The past several years I have been working for various companies doing coding as my day job. Recently, I have started doing less of that and have gone back to coding in my free time. Before Christmas, got a Pebble Steel watch and that has given rise to my desire to code things for it. The watch is capable of running (mostly) any C code and/or JavaScript that you care you use. So I was excited.
First Problem – I don’t know C. Well, the library had a bunch of books, the internet has one or two (thousand) tutorials on how to get started. So a couple weeks study and a lot of trial and error has produced my first public release of my “Minimal Analog” watchface.
I couldn’t find a watchface that gave me the look and features that I wanted, and looked to the future of the Pebble Time series of watches that are coming out in May. They are in color! I put together some ideas from a lot of digital, analog, and physical watches that I had seen, but most of them used static bitmaps for the graphics. This means that the user can’t change the color of everything on the watch, without the developer having to generate hundreds of different bitmap files. To overcome this, I use only code-generated graphics for the hour-ticks, numbers, hands, and battery indicator. The weather condition is a custom font that I put together so it can also have arbitrary color applied. The user can select any of the supported colors they like for any of the elements.
This face auto-detects your location, and every 30 minutes updates the weather condition. It also has a Bluetooth disconnect notification that buzzes the watch and displays if you go out of range of your phone for too long. It has options for temperature in Celsius or Farenheit, and to display a seconds hand.
This is a first run, but has gotten a favorable reception by the Pebble community. More improvements are coming, especially once the official color SDK is out. Pebble has asked not to post those images yet. Lots more to come.
As for the future of this face, I will add a lot more user-options. When to display the battery indicator, ability to turn off weather updates during certain hours, internationalization of the date display, and some other ideas.
UPDATE 5/15/2015 – Version 1.3 was released, this adds a user-option for showing or hiding the battery indicator based on remaining charge. By default it hides until 40% or less giving you plenty of time to top it off before you run out of battery. Here is the new look.
UPDATE 9/17/2015 – Unfortunately, I have had to give up on this project, there will be no further development. My C skills aren’t up to the task. Here is a GitHub link:
https://github.com/GhastlyJack/minimal-analog
I had started working on adding color support, color selection, multiple hand options, and a whole bunch of new features. Take and enjoy, make of it what you wish. I do not need to be credited.
UPDATE 8/17/2016 – Keith Harp has taken over development and improvement of this watchface. To see his work, click over to his app on the Pebble store.
He has finished the color-picker for 3 foreground colors and a background color. He has added font-size selections, and a choice of hand styles. All this and he removed the need for a configuration webpage making configuration fast and easy.
A man with skills much greater than mine. Nice work Keith!!