Hackaday Newsletter 0x32

[Hackaday] Lost Moon Found: The Satellite That Came Back to Life [Read article now »] Shake up in Wearables By [Mike Szczys] Pebble is no more. The most hackable smart watch company that began with a hugely successful Kickstarter, delivered on their promises (with more than one model and production run), and ultimately saw its estimated value peak and then drop, has [ceased all hardware production]. Just one day before the official announcement Alasdair Allan looked into [the demise of Pebble as a platform], citing the Smartstrap as a good idea before its time that simply failed to get developer and 3rd-party-company buy-in necessary to make it a success. He also foreshadowed the ramifications of FitBit's acquisition of the company. Pebble 2 and Pebble Core were both successful Kickstarter campaigns that haven't yet fully shipped. Backers will get refunds instead of hardware. FitBit will continue online services for existing Pebble watches for now. But they will not honor warranties and we think it's inevitable they will phase out server support, crippling the features that depend on them. This type of user-base scorn becomes a formidable challenge for future companies trying to build widespread adoration of IoT. From The Blog [Abacus Drive is a Speed-to-Torque Game-Changer] By [Joshua Vasquez] Apart from the harmonic drive, the engineering community hasn’t really come up with any clever mechanisms for speed-to-torque conversion in the last... [Read more »] [The Demise of Pebble as a Platform] By [Alasdair Allan] Despite owning five, including the original Pebble, I’ve always been somewhat skeptical about smart watches. Even so, the leaked news that Fitbit is buying... [Read more »] [You Can Have My LM386s When You Pry Them From My Cold Dead Hands] By [Elliot Williams] Everyone has a chip-of-shame: it’s the part that you know is suboptimal but you keep using it anyway because it just works well enough. Maybe it’s not what you... [Read more »] If You Missed It [Thwomp Drops Brick on Retro Gaming] [Self-Driving Cars Are Not (Yet) Safe] [Taking It To Another Level: Making 3.3V Speak with 5V] [Sporty Cars Making Fake Engine Noise] [Make Your Own Nuclear Battery] [Hackaday] NEVER MISS A HACK [Share] [Share] [Share] [Share] [Terms of Use] [Privacy Policy] [Hackaday.io] [Hackaday.com] This email was sent to [{EMAIL}] [why did I get this?] [unsubscribe from this list] [update subscription preferences] SupplyFrame, Inc · 51 West DAYTON ST · Suite 100 · Pasadena, Ca 91105 · USA