Smartwatch+

Smartwatch+

The iOS companion app that makes your Pebble smartwatch even smarter!

About

Smartwatch+ is the perfect companion app for your Pebble smart watch. It enhances the experience with your Pebble smart watch and provides a lot of additional functionality.

Smartwatch+ allows you to display additional information on your watch, such as weather, your iPhone's battery status, current stock and Bitcoin prices, your current GPS location, your latest calendar appointments, as well as reminders. Additionally, you can control certain functions of your phone from the watch, such as taking pictures, controlling the music volume, playing a sound to find your phone, and sending HTTP requests for home automation, etc.. The watchapps that are required to view the information on the Pebble can be installed from within this app.

Smartwatch+ also supports the httpebble protocol, which lets you use all httpebble-enabled watch apps.

Download

Smartwatch+ is available for iOS devices (running iOS 6.0 and newer) through the Apple App Store.

Features

  • Status Screen
  • Status Screen
  • Status Screen
  • Status Screen

Smartwatch+ uses different screens to display data on the Pebble watch and to interact with an iPhone. The screens can be accessed through a menu on the Pebble watch using a custom watch app. The iPhone app lets you configure the number and order of screens to adjust it to your individual needs. All screens that display data are automatically updated at user-defined intervals.

SmartStatus is technically a screen as well, but it acts a little bit different in the sense that it's not part of the regular menu. Instead it is its own watch app and provides the iPhone's battery status, as well as the current weather, your next calendar appointment and the currently playing music info together with the time in a glance-able watch face.

Currently, there are 11 screens available in Smartwatch+:

  • Status Screen

    Status Screen

    This screen is called SmartStatus and displays current weather conditions, temperature (in °C or °F) and iPhone battery status alongside your next calendar appointment and the currently playing song information.

    SmartStatus is special in the sense that it's not part of Smartwatch+' menu structure, but instead runs inside its own watch app. This separation allows for it to be open-sourced and easily replaced by different user-created implementations. Click here for more information about SmartStatus.

  • Weather Screen

    Weather Screen

    Displays current weather conditions, as well as a 3-day forecast of your current location, or a city of your choice.

  • Calendar Screen

    Calendar Screen

    Displays a list of next calendar appointments with time/date and location.

  • Reminders Screen

    Reminders Screen

    Displays a list of your reminders from the iOS Reminders application. This can be used to have quick access to notes on your watch, for example.

  • Find My Phone Screen

    Find My Phone Screen

    A button press on your watch plays a loud sound on your phone, such that you can easily locate it.

  • HTTP Request Screen

    HTTP Request Screen

    This screen displays a list of up to 20 HTTP GET requests and lets you trigger them from your wrist. Click here for more info about setting up HTTP requests.

  • Music Screen

    Music Screen

    The Music Screen offers the same control as the built-in music app - except it adds volume control. Toggle between Next/Previous and Volume controls by pushing the center button for a few seconds.

  • Camera Screen

    Camera Screen

    Launch the camera app on your iPhone and take a picture by using your Pebble as a remote shutter.

  • Bitcoin Screen

    Bitcoin Screen

    Displays a 24h chart of the bitcoin exchange rate from mtgox, as well as the current value (including high/low).

  • Stocks Screen

    Stocks Screen

    Displays a 24h chart, as well as current/high/low values of a selected stock.

  • GPS Screen

    GPS Screen

    Displays current location (either as lat/lon or street name), altitude or distance travelled (in km or mi), and current speed (in km/h or mph).

Settings

The iPhone app lets you adjust the number of active screens on the watch by dragging them between Enabled Screens and Disabled Screens. It also lets you change the display order of the screens.

  • Settings
  • Settings
  • Settings
Several screens have individual settings screens to configure their update frequency and other parameters:

  • Settings
  • Settings
  • Settings

FAQs

Here are some of the most commonly asked questions:

The iOS app crashes upon launch:
Try to delete and reinstall the app on your iPhone. If that doesn't help, please email me.

The watch app is stuck on "Updating..." or "Loading..."
This means that the watch app cannot communicate with the iOS app and it can have one of the following reasons:
  1. No Bluetooth connection: Please establish a Bluetooth connection between Pebble and iPhone.
  2. The iOS app is not running in the background: Please launch Smartwatch+ on your iPhone and keep it running in the background.
  3. Another Pebble-related app is running in the background: Currently, only one app is allowed to communicate with Pebble at a time. Therefore, all other apps that communicate with Pebble, such as httpebble, PebbleActivator, Smartwatch Pro, etc. need to be quit. The only exception to this is the official Pebble iOS app.

Smartwatch+ disconnects all the time:
Repeated disconnect issues are usually caused by either a bad Bluetooth connection, or by the operating system closing the Smartwatch+ iOS app. There are two different ways to deal with it:
  1. Bad Bluetooth connection: Try to "forget" Pebble in the iPhone's Bluetooth settings, then restart your Pebble and try to re-pair it with your iPhone. This should effectively reset your Bluetooth connection.
  2. iOS kills the app: Although Smartwatch+ is registered to run in the background, iOS sometimes decides to quit the app. This occurs most likely when the iPhone runs out of memory. In order to prevent iOS from closing Smartwatch+ you can try to keep the memory footprint on your iPhone as low as possible. I usually quit unnecessary apps proactively using the multitasker.

Can I run other Pebble-related apps simultaneously?
NO! In order for Smartwatch+ to work properly, you need to quit all other apps that communicate with Pebble (except the official Pebble iOS app).

The camera is not launching - what do I do?
Pressing the "Launch Camera" button on the watch will send a notification to your iPhone. Make sure to tap/swipe that notification in order to launch the camera feature. You can also tap on the "Camera Screen" button inside the iOS app.

How can I reduce the battery usage of Smartwatch+?
Smartwatch+ itself doesn't use too much battery. What drains the battery are the constant updates (and the GPS). So if you increase the different screens' update frequencies to 30 minutes or more (and disable the GPS screen), this should lower the battery usage. If you want to reduce it even further, switch the update frequency to "Manual"

Can I turn Smartwatch+ off when I don't need it in order to save battery?
As long as you want to use Smartwatch+' features on your Pebble, the app needs to run in the background on your phone. However, if you want to use other apps that communicate with the Pebble smart watch, you'll have to disconnect Smartwatch+ by pressing the "Disconnect" button inside the iOS app.

Does Smartwatch+ always need to run?
Yes, in its current iteration Smartwatch+ needs to be constantly active in the background in order to communicate with the Pebble watch. Once you quit Smartwatch+ using the multitask bar in iOS (or by pressing the "Disconnect" button inside the iOS app), the iPhone, as well as the Pebble watch are back to their original operation - exactly as they were before using Smartwatch+.

Any other questions?
Please email me.

Feedback/Contact

You can always email me with any questions/ideas/suggestions/bug reports.

© Robert Hesse 2013