My personal Core 2 Duo, featuring irek’s beautiful Brutal watchface

Hopefully you have pre-ordered a Core 2 Duo watch - if not, you can still grab one here. Thank you for your support!

Project Updates:

• Core 2 Duo is nearing mass production! We’re on track to ship out all pre-orders in July and August.
• Core Time 2 is on schedule, aiming to have working engineering samples within the next month.
• If you pre-ordered a Core 2 Duo - you will receive an email later in June to confirm your shipping address and to pay duties/tariffs/taxes for your country.
• We’ll be shipping out the first 200 Core 2 Duos over the next few weeks
• Apply to join the beta test!
• The new iOS and Android app will work with old Pebble watches - no more sideloading!
• Catch a glimpse of the firmware development kit at the bottom of this post
• ICYMI: the second episode of my podcast Tick Talk came out last month

Shaky-cam footage from the 200 unit test build production line

Things are moving quickly!

We just built 200 Core 2 Duos. We'll begin sending some of them out to early pre-order customers over the next few weeks.

Who will be the first to receive them? Potentially you - if you opt-in to our beta test and are selected. We're looking for willing and able volunteers to help test the new watch hardware, software and mobile apps. 

You can join the test even if you didn’t pre-order a Core 2 Duo - if you have an old working Pebble Time (Steel/Round) or Pebble 2 watch, you can join the beta to help test the new iOS and Android mobile app. Our new new app works with your old Pebble!

Are you a Pebble watchface/app developer, or want to be? We'd love to get you a watch sooner so you can try it out, especially if you don't have any working Pebbles left!

Beta Tester Rules/Requirements:

• You must be a kind, generally positive and optimistic person
• Must have patience and be willing to use the very, very first version of the mobile app (rough around edges, design won't look great, not all features built yet, etc) and report a lot of bugs and send us your thoughts (privately).
• If you are looking to get this early just to post screenshots and videos publicly or be negative on twitter/youtube/etc, don't sign up. This is not the beta test for you.
• Don't expect new features yet. Right now we’re aiming for feature-parity with original Pebble experience. Please don’t be frustrated or complain if we haven't built the features you care about yet - they will come eventually!
• Willing to join a WhatsApp (or potentially Discord) group to read updates and stay in touch
• Good eye for detail
• Good at reading and following instructions
• Willing to submit detailed bug reports when you run into an issue (including screenshots, videos/photos of your watch showing issues)
• Able to answer follow up questions from our team and re-test after we fix the problem

Sorry for making this sound harsh, but I'd rather be honest and not waste anyone’s time. This is actually going to be a lot of fun (for the right person)! I just want to make sure we're on the same page.

If you don’t get selected for this first round of testing, don’t worry. We will gradually open this up to many more people.

Apply to be a beta tester!

New on my desk this week is our firmware development kit! We’re going to be selling this circuit board as an optional accessory for embedded developers who want to safely experiment with PebbleOS (it’s open source!) on their C2D (and hopefully fix bugs and build new features 😃). You will need experience with embedded development (or no experience and a lot of time on your hands) in order to use it properly. If you pick this option, your Core 2 Duo will not have the back cover assembled so you can plug in the firmware development kit.

Keep in mind this is ONLY needed if you want to modify and debug the firmware on your watch. You do not need this if you want to develop apps for PebbleOS. In fact, you technically don’t even need this to develop firmware - you can update PebbleOS on fully assembled C2D just fine over Bluetooth. This development kit simply makes the process faster and gives you access to a UART console to get realtime logs off the watch.

You will be able to add this later in June to your pre-order before your watch ships out.

In case you missed it, the second episode of my podcast Tick Talk came out last month: