Guest Blog Post - PAL Smartstrap

This is a guest blog post from Powerstrap, the team behind Pal, a GPS and battery extending smartstrap that launched on Kickstarter this week:

kickstarter.com/projects/655382546/pal-strap-gps-and-extended-battery-strap-for-pebbl

Powerstrap is incredibly excited to share that our Kickstarter for the world’s first GPS and battery Smartstrap for Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel watches is now live! We have been working very closely with Pebble to provide the best strap for this amazing community since 2014 and the time (pun intended) is finally here to share it with everyone!

Meet Pal!

It features a high performance, independent GPS that allows users to track speed, distance, elevation, and route for up to 24 hours without the need for a Smartphone. Begin your activity as soon as you go out, with no time wasted idly waiting for a signal. Pal uses industry leading GPS (Qualcomm SiRF), which provides quick signal pickup. It also extends the life of Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel for up to seven days and shares the same charger for hassle-free charging. In cases of emergency, the Pal can be used as a battery back-up to the Pebble. It also comes with a companion app for iOS and Android for GPS logs and social media sharing.

How Did We Get Started On This Journey?

We love our Pebbles and wanted to contribute to the community. I have been a watchstrap creator, watch straps are my passion. I’ve found that they usually don’t get the respect that they deserve in the creation process. So when I fell in love with Pebble, I wanted to see what I could do to lend my expertise to make the already amazing Pebble just that much more awesome. I took my experience with watch straps, enlisted two great engineers CC and Edwin, whose backgrounds are in electronics, mechanical engineering and the battery business.

One of the things that was so incredibly helpful, was being able to work hand in hand with Pebble to make sure that our idea for a functional strap matched with Pebble’s vision and community. They have been great partners in helping us identify what would be of most use to the Pebble community, best practices, and gave great feedback which helped us perfect the design. This relationship is not unlike the relationship between the Pebble and Pal, both working together in harmony to make something unique and great -- which actually helped inspire the name Pal!

Early concept drawing and battery buckle prototype

So how does it work exactly?

Let’s dive in deeper into the technical specification of the Pal Smartstrap. Pal GPS architecture is powered by Qualcomm’s SiRF chipset, this chipset can track speed, distance, and elevation as a standalone, offering an impressively fast first time signal pickup within three minutes and it will continue to work even if it goes indoors for a while, and then comes back outside. PAL also features data storage for up to 24 hours of GPS data.

Raw GPS data received from satellites are processed by Pal’s MCU and results are pumped to Pebble for display and storage - allowing the smartwatch to leverage GPS location data without the need to be connected to a mobile phone.

Per our efficient power management intelligence, Pal’s battery recharges Pebble’s battery only when the user manually activates the function or when Pebble’s battery drops to very low level and triggers auto-charging. Connecting pins between the Pal and Pebble are surrounded by soft gasket. This structure makes Pal water resistant, but it probably cannot withstand swimming or diving. In any case, even if water goes between connecting pins, Pal’s electronic design has protection measure and it won’t be damaged.

Tech Specs: GNSS support: GPS only TTFF cold fix time: about 40 seconds under open sky. Location fix time can be accelerated by AGPS (working in progress with Qualcomm) Location hot fix: within 10 seconds. Certification planned to be done upon campaign success and product launch: CE, FCC, IC Battery technical Specs: Battery capacity: 250mAh Battery chemistry: Lithium Ion Polymer Nominal Voltage: 3.8V Pebble Watch’s battery: can be charged from either PAL’s internal battery or external charging port underneath PAL Internal battery of PAL: charge up from charging port underneath PAL

Design

Together, the Pal and Pebble Time weigh only 65grams and offer users enhanced functionality, without added weight or bulkiness. The interchangeable design features a unique strap curvature that is ergonomically engineered to fit every wrist size and it only takes seconds to pin the Smartstrap to the clasp to customize the strap length.

Open Platform

From the beginning, it was important that we kept Pal open so developers have the opportunity to take the strap to the next level. We hope that by incorporating the best in class hardware components into Pal, it will help encourage app developers to be even more creative and limitless.

Obviously our first priority is getting fully funded so we can go to production, however, we are currently starting communication with interested developers as there are so many interesting and helpful potential ways that this technology can be adapted. When we are fully funded, we will release our Pal strap API. How we interact with developers moving forward will depend on the interest and size of the group, however anticipate that the dev community on Pebble.com as a likely option. If you have an idea for an app for the Pal, we would love to hear from you and potentially support your development. Contacts us here: pal@palstrap.com

We've launched a Kickstarter to help bring PAL to life. We hope you will check us out and support us at kickstarter.com/projects/655382546/pal-strap-gps-and-extended-battery-strap-for-pebbl