Pebble has been making a pretty serious effort in the health and fitness arena. The company recently partnered with Stanford Wearable Health Lab to launch Pebble Health, and now it’s taking things to the next level by publishing its fitness-tracking algorithms as part of a program called Open Health.
What this means is that others can build upon Pebble’s algorithms, suggest changes, and so on, ultimately making for better products. The findings are being published on the Pebble Research Blog.
“The world of health on wearables is unknown territory: no one yet knows what services will work best for people, or how to deliver a good experience that doesn’t try to be one-size-fits-all,” said Pebble on the Kickstarter page for its newest devices, the Pebble 2, Pebble Time 2, and Pebble Core.
As part of the announcements, Pebble is also launching the Happiness App, which is an experimental app designed to help in the research of what factors affect a person’s mood. During the weeklong program, you’ll give input on the factors in your environment, which will then help give you feedback on how those factors impact your mood. The app is actually available starting Wednesday for those with the Pebble Time, Pebble Time Steel or Pebble Time Round. You can get it here.
Last but not least in the round of announcements is the fact that Pebble is working with Stanford’s Mobilize Center to develop an app that encourages wearers to be more active throughout the day. The company is also aiming to improve the existing developer toolset to help make it easier to create apps related to health and health tracking.
Health and fitness tracking seems to be linked with the smartwatch industry, afact that has not been lost on Pebble.