Progress of Augmented SmartWatch Pro and the Pebble

Version 3.8 is the first step in optimizing for the Pebble

Google Now on the Pebble

Location based weather on the Pebble:

GMail – Sender, Subject and Body (Rooted Phone)

Phone Battery Status on the Pebble

User Reviews for Augmented SmartWatch Pro on the Pebble:

“Instant value on the Pebble Instantly adds more value to the Pebble. Notifications for tons more apps … awesome!”

“I had to buy another app to get some of the other notifications to work. Augmented Smartwatch Pro”

“I tested the trial and then bought it. The official Pebble software will probably get better with time and moot the purchase, but it is worth $4 to have all of the extended notifications right now.”

“Just the app I needed. My Pebble came in the mail and I knew there wasn’t going to be third party notification support for Touchdown. Enter Augmented SmartWatch Pro. Instantly got what I wanted from the app. Any notification that hits the bar can be pushed to the watch. Random third party app? No problem. Google+ Messenger updates? Boom, on my wrist. Weather, Touchdown, sports updates”

“That app is awesome!” and “Looking around a bit more I found exactly what I wanted in an app called Augmented Smartwatch Pro.  I believe this app was initially developed for the Sony Smartwatch, but as noted on the developer’s site, it actually can handle quite a few watches with Pebble being the latest and getting some great attention. It’s well worth the few bucks to enhance the watch.”

“First off, I’m sure a lot of emails to you start off this way, great app. It fills the need I had for pushing various notifications to my Pebble.”

Update Feb 5th:

Interesting video @ DroidLife where they show how multiple notifications work. It is better than I thought in that a more recent notification will be displayed right away on the Pebble – thereby overwriting the notification in progress. 

What this means is that (until/if Pebble does something about this), a client (3rd party app like Augmented SmartWatch Pro) could “pace”out the notifications instead thereby have a more pleasant user experience (similar to what the Augmented SmartWatch Pro app does with the Sony today)!  This will be in Version 3.7 and is available in the trial version.

Version 3.7 of Augmented SmartWatch Pro now officially supports the Pebble Smart Watch!

Click here to see what is coming in the next release of Augmented SmartWatch Pro for the Pebble Smart Watch

• Market Link to Augmented SmartWatch Pro for the Pebble Smart Watch
• Trial Version of 3.7 for Pebble @ http://bit.ly/11pnamX
• Direct integration with Notify My Android for true real-time Web updates
• With optional Root support, can get every chat message in WhatsApp, Sender Subject and Preview of GMail and Exchange emails (video on other watches shown below for WhatsApp):

• Hyper-Local Weather information (North America)
• Weather information – Current Conditions, Low and High Temp, Current Location (automatic based on location)
  • Weather notification (if enabled) is formatted specifically for the Pebble (as shown in the above pic)
• Fitbit Battery Status added to Fitbit Status details
• Option to send the extra info (weather, fitbit, etc) as a separate notification after each new notification (for a true hands-free experience)
• Integration with Withings, Fitbit and Klout
• Option to append Weather, Withings, Klout, Fitbit,  Calendar and Battery Indicator text information to Notifications sent to the Pebble. Only one of these will be sent in one notification.  The information will cycle thru all enabled options: Notification 1 with Weather, Notification 2 with Klout, Notification 3 with Withings, etc and repeat. Option is enabled by default (can be disabled in Pebble settings). Each individual option (Weather, Klout, etc) can be configured individually to be included in the cycle.
• Almost all notifications shown in your status bar can be sent to the Pebble with Augmented SmartWatch Pro – thereby removing the limitation of only a small set of supported notifications that is currently support by the original Pebble app!
• Some notifications are “optimized” to eliminate duplicate notifications based on real-world use cases and tuning. Some (like Google Navigation) can be configured via settings. See here for more info
• Option to insert a delay period between notifications (so that newer notifications do not immediately interrupt a prior notification)
• Potentially more information on notifications for the following
  • Skype,
  • Google Navigation
  • WhatsApp
  • Gmail
  • Exchange Email
  • Spotify
  • Pandora
  • LastFM
  • LiveScore Addicts
  • GrooveIP
  • Google Voice
  • Executive Assistant/Touchdown
  • Kik/Kakao & More
• Quiet Time and Stealth modes are supported for the Pebble. Quiet Mode allows for notifications to be suppressed during the night time and Stealth mode will only show the Sender of notifications and not the details.
• Future Updates will append additional information – at a glance towards the bottom of the watch: Wifi Signal, etc
• Augmented SmartWatch provides for an open and very simple API to allow any 3rd party entity (like Tasker or other Android app) to send a notification to a Pebble at any time. The interface is very simple and is as follows:

    Android Intent – com.alk.k9.action.add

   Parameters: 1) sender 2) subject

   Tasker Task example  – note in the latest version of Tasker it is called Send Intent (it was Action Intent in older versions of Tasker). Note also the “Target” must be set to Service:

How to Setup Pebble Support in Augmented SmartWatch Pro:

