Tag Archives: pebble

How to search for Pebble app/watchface on the web

Pebble smartwatch has a pretty good appstore that is accessible from the official app on your phone. But sometimes I want just to search for the app on the Web (big browser, keyboard/mouse – you know). Fortunately it is possible:

Pebble Google Search

Just enter “site:apps.getpebble.com” in your google search in addition to search terms and you will be able to get direct links to Pebble apps/watchfaces in the app store.

Pebble direct appstore link

Of course this has limited use at the moment – you can scroll thru app screenshots, read the description and that’s about it. Ideally this would behave same way as Google Play store does – allow me to install the app from the web directly to registered device.

Your move, Pebble.

Flipping pebbles

Big Flip Clock

As far as smartwatches go – Pebble is a lot of fun. But after playing around with Watchface Generator, Canvas for Pebble and numerous other apps I wanted something more, something that only Pebble SDK could provide. A coder in me wanted to code.

Enter CloudPebble – an amazing online development environment that runs in your browser, has a full-blown C compiler and connects to your watch to run/debug compiled apps. Plus your projects are stored on the cloud and available anywhere you can get online.

Yes you program Pebble in classic C – and it’s a lot of fun. And my first real attempt at custom watchface (pictured above) is old-style flip clock, you can get it here. It is based on amazing pebble bitmap library by Gregoire Sage

Display “Lose It!” data on Pebble watchface

Original Lose It!Lose It! on Pebble

Lose It! is an excellent service that helps people lose weight by monitoring calories intake. It integrates with variety of devices so I was curious if I can display my user data on Pebble smartwatch (to make sure I can have another piece of cake or not).

Unfortunately LoseIt doesn’t have a public API. There had to be another way. Continue reading →

How to receive Stack Overflow notifications on your phone and smartwatch (v 2.0)

StackOveflow Pebble UpdateA while back I described how you can receive Stack Overflow notifications on your phone and smartwatch by reading RSS feed provided by StackOvedlow API (v1) and connecting it to PushOver push notification service (and their Android app and ultimately Pebble Smartwatch via awesome IFTTT.

Since then Stack Exchange retired version 1 of their API (and besides it didn’t provided all the information needed, e.g. total reputation points) so I was looking for an alternative. Fortunately StackOverflow API v2 provides very extensive set of functions. One call I was looking for is

api.stackexchange.com/2.2/users/[userid]?site=[site]

Where [userid] is your Stack Exchange User ID and [site] is the Stack Exchange site you’re interested in. For example for me call to

https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/users/961695?site=stackoverflow

provides a nice JSON output: Continue reading →

Canvas for Pebble: How to hide time in all-day events

If you wish to create a custom watchface for Pebble Smartwatch but want it to have some more advanced features than very cool Watchface Generator offers then amazing Android app Canvas for Pebble is definitely for you.

Using it you can have your Pebble watchface to display weather, location, temperature, of course date and time, etc. etc. in highly customizable formats.

One cool thing it allows you to show – next calendar events from your Google calendar. As with everything else it’s a highly customizable entry. For example three (out of much more) options are:

%a – abbreviated day of the week
%R – start time of the event in 24-hour-format
%ET – event title

So if you format the calendar field as "%a %R: %ET" your Pebble will display something like "Mon 12:30: Visit from Elvis". Unfortunately if calendar event is an all-day event (e.g. national holiday) – start time of the event (%R) always displays as “00:00” making your event look like "Tue 00:00: Day of the Tentacle". It would be really nice if we could hide the time for all-day events.

Fortunately one of the things Canvas allows you to do is conditional formatting. It does this in a form of {text1#condition#text2} where if condition is true – text1 is displayed, otherwise text2 is displayed (which is optional and can be omitted).

I noticed that for all-day events, event duration (represented in Canvas as %ED) is always 24 hours (duh). So I replaced the above format for calendar event with this one: %a{ %R#%ED<24}: %ET. The code in braces means “if event duration is less than 24 hours – show event start time, otherwise don’t show anything”. And the result is in images above.