Recycling Rebbles

Companies might claim that keeping devices running in their twilight years is too expensive, but vigilante self-support groups show it’s possible.

Pebble is a good example – a smartwatch firm that was bought by Fitbit, which eventually shut down the servers providing the platform for two million Pebble devices.

That could have been the end of the story, but Pebble had a community willing to fight, or at least code, for their watches. Between the acquisition and the servers being turned off 18 months later, the “Rebble Alliance” worked frantically to document critical APIs and development tools.

“Pebble didn’t make sense as a Fitbit product, so they did not keep making it, but we’ve had support from Pebblers inside Fitbit, and Fitbit itself,” said Joshua Ward, a coder on the project. “For instance, right after the acquisition, Pebble and Fitbit added support to the apps for custom ‘boot servers’, which is the functionality that made Rebble possible.” possible ”

The first replacement app ap store appeared the day after Fitbit turned off the original servers and within days they had firmware, core apps and third-party apps, as well as development tools to keep the project active.

There are now more than 212,000 Rebble accounts, or one for every ten Pebbles ever sold, and almost 9,000 subscribers pay a monthly contribution towards covering costs, which include annual $750,000 fees per 100,000 users to cover APIs for voice dictation and weather.

Despite this strong start, Ward admits that it will struggle to continue as hardware ages beyond repair. However, the project has already saved 200,000 devices from the e-waste pile.