I tried reporting this over email and while they were very generous with help on other matters, they didn’t seem to want to take this one seriously so I figured I’d submit it as feedback instead as this is clearly a mechanical issue, not any kind of software issue, so they wouldn’t have been able to help anyways.
I feel this is a very significant issue that deserves to be fixed before the next batch if possible - or perhaps my index is defective and most don’t behave this way.
Basically, the tactile click does not reliably match the actuation/release of the switch’s signal. I haven’t noticed it with actuation yet, but it very frequently happens with release unless I hold it hard enough to hurt my finger a bit. If I soften my hold on the button at all then it risks stopping the recording earlier despite no tactile release and then starting a new recording despite no new tactile actuation.
I’ve included a screenshot of my notes log that shows a series of chopped up messages and then a couple ones that were too short to be able to transcribe - those 5 messages were part of one tactile actuation/release cycle.
Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal in a product, but the whole point of the Pebble Index is to capture important thoughts immediately and reliably - it’s a bummer to need to press as hard as I can just to minimize the chance of the button failing, with no way to know whether it worked until I check my phone (or if I notice the dim green light on the ring flash) and then I’d have to start over.
Interested to see if other people run into the same issue or whether mine might just be a little wonky.
No it can’t be just a debounce issue unfortunately as that would present as only at the beginning or end of the recording, but as you can see from the screenshot it’s happening in the middle of the message as well. It could perhaps be debounce in addition to some mechanical mismatch between the signal and tactile release, but debounce alone couldn’t solve this.
How so? With a mechanical switch, no amount of debounce will change the threshold for the amount of pressure needed for the switch itself to be in a closed state. That would only work with an analog trigger, which I doubt the ring has
Yes. It’s almost certainly a digital microswitch. But also the issue yoi’re describing wouldn’t even be debounce, that would be an activation threshold issue.
I am, of course, assuming that it is a digital switch instead of an analog one. It is the most likely situation IMO but it’s not impossible that they used an analog one. Since there’s no schematics and the fw is closed source I don’t have any way to actually verify that on my own
Folks, we’re getting a little off topic. I can really obviously trigger it to actuate/release over and over by giving it more or less force without releasing the tactile click - it’s really not feasible to solve that much of a gap between the signal actuation level and the mechanical actuation with purely software.
Here’s a clearer description of the problem (with contrived force units based on subjective experience):
After mechanically depressing the button, if I keep holding with less than 10 units of force then it mechanically releases the button. If I hold with less than 12 units of force then it stops the recording and blinks the lights etc. If I fluctuate between 14 and 11 units of force then it turns on and off without mechanically releasing the button.
There’s clearly a gap in the wrong direction between the signal release and the mechanical release. Ideally you’d want the opposite - for the mechanical release to trigger first and make it fly past the signal release making it nearly impossible to “flutter” the signal like I can trivially do.
With such a significant tactile click it just seems like a huge missed opportunity to not take advantage of that travel to have the signal release within the travel range, rather than clearly outside it, forcing me to leave indents in my fingers from pressing so hard. I understand it’s not an expensive device but surely a better performing switch is called for when it’s almost the only feature of the ring.
Please, let’s not discuss software debounce anymore in this thread as that is not the solution, and if it somehow is then it’s already been discussed adequately for it to be surfaced as a possibility to the company.
