It's been 10 years, but Pebble (e-ink smart watches: https://repebble.com/) is officially back! Rebble has been keeping Pebble alive for years now, even re-enabling the voice transcription (for sending messages from your watch), but this launch includes an updated app and new watches!
Read more here, or develop your own watchfaces and apps here.
CloudPebble (redux) for development
When I first got into Pebble watches 10 years ago when wearables were officially becoming a thing, the major draws were the e-ink, the built-in microphone (in later models) allowing you to dictate replies, and the ability to program it yourself.
I was also taking public transportation to and from work and/or the gym at the time. I live in Chicago and a few miles from the CBD so luckily had a choice of a train line or multiple bus routes. If I missed my bus at one stop along one route, I could trot to another one a block away, and if I missed that, I could hike a little farther to the train station. However, knowing what to take and when depended on knowing what the real-time schedule, so I developed my own watch app to help.
The first screen was choosing my starting point (work, home, gym), and using the CTA API and my phone’s connection, it would then list all the upcoming bus and train times for various stops/stations around that point that I normally used. That was it. But it saved a lot of time and made life easier, especially in the winter.
Since then, I changed jobs a few times and stopped using my Pebbles (I have several) as much and switched to other watches, first a FitBit, then Garmin. However, programming for Garmin requires that you’re a business, and given the new watches, I thought I’d see if I could deploy an app real quick to one of my old watches.
Using the Pebble Demo Code for CloudPebble
I decided to use a demo program from the examples (feature-accel-discs) that make use of the accelerometer. To do so, I just copied all the code, enabled the Cloud Dev Connection via my phone app, unchecked the build for later models (Time 2, etc.), and built and ran it.
