智能手表供应商 Pebble Technology 首席执行官 Eric Migicovsky 成功募得1,000万美元的前一夜，他还坐在家里的客厅跟朋友一起预测他在 Kickstarter 上的集资活动会筹到多少钱：“最高数字是5,000美元。”他说。现在 Pebble 已是一家有45名员工的企业，这家新创公司的总部也已经从Migicovsky家客厅搬到位于美国硅谷的办公室。
2008年可说是 Pebble的起点，当时 Migicovsky 仍在就读加拿大滑铁卢大学(University of Waterloo)工程学院的最后一年，打造了智能皮夹以及智能手表的原型。他的智能手表原型采用Arduino开发板与一个从报废Nokia 3310手机拆下的显示器连接：“我当时真的无法想象五年后我会开一家智能手表公司。”
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Migicovsky 是在参加一场由Broadcom所赞助的活动上，与现场记者分享他的创业故事。募资网站Kickstarter目前吸引了来自全球150个国家的赞助者， 其中有45%都是非美国人，这些小资赞助人让Pebble成为一家生产实体产品的真正企业，而不是只有产品原型；Migicovsky 开玩笑地表示：“当时的产品原型用了很多万用胶带把零件组合起来，五年后，我们用的万用胶带越来越少了。”
在Pebble诞生之前也有其他的智能手表，但Broadcom共同创办人暨首席技术专家Henry Samueli 表示，Migicovsky让他的新创公司与众不同的方式，是站在消费者的立场考虑他们可能会想要的，然后再观察他们能用智能手表提供什么协助：“他们每 一天都用很小、却有意义的方式让生活变得更好。”
Pebble的智能手表能提供客制化的表面，让使用者展现时尚或者带来乐趣；据了解，目前最受欢迎的Pebble表面应用程序，是有一只怪兽会在每一分钟把时间数字吃掉。而让智能手表能成为遥控器，也是一个让人意想不到的应用，并替未来的更多新应用铺路。现在的Pebble智能手表能采用蓝牙与智能手机连结，读取手机所收到的消息或是来电者信息，还能遥控支持Wi-Fi功能的门锁或是空调等等装置。
该 公司还提供一套开发软件，让个人软件工程师或是开发商使用。其中飞利浦(Philips)撰写了透过为该款手表遥控LED照明的程序，另外还有一个新的应 用程序能让手表控制GoPro可穿戴式摄影机；于是Pebble智能手表的任务是链接各种传感器，扮演其他装置的提示/提醒、免手持显示器。
Broadcom的Samueli 认为，医疗相关应用会是新兴可穿戴式装置的一大类别：“一旦我们能打造够精密的传感器，医疗保健将是一个最大的应用市场──例如用来监测血糖、脑波等，创造一个全新的医疗保健世界。”
但Migicovsky 希望让他的智能手表维持简单，他的目标是让该装置只显示一些只要用蓝牙就能传输的小型讯息，如此才能让装置的电池寿命达到一个星期。目前该款智能手表并不支持无线充电，但据了解已经在研究相关技术与标准；Pebble智能手表现在采用专属的充电插座，有部分原因是要确保该装置的防水性能，以及工业设计上的考虑。
本文授权编译自EE Times，版权所有，谢绝转载
编译：Judith Cheng
参考英文原文：Pebble CEO Turns Back Clock，by Rick Merritt
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Pebble CEO Turns Back Clock
Rick Merritt
SAN FRANCISCO -- The night before Eric Migicovsky opened a door to what would become a $10 million windfall, he was sitting in his living room chatting with friends about how much his Kickstarter campaign might raise when it launched the next day. "The biggest prediction was $5,000," he said.
Today Migicovsky is chief executive of Pebble Technology with about 45 employees. The startup recently moved from his living room into a real office in Palo Alto, Calif.
The startup had its origins in 2008 when Migicovsky was in his final year at engineering school at the University of Waterloo. He was working on prototypes for a smart wallet and a smart watch.
His smart watch prototype used an Arduino board linked to a display torn out of an aging Nokia 3310, the classic candy bar cellphone. "I couldn't have predicted that five years later I would be running a smart watch company," he told a group of reporters at an event sponsored by Broadcom Corp.
Kickstarter rallied backers from 150 countries, 45% of them outside the US. They helped jettison Pebble into a real company with a real product instead of a prototype "held together by duct tape -- five years later there's much less duct tape," Migicovsky said.
"It's really exciting to see two or three people create a product that takes the industry by storm," said Henry Samueli, co-founder and chief technologist at Broadcom, introducing Migicovsky at the event.
There were smart watches before and after Pebble. But Migicovsky credits his startup with being unique in how it considered what consumers might want then observed what they did with its device "daily to make life better in small but meaningful ways," he said.
Creating custom watch faces as fashion statements or just for fun is one use. "The most popular Pebble app is a watch face where a monster eats the time every minute," he said.
Use of the watch as a remote control was one of the unexpected applications and one with lots of legs for the future.
Today Pebble is a Bluetooth platform to read text alerts and caller IDs from smartphones, control WiFi-enabled door locks and thermostats, and more. The company has a software developer's kit used by hackers and established companies, including Royal Philips Electronics who wrote an app to control its LED lights using the watch.
Another new app lets the watch control a GoPro camera. The watch also will become a window to wearable fitness devices.
"Our job is to connect to sensors and be the heads-up, hands-free display to other devices," he said.
Broadcom's Samueli said he thinks medical gadgets will become one of the biggest segments of the emerging market for wearable devices. "Once we build sophisticated enough sensors, health care will be one of the biggest areas -- with monitors for blood chemistry and brain waves you will have a new world of healthcare," he said.
Migicovsky wants to keep the smart watch simple. The company aims to limit the device to using small messages of just a few Bluetooth packets. That way it can maintain its promised battery life of about a week.
The watch does not use wireless charging yet, but the company has done "quite a lot of investigations" of competing standards. It uses a proprietary charging plug now in part to ensure the watch is waterproof and for better industrial design.
责编：Quentin
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