My guess would be that it’s something along the lines of bringing the timeline to the original Pebble smartwatches. I hope it’s more though, a lot more. There’s quite a few things that I’d like to see come to Pebble. It’s got a lot of potential, but I don’t think it’s been properly exploited as yet.
I’d love it to be more about smart straps too, that would be great. I think that’s one of the few areas they could really get an edge over the mass market that the Apple Watch has developed.
Anyway, I’m hoping for something interesting from them on Wednesday.
What I really wanted to do was to be able to use my Pebble Time with two devices simultaneously. However, it appears that this is just not possible at all. The reason? Simple really, but the smart watch uses bluetooth LE in slave mode and not in host mode. Host mode would allow you to connect to up to 7 other devices. However, it doesn’t look like you can do that easily with an iPhone, and, the Pebble doesn’t have that enabled as yet, and it appears that there is little or no demand for it. Trust me to be looking for something that no one else wants.
So, why did I want it? Well, I thought it would be useful to be able to get it to have notifications from both my iPhone and my Nexus tablet at the same time. Android has a few things that iOS doesn’t, and whilst the same is true in the other direction, from my perspective that’s quite minimal.
However, it isn’t the end of the world at all. I can live without it, but perhaps I may have to think of a different way of doing things in order to achieve what I wanted.
Pebble Time Watch Faces – Choosing from what I’ve got already
So I’ve been looking for just the right watch face for my Pebble Time. I’ve been looking at the faces on the Pebble store and seeing what works for me and what doesn’t. So here’s what I’ve selected so far.
Pebble Time Watch Faces – This is the one I keep coming back to
This face is the one I use the most. I keep on coming back to it and it ends up being my default. It works. It’s ok. It functions well and it tells the time. In the end that’s the most important thing I suppose.
Pebble Time Watch Faces – The tardis
There are some quite fun faces on the Pebble store. This is great. It isn’t animated, which is a bit of a shame. It would’ve been nice if perhaps the Doctor could’ve popped his head out of the TARDIS every now and then, but no, it’s static.
Pebble Time Watch Faces – LCARS
As a Star Trek fan I liked this one a lot, although it lacks colour, which is a shame for a colour smart watch. But then I found this one …
Pebble Time Watch Faces – LCARS in colour
Which is in colour and is also very cool. However, I think that faces like these aren’t for me on a daily basis anyway. They’re fun every now and then, but that’s about it.
Pebble Time Watch Faces – The Speccy Face
Following on the theme, the speccy face is also pretty cool and retro, but again probably isn’t that good for daily use. It is however, very good at showing old techie friends who remember the ZX.
Moving on I’ve tried some other faces which I thought would be more functional, such as …
Pebble Time Watch Faces – Good for daily use
Which, at face value, no pun intended, actually, pun intended, works very well indeed. My only issue with this, it was a little dull. Not that much fun really. I know I’m difficult to please right! So, next I moved on to …
Pebble Time Watch Faces – Elegant and fairly usable
This, which seemed like it might work, but I couldn’t settle to it in the end and went back to my default watch face, as I seem to do quite a lot.
Pebble Time Watch Faces – A nice simple face
My latest possibility is this face. Which is elegant, simple, has a second hand and the date, and looks very good. I’ll see if this one works out for me.
As an aside I’ve also tried this …
Pebble Time Watch Faces – Binary watch face
Which is a bit extreme, but, if you can master it, is great way to tell time.
So, where does that leave me? I’m still not quite satisfied with the watch faces I’ve got. I’ve still not settled on something that I’m completely happy with. I might find something eventually. I keep on looking.
When I find just the right one, I’ll let you know.
I’ve been noticing that my new Pebble Time has been getting scratches and blemishes on the casing. It’s not encouraging as the thing is only a few weeks old, or rather, I’ve only had it a few weeks, so I’m a little disappointed that it isn’t holding up so well. Of course, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s not great is it.
So I’m considering getting a covering for it to protect it a little better. If I do, I’ll let you know about that.
This is a very useful little Pebble Time app that just gives a signal if the bluetooth connection gets broken between the watch and the phone. It makes a lot of sense. If you walk away and have left your phone behind you at least your watch will tell you fairly quickly that it’s lost its connection. Of course that’s no guarantee that you’ll find it or someone won’t have taken it, but it’s a start.
I put this on Instagram a while back and it just tickled me. What I did was to put my Pebble watch on top of my Twine box. The Twine is set to notify my iPhone every time it’s moved, measured by vibration. However, whenever the Pebble Time gets a notification it vibrates. So, once the Pebble Time is sitting on top of the Twine Box all it needs to do is to receive a notification from my iPhone and then a chain of events is triggered. The Pebble Time vibrates. This causes the Twine to notify my iPhone of a movements (via IFTTT). The iPhone gets the notification, it’s passed on to the Pebble Time, and so the cycle repeats.
I found it quite funny, but I guess no one else will.
Now that would be super useful. I’m sure that it was promised a long time ago, possibly when the first Pebble watch came out, but it never really happened. Well, it didn’t happen at all.
The nearest thing to it is an app called This Button for Pebble, which allows an HTTP push from your Pebble. That’s really useful, but I’ve only been able to get it to work intermittently so far. Perhaps I need to persevere with it.
Of course, a real IFTTT channel would be better. Ideally for me it would have:
Battery status
Accelerometer function
Access to buttons
Access to the microphone
That lot would do for a start anyway. That would be fun to play with and create recipes with on IFTTT. I’d like to see that.
I’ve been waiting to see when smart straps would arrive for the Pebble Time. This one looks really cool, the only down side is the wait before they’re manufactured. It’s a whole year away! I guess I’ll wait. I’m sure there’ll be other people making smart straps in the interim.
I am Ashley Elsdon 