The Amp Hour

An Interview With Andrew Witte - Telistic Timepiece Technomania

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Welcome Andrew Witte, CTO of Pebble Technology!

  • The Pebble watch was the largest Kickstarter campaign to date, raising over $10 million and having over 68,000 backers.
  • The company was started by  Eric Migicovsky as a grad student, Andrew joined a year before the KS campaign.
  • The first project was called the inPulse (the one in the picture above), which worked with Blackberry devices.
  • There have been others such as the Spot watch and the Meta Watch. There are many others out there, as well as other wearable technologies.
  • Power consumption is the absolute highest priority.
  • The screen is a Sharp memory LCD display. This is a "memory in pixel" device. It is manufactured using a TFT process.
  • Chris didn't know much about LCDs, Ben Krasnow  recently made a video showing how to make DIY ones.
  • FCC and CE were the main regulations Pebble needed to pass. The Bluetooth module meant they needed to pass the Part C "Intentional Emitter" test, similar to how Jeri talked about when she was on the show recently.
  • There is a developer marketplace for firmware (for the native on-watch apps) and for android (for the companion phone apps).
  • The watch uses FreeRTOS.
  • At first they had planned to manufacture locally, but the success of the campaign made them decide to move to China. They hired Scott Miller and Dragon Innovation to help with the manufacturing transition.
  • There is a Kickstarter update photo of a $1M purchase order.
  • Not all KS projects work out as planned; Lockitron (the team are friends of pebble) ended up getting rejected and built SelfStarter.
  • Every unit is pressure tested and tested underwater (for now, soon will just be air tested).
  • Moved the Bluetooth from a module to circuit on board (and saved lots of money).
  • The Lithium Polymer batteries are manufactured like capacitors. The Pebble has custom batteries because of this.
  • The Pebble shown in the Kickstarter video was 1 of 3 prototypes. It had a 3D printed screen which cost $1000+ to manufacture.
    • Many thanks to Andrew for being on the show and talking about the intricacies of developing and manufacturing the Pebble watch. We can't wait to see what comes from them next!
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    The Amp HourBy The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)
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