How about that then!
Category: Wearable Computing
Another interest that’s starting to grow. Things like the lillypad and similar. Arduino stuff too to a degree.
Seem to be getting reasonable power consumption on my new Pebble Time
When it arrived it had 80% charge and that lasted about 3 days in total. That was with a fair amount of use too, so I don’t think that’s too bad at all really. I can’t really remember how long the old one used to last as I haven’t used it in ages, but 3 days is ok I think. It’s longer than I get from my iPhone anyway.
New and old Pebbles
Interesting to see how the Pebble has evolved since the first one until now. The Pebble Time is much slimmer than the first Pebble and a wholly nicer device to wear and use. But the original Pebble still has some nice touches to it though.
How’s that Pebble then?
So, a couple of days into my use of the Pebble Time, how’s it going? Well so far so good. Today I was interested to see how the constant bluetooth LE connection would drain my iPhone 6. It seemed to add an additional drain, but not too much. So that’s a good sign, a good step forward.
Notifications are pretty good though. I quite like them even though they get a little bit annoying at times, but I think that’s more to do with my having too many on my iPhone anyway, so perhaps it’s a good prompt to clear those up.
Next I’m interested to see how I can do more with the Pebble and get it working for me in the way I’d really like it to. More of that soon though.
That first Pebble sync …
So the first step of getting the device sync’d up and updated is easy to do and all goes well. We’ll see how things pan out with the old Pebble. Or rather the new Pebble that is.
So my Pebble Time has arrived …
Pebble Time arrived
What’s in the box
Get ready …
After a not bad wait at all my new Pebble Time smartwatch has arrived. So now I’m experimenting with it to see what it can do and what I can get done with it. That’s going to take a little while I should think, but as I decided to go with the Pebble Time just before the Apple Watch was announced and took centre stage I want to see how much I can get done with the new Pebble.
So expect updates on this over the coming weeks …
A first go at weaving with Conductive Threads
A little bit of TouchBoard
Weaving with Conductive Thread
A first attempt
Messy
I went to a workshop today on weaving with conductive thread. Not something I’ve done a lot of before, but something I’ve had a previous taste of when I did a workshop of making interactive clothes. However, I’ve never done anything with weaving at all, but it always seemed like a fun thing to try.
So the idea was to weave something small and introduce a couple of conductive thread elements in that could be attached to a microcontroller board like a TouchBoard. In fact, it was a TouchBoard in this instance and that was very straightforward to use as it is nice and easy to connect up.
Well the weaving was ok, in fact easier than I expected although I made a few mistakes. Introducing the conductive thread was simple enough, and as you can see I managed to create a little piece of stuff at the end of it. It worked too. I connected it up to the TouchBoard and it worked a treat. In fact, when I got home I connected it to my Ototo board and that was fine too.
So what’s next? I’m not sure actually. I don’t know quite how I’ll take this forward if at all. There are a few possible applications to it, a few ideas bubbling around, but I need to think about them a bit more first.
Let’s see what happens.
And my Pebble Time is on its way
Hopefully I won’t have too long to wait until it arrives, although it does have a fair distance to travel. I’m really interested in seeing how it compares to the original Pebble smartwatch and what sort of functionality I can get out of it compared to the Apple Watch. Not that I have an Apple Watch, but it’ll be interesting nevertheless.
I also want to see how it works with both iOS and Android and work out what’s best and where the most interesting and useful interactions come from. So expect Pebble Time posts in the coming weeks.
So I saw an Apple Watch …
And after all that it just wasn’t as amazing as I thought it would be. It was also thicker than I thought it might be. I’m just not sure that it is for me right now. I also think that the price for a reasonable model is too high right now. It might come down, it might not, and I’m not sure that Apple will want to replicate the same update cycle as their other hardware. People just don’t replace and update their watches with the same frequency. Or maybe Apple wants to change that too.
Anyway, for now I’m going to see how things pan out with my Pebble Time.
Can’t help but notice all the Apple Watch apps
It seems that every app update now has something to do with the Apple Watch. There are going to be so many apps that extend to it soon.
It makes me start to wonder about my decision to go for a pebble time. Of course it’s too late to go back on that but it is nagging at me. I still think that the Apple Watch is too fat and I’m sure that within a couple of years there’ll be one much better and much thinner too. My money is on it being called the Apple Watch Air! Who knows.
I am Ashley Elsdon 