1. Enable accessibility for Augmented SmartWatch Pro (system settings->accessibility)
2. Confirm that Pebble Notifications within the Augmented SmartWatch Pro app are enabled (open Augmented app on Android -> Settings->Pebble Watch Options->Enable Pebble (this is by enabled by default)
3. To test – Open Augmented app on Android -> Menu -> Test Notification (this option sends a test message to the Pebble Watch)
4. Select notifications to enable by opening the Augmented app on the Android->Settings->Notification Options (or Weather Options)

Note the Pebble Android App/SDK will still have the following restrictions:

• No control of the vibration pattern for each notification (other than the default provided by the Pebble notification software)
• No ability to automatically scroll through the notification (manual scrolling will be required)
• No Concept of Widgets (like on the MetaWatch)
• No apparent ability to auto-clear the notification from the watch to show the watch face (or whatever was previously being displayed on the Pebble). Update: based on the Verge review, it does appear to timeout (though the time to timeout or an actual demo of this was not provided)
• Update (based on the Android Police Review) it appears that there is no timeout mechanism – i.e. a notification appears until manually cleared! This is not a good thing and I highly encourage the Pebble team to put in a timeout mechanism – to revert back to prior watchface in 20 seconds (or whatever timeout period is required). What is unclear is what happens when a 2nd notification arrives and a prior notification is showing on the Pebble. Is the 2nd notification delayed until the manual clear, or is it ignored?
  • The whole key concept of “hands-free” and “at a glance” is unfinished with the Pebble if indeed this is the intended behaviour (IMO)
  • Update: I am in direct contact with Eric (CEO of Pebble) and he assures me that this is being worked on already! This is fantastic news as this capability (plus the ability to send 1-bit graphics to the Pebble) may actually allow me to seriously consider retiring my Sony Smart Watch!
• The IFTTT web triggers (I believe) will have a 15 minute delay as IFTTT queries it`s triggers even 15 minutes – so I would use Notify My Android instead to get true `real-time`web push updates

Note that Vibration settings do not affect the Pebble

Update Jan 31st

• It works!!!! Market version 3.5.1 will work with the Pebble Watch – including Fitbit, Withings, Weather and more!
• Thanks to the Internet someone was able to test for me and take these two pictures

Status Update:

• Pebble finally released their Android app
  • It appears they will have their own GMail connection as they ask for the password to the account  (i.e. they do not use the native GMail app database). Which means battery life concerns on the Android and potentially not real push notifications (but polling). Not a good thing in general. They also have a “Default Email App” – not clear how this works across the various email clients (as there isn’t a standard defalt app between Samsung and HTC for example). Other notifications are GTalk, Google Voice, Calendar, Incoming phone calls and SMS messages – that’s it. Hence a huge potential opportunity for Augmented SmartWatch Pro
  • WhatsApp is now an option in the official Pebble Android app – but I wonder if it just provides a visual indicator that there is a chat message (and one needs to read the message on their Android phone) or if indeed the chat message shows up on the Pebble watch and for every chat message sent. 
  • After further investigation, I can confirm that the Pebble Android app does indeed support the “com.getpebble.action.SEND_NOTIFICATION” Broadcast Intent as documented in the API!
  • So Augmented SmartWatch Pro will issue the Intent with the Notification information. It remains to be seen what the Pebble software/watch will do with this information however.  

General Comments:

• At this time, I don`t see the Pebble (at least right away) replacing my Sony or even my MetaWatch (due to lack of widgets and configurability on the Pebble).
• The concept of  `hands-free`and àt a glance`seem to be missing on the Pebble (initially) – this is the killer use case (IMO) and this is the key objective of Augmented SmartWatch Pro. I also do not see myself investing the effort to do this within Augmented SmartWatch Pro for the Pebble.
• I am not convinced that even 3rd party apps (on the Pebble) would be able to do interrupt the Pebble display and show a notification for only 7 seconds (for example). Their SDK may simply not allow this (and hence only their native apps can do this). I believe this may only be possible if the user has selected the 3rd party app as being `current`. Hopefully we will get clarity on this very soon.
  • Also if a watchface if just an app controlling the watch (and showing a `watch`), perhaps it is just an app. Hence an app could also show weather information on the Watchface also (or whatever information it wants to).
• Based on the value Augemnted SmartWatch Pro will add for the Pebble, I still intend to raise the price a fair bit for the Pebble  (not necessarily with 3.5). I do expect to receive my two Pebbles very early in the shipping cycle as I did pledge on Kickstarter on Day 1 (April 11th), however based on the very slow shipping of Pebbles this looks like into Mid-February now.
• Update: After further reflection, I believe all of the above can indeed be provided by a 3rd party app that would reside on the Pebble and communicating with multiple apps running on the Android via an open interface (including the concepts of widgets on the Pebble).
  • I am still inclined to not do this component (but would be happy to be one of the apps on the Android communicating with such an app on the Pebble – sort of how there is Community Edition for the MetaWatch, but in this case this app would run mostly on the Pebble watch directly).
  • The main reason is lack of (time) bandwidth and being too tied to the Pebble environment, moreover Pebble themselves may decide to start doing this. However I do believe that if someone were to develop this app on the Pebble and were to do this fast (e.g. within 3 months of the first shipments), then they could have a first-mover advantage for what could be the biggest SmartWatch seller ever (to date). Assuming one is technically competent, I don`t see it as being too difficult, but the key is to get the vision right (otherwise others will quickly copy and someone else will get it right).