This is a read-only archive of an earlier blog posting. Reasons for the
change are at http://blog.sensicomm.com.
The permanent version of this post - with comments (if any) - is at
http://sensicomm.blogspot.com/2015/09/pebble-watch-programming.html
Pebble watch programming.
Time for a new watch. I chose the Pebble
classic because I like the idea of a daylight-readable (e-paper)
display and multi-day battery life between charges. The fact that
several were available on ebay at good prices didn't hurt
either.
Yes, I do love the display. It's a crisp and
clear monochrome, easily readable in sunlight. In the photo, you
may notice a bit of "rainbow" effect to the left of the time and
date. That seems to be a polarization effect: it's noticeable when
wearing polarized sunglasses or with indirect illumination from a
clear sky. In direct sunlight or artificial light the rainbows go
away.
Programming
The watch has an
ARM chip in it, so of course I have to develop my own watch face.
Pebble has an online development platform, but I decided to install
the SDK on my Debian PC. I got the SDK from developer.getpebble.com/sdk/
and installed it per the instructions, which includes installing
several libraries and python packages. A couple of notes:
- The "pip install -r requirements.txt"
command takes a long time to run -- several
minutes.
- I did not install the Pebble-supplied
ARM compiler: it requires a later version of glibc than I have
installed. I already had a compiler installed
(blog.sensicomm.com/2014/02/stm32-on-linux-again.html),
and it seems to work fine.
- To tell the SDK
where the existing compiler is:
- cd
$HOME/pebble-dev/PebbleSDK-3.3/
- ln -s
/opt/gcc-arm-none-eabi
arm-cs-tools
And it works. I was
able to compile a sample program using the "pebble build" command
and install it using Bluetooth and an Android phone.Comments on blogspot.com
To make or view comments, see the original post at
http://sensicomm.blogspot.com/2015/09/pebble-watch-programming.html
