Pebble Developer Blog

Into the Future

In the months since our last community update, we’ve been setting the table for the Pebble ecosystem’s next major transition. We’re working hard to make sure Pebble users can keep enjoying their smartwatch experience for as long as possible. We’re happy to share the progress made so far with Pebblers today as a part of our continuing efforts to honor Pebble's legacy, ecosystem, and functionality.

We're pleased to announce that Pebble.js has now been published as a Pebble Package. Pebble.js lets developers easily create Pebble applications using JavaScript by executing the JavaScript code within the mobile application on a user's phone, rather than on the watch.

Things have been a bit 'quiet' recently, but we're back with another fresh Pebble SDK! In this release we've included one of the most frequently requested APIs, exposed the raw HRM sensor value, released PebbleKit 4.0, plus added an exciting new BLE HRM mode.

We're incredibly excited to announce the first public beta of the Pebble SDK 4.2. This is the first time that developers can experience the new 'Emery' platform which is specifically created for the upcoming Pebble Time 2.

The latest 4.1 releases of the firmware, mobile apps and SDK bring support for the new Pebble 2 smartwatches, which have started appearing on the wrists of developers and reviewers around the globe.

If you’ve been living under a rock, or have just been sunning yourself on the beach for the past week, you might have missed the launch of Pebble OS 4.0. This new version introduced some fantastic new features, such as the updated health app, timeline quick view, app glances, Rocky.js and a new system launcher.

Today we have the pleasure of announcing the release of Pebble SDK 4.0. We have published an updated version of the Pebble Tool, the SDK itself, and we've deployed 4.0 onto CloudPebble. It's time to get busy!

Pebble developers of the world unite! Pebble OS 4.0 is just around the corner and it's now time to put those finishing touches on your projects, and prepare them for publishing!

We're incredibly excited and proud to announce the first public beta version of Rocky.js watchfaces for Pebble. Rocky.js is ECMAScript 5.1 JavaScript running natively on Pebble smartwatches, thanks to our collaboration with JerryScript. This is an incredible feat of engineering!

Creating companion apps using PebbleKit Android and PebbleKit iOS is a great way to extend the functionality of your Pebble watchfaces and apps, but what if Java or Objective C just isn't your thing? What if you love JavaScript? What if you just don't want to write the same companion app twice?

Now you don't have to! Enter Cordova - an open source framework for building cross-platform mobile apps using web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript. What does this mean for you? One framework, and one codebase for building Pebble companion apps for iOS and Android!

It is with great pleasure that I present to you, Clay, a Pebble package that makes it easy to add offline configuration pages to your Pebble apps. All you need to get started is a couple lines of JavaScript and a JSON file; no servers, HTML or CSS required.

Developers rejoice - we’ve released the first version of our SDK 4 developer preview! This SDK enables you to start building applications for the new Diorite platform (Pebble 2), and includes a set of new APIs for interacting with the 4.0 user experience.

In this blog post we’ll dive into the App Glance, UnobstructedArea, and AppExitReason APIs, and explain how you can use them to create great experiences for your users!

I am thrilled to announce that, as part of SDK 3.13 and Pebble Tool 4.3, we have launched our own packaging system: Pebble Packages!

You might have noticed a bit of a buzz around Pebble today - we have officially launched our third Kickstarter campaign, and it is jam packed with exciting new products and features for developers to explore and hack on. We have been hard at work not only creating the next generation of health-focused smartwatches, but also refining what great wearable user and developer experiences look like. We are introducing an entirely new class of wearable device, and adding a modern JavaScript SDK that takes advantage of the Web APIs JavaScript developers around the world know and love.

There is a lot to take in, so we’re here to help break down what’s new and exciting for our favorite developer community!

After many morning coding sessions on the weekends, Pebble.js has been updated to support the Chalk platform (Pebble Time Round). This update is available in CloudPebble, and ready for you to work with right in your browser with no setup!

Supporting Chalk required a ton of bug crushing to become compatible with the new 3.0 style status bar, changes to accommodate reduced memory on the 3.x Aplite platform, adding new features such as text flow and paging, and making it easier to target multiple platforms by adding a feature detection API.

New developers typically begin their journey by following our tutorials, and then moving on to projects of their own. The guides section of our documentation is intended to help developers go beyond the basics - to help understand some of the more complex APIs and concepts required to develop a Pebble app. Ultimