Sadly he only has the same ones available, as he did 3 years ago.
BUT! The mini stars are on sale.
don't do this as I will, I have a bit of schooling on it.
I might have to try a selfo on that one in my wrist
.
Yep I already plan on taking it out once itās no longer bright but Iāll be keeping it and probably framing it (Iām sad like that).
Honestly itās my favourite implant it glows with no power and no input from me in the future I may look at a hayworth thing but for now Iām happy.
3 Likes
Donāt get me wrong, I would do the same thing too. I have an old (old when I bought it) US army compass with tritium vials all over it. Some are still ridiculously bright others are almost impossible to see. (I also have a WWII RAF compass of the model that would have been fitted in a Spitfire).
I just donāt think I would implant one myself. I am not knocking those who do, but I am glad, for your sake, that you carry a scalpel in case.
Since Iāve discussed other PINE64 products in this thread, and Iām decently happy with them (especially the Pinecil soldering iron), I thought Iād discuss another product from them that I got in the mail yesterday. Hoping that someone will at least find it interesting.
Itās the PineTime. Itās an open-source smartwatch, works on android, iOS, or Linux. There are several community firmwares, but the most popular by far is InfiniTime, based on FreeRTOS. Itās meant to be an open-source replacement for the Pebble. It has support for notification sync, music controls, timer, stopwatch heart rate monitoring & pedometer, and navigation (although the navigation is a WIP). It has a few games and other toys (such as a metronome), but all of the āappsā must be compiled into the firmware at the moment. No app store.
I currently use a Fitbit versa, but I only use it for notifications, clock, and music controls. I tend to use my phone for exercise tracking anyways, as I often forget my watch. So, the feature set is pretty close to what I need.
Itās surprisingly snappy, and thereās never any UI lag or anything. Itās all instant.
It comes either as an individual sealed watch (for waterproofing), or as a dev kit, which comes with two watches. One sealed, one unsealed. This is nice, as the unsealed one has the SWD pins exposed.
While it supports OTA updates and flashing over Bluetooth, if youāre trying to develop your own firmware, itās necessary to have the programming pins to recover from a brick. So, test on the unsealed watch first, if all is good, flash to the sealed one. If youāre just planning on using existing firmwares, InfiniTime includes a lightweight recovery environment and a robust bootloader, so bricking is unlikely.
The single sealed unit is $27, and the devkit is $50 (comes with a basic programming jig, too).
IMO, a platform agnostic open-source smartwatch is a neat idea, and Iām really happy with mine so far. I really miss my old Pebble, and this fills that gap for me. It also already works with the PinePhone, thanks to a linux companion app. On android, it uses Gadgetbridge, which is also open-source, available on F-droid.
A little bonus: Since I was already paying for shipping from china, I picked up a few other goodies, including a clear casing for my Pinecil. The little plastic screen cover had also gotten cracked on the old casing in transit, so I needed a new one anyways.
I think it looks really cool 
I also picked up one of their PinePower 65W USB power supplies. Wanted this as a supply for my pinecil since I was just using my laptop charger before, and itāll also be a good backup in case something happens to my laptop charger. Itās also really nice for the price, recommended if anyone is in need of a supply. It has two type-Cs, and one type A. All of the ports can deliver the full power (not all at once), so you donāt have to constantly check which port to use.
I also picked up 2 silicone type C cables for the Pinecil, so I donāt have to worry about catching a fabric cable on fire, or melting a rubber one. They were only $4, figured why not.
3 Likes
I am curious about the pine time but as I already have a mi band 6 it seems like apart from the open source aspects it provides less functionality than my current āwatchā.
Thanks for the review.
My mom came to visit, and she had cake - so, sorry for the delay 
It definitely depends. In summer time, when it can āchargeā a lot, it keeps on shining pretty much all night long. If I wear longsleeves or have little exposure to light, it shines for some hours at least. But itās not thaaaat bright - I mean, in a dark room, itās super visible and bright, but if there is some external light, itās definitely less visible. Dunno if it can be seen in a club, for example - thanks to f*ing covid, I had no chance to try that out yet 
If you charge it with a UV-lamp or something like that, itās definitely very visible even in a normally lit room 
Totally true. Thing is, I know itās not radioactive, that oneās for sure
About toxicityā¦ well. Iām pretty sure itās okay, but I canāt really say what material itās made of - but at least itās covered by an extra layer of ānormalā silicone, so the glowy stuff is not really touching my body. And to be honest, I finally decided that if my artist says itās okay, Iām just gonna trust him.
But yeeeah, youāre right with your statement, I admit that
Outer or inner side? On the outer side it might be okay, as the stars are very flat - a small incision should suffice, plus a little pocket. And you usually know what youāre doing
On the inner side, I personally would be careful because of all the important stuff thereā¦
Oh, and Iām definitely not sure if the stars will shine through skin, since they are so flat - my artist said they are mostly suitable for hands or head placements only. But if you try it out, please keep me updated on how it works!
1 Like
Did you check it?
Thatās the fun about radioactivityā¦ itās quite invisible
And unless you have a Geiger youād never really know
I know you trust your guy, and his processā¦ just saying most people donāt realize bananas or concrete are radioactive
Those negative ion products @amal found are terrifyingā¦
I remember the British government advice on Chernobyl fallout that should be considered low level waste was so wonderfully cautious that it basically included garden soil.
But if the glow on this fades overnight and recharges when exposed to light then it probably isnāt using radioactivity to cause its glow. (And no, that doesnāt mean that the implant isnāt. But it is not deliberately radioactive)
nope its silicone doped with a standard phosphor powder
1 Like
I wasnāt saying that it IS
Itās probably just using aluminum strontium or something similar
Just musing on the āI know it isnāt radioactiveā
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Like the thin skin of my wrist. Palm side.
Sounds like you do too. Pretty much my plan. Buy a #11, go through the skin, pocket it in a bit with a taper, and tuck the star in. Shouldnāt have to make to big of an incision at all.
Judging by the pics, I wasnāt either. I figure my best chance is in that area.
Oh neat. I loved my Kickstarter Pebble so much I bought a second oneā¦ I was very sad to see it die and have to āupgradeā, but I have a Samsung Frontier S3 now and itāsā¦ reliable. and huge. the bloody thing has been a brick tied to my arm for the last 5 yearsā¦
5 Likes
I bought a pebble on ebay not long afterwards and loved that thing, was sad the day I ate shit on a longboard and fucked it
I did and am really considering purchasing one after your review
3 Likes
Yeah, for that price itās worth trying out even if you are just mildly interestedā¦
3 Likes
After seeing @darthdomo 's and others talk of the Pinebook I was going to preorder the Pinetab as Iāve been looking for a decent tablet and figured Iād give it a shot over spending $300 minimum for a decent android tablet. But alas they were out of stock before I could
1 Like
Honestly, I think thatās for the best sadly. Itās got the same hardware as the PinePhone I believe, but a large screen and no modem.
While I find the PinePhone to be a really interesting device, and fun to mess with, IMO itās not at all ready for daily use for the majority of people. It canāt even really play youtube well in my experience.
I can respect the effort to get a tablet working too, and while it might be interesting with the keyboard for doing command line stuff, it would likely be awful for normal every-day tablet uses.
It is getting better though, and I hope at one point they can get it to the point of being usable. A lot of the work left is with software optimization, which can be and is being worked on.
2 Likes
My Pebble 1 sadly suffered a long and painful death, due to the screen failing. Black lines started to appear, I think (itās been a long time). I got mine a while after the Kickstarter days, at Best Buy. Think the Pebble Time had already released.
I really loved it, it had a charming but utilitarian feel to it. Especially compared to the comparatively laggy and bloated Android Wear watches Iāve tried, it felt a lot nicer.
The PineTime recaptures that feeling for me. It has a little bit of a ways to go in terms of matching the featureset (mainly with loading user apps), but otherwise, it feels similar to me. The developer of InfiniTime has been posting regular updates, so hopefully itāll just keep getting better.
My only issue so far has been with the Bluetooth low energy connection on my Pixel 4a, running the Android 12 beta. Itāll occasionally cut out and not want to reconnect. This was especially annoying when I was trying to load the newest firmware over Bluetooth.
Iām fairly certain this is a bug with the Android 12 Beta though, as I used my momās Moto G7 Power running android 10 I think, and it had no issues at all (thatās how I ended up getting the firmware loaded). It comes with a very old version of InfiniTime at the moment, although Pine64 is reportedly loading a newer version on the individually shipped watches (not the dev kits).
Iām planning on rolling my phone back to Android 11 anyways, so hopefully thatāll fix it. Iāve had a lot of Bluetooth-related bugs on Android 12, hopefully they get solved by the time of final release.
1 Like
I also have a frontier, and I love it, I dont find it large personally, but I have normally worn bulky dive watches over the years.
I am not a huge fan of Tizen as the OS but I have heard that the Galaxy Watch 4 will run android.
I totally get the Pebble and PineTime concept, I considered one myself but I am equally happy with an out of the box does that does everything I want.
There is a huge price difference thoughā¦
You could buy ~26 PineTimes for one Samsung Galaxy Watch 3
1 Like
My main thing with smart watches in general is I try not to use them for anything too convenient like the type of convenient Iād be pissed to not have (sending text, answering calls. I tend to forget to charge them/bring them altogether so simple telling time and music control/displaying notifs is all I need
3 Likes