Pebble pledges $1 million to development of smartstraps for Pebble Time

With the announcement of the Pebble Time, Pebble also briefly touched on what they’re calling “smartstraps.” These smart watch bands are basically just a platform so developers can create smartstraps that do different things and add a little functionality to the base Pebble Time.

Today, the company has opened a million dollar fund towards the development of these smartstraps and they’re showing off a few different early ideas from what others have already been working on. Pebble will be taking money from that fund to help back Kickstarter projects for smartstraps, so if you have an idea for one, get to work on a prototype.

The first concept is from Xadow, and it creates a completely modular watch band that you can swap out for things like NFC readers, barometers, and heart rate monitors, which should definitely add some length to the lifespan of the Pebble Time.

The second prototype is from Spark, and it might be a solution to a problem that doesn’t quite exist. The Spark Electron is a module that takes a SIM card so your Pebble can connect to mobile networks. On the bright side, you’d be able to use your Pebble without being tethered to Bluetooth’s relatively short range, but I’m not sure many people would pay their carriers extra per month for that convenience.

Regardless, these are the kinds of things Pebble hopes developers do for their smartstrap platform. With this new fund, it’s pretty likely we’ll see more of these by the end of the year.

source: Pebble

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