me, and the Pebble excels at them. If they appear on my iPhone’s lock screen, they appear on the watch. If the phone rings (very rare occurrence for my phone), I can see the caller ID on my watch & accept or decline the call (if I accept, I still need to get the phone out or put on the headset to actually talk). Since I am on AT&T, I also get the option of voice replies to text messages. That works most of the times I’ve tried it, but I don’t find myself using it much.

Waterproof. It is really waterproof. I can swim in it and not worry. 

What Could Be Better

The screen. Perhaps this is a case of the low power displays just not being as high density yet, but a really high density display (say 4x the number of pixels) would really shine. As would having the screen fill more of the face area; the large bezels are not great.

The software. Connectivity issues have been an issue for me on all my Pebbles and while the phone side is at least partly outside of their control, keeping the two devices connected and talking is job number one for a smartwatch. Additionally, not interfering with other Bluetooth devices is a must. Especially headsets and Bluetooth audio devices, both of which I have had issues with along the way. 

I would like to see some of the health information, like step counts, be included in watchfaces (maybe this can already be done and I just need to find, or write, a face that does it).

The Other Stuff

Health metrics is becoming a bigger space it seems, and Pebble was certainly late to the party. The activity & sleep tracking in the newer watches is a good start though. Personally, heart rate tracking doesn’t bother me, but that is not true for all. (If I had it, maybe I would feel differently too).

Timeline is another thing I don’t really use. The concept is good, but I am much more notification driven. Well timed calendar notifications work much better than me remembering to scan a list of events. 

Watch design is something I’ve seen Pebble be criticized for. The Time Steel looks OK to me & in fact is often mistaken for an Apple Watch at first, even by folks wearing an Apple Watch. The only real criticism of the design is the bezels. Smaller would be much appreciated! The screen really needs to get as close as possible to the outside edges of the face. I think the three new watches are a big step forward in design from the first two & I hope the design aspect will continue to improve. The look of the watch is very important. 

Carrying on from the look of the watch, the bands on the Time range (and the original Pebble) are all standard ones, with the included band on the Time watches coming with quick release pins. My Time Steel is on a third party nylon mesh band, and there are so many options out there at every price point and in all materials that it is hard to choose. If you go with quick release (sadly not available for my nylon band, though I am planning a mod to fix that), then you can change them in seconds for a different look.

Apps on the watch are not a big deal for me. I have two that I use (assigned to the shortcut buttons): the built in Health app for tracking  sleep & activity and Leaf, an app that connects to our home Nest devices. There are lots more available, but few that I really want on my wrist. Definitely not any web content reading or video apps!

Watch faces are something I’ve tried lots of (though still a tiny percentage of what is available in the store). I have my favourites, and switch between them occasionally. I also take a look in the store quite often to see what is new. 

The Future

I hope this downsizing is indeed a “right sizing” and Pebble can keep going strong. They have come so far, and I believe continue to supply something that the other contenders still cannot match (always on screen & a week of battery life), it would a shame to see them fail now.

The mass market appeal of wearables though is much harder to pin down. Health & fitness tracking will appeal to some, but I fear the things I value most in my Pebble will never be seen as more than nice to have (if that) by most people. Maybe the key to success for now is targeting the early adopter with a slightly higher end product. Early adopters will pay  more than the mass market & will upgrade more frequently. I am hoping Pebble isn’t planning to morph into another fitness tracking company with watch features.

Apple vs Law Enforcement

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I’ve said a few things about this on Twitter already, but what amazes me here is that they are not asking Apple to turn over the key, or even to decrypt the data using a key they already have. Instead, they are trying to say they can force a private company to dedicate resources to writing a special version of their software, installing it on a device and then allowing the FBI remote access to the device.

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Android Marshmallow / GMail Data Use

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I upgraded my Nexus 5 to the latest Android version. 6.0 aka Marshmallow, and didn’t really think much of it. Then, on Monday, I needed to run a test on some software that required the Wi-Fi to be turned off. I noticed at the time that the GMail app was having some problems; I received regular crash notifications from it (while it was running in the background).

Then tonight I checked in on my test and was surprised to see an Android mobile data warning in the notifications area. Tapping through, I saw that in the last few days I have consumed ~5GB of mobile data. On a phone that has been sitting on my desk without me touching it. The culprit? You guessed it, the GMail app was responsible for almost the entire 5GB. In less than five days.

Massive Data Consumption

I also received an OS update this evening, and since then the GMail app seems happier. I am back on Wi-Fi now though and will continue to monitor it. Had I been on a 3GB plan, I would have been more than a little annoyed (and had to pay for the extra data). As it happens, this phone is on a 20GB shared plan, so I have some headroom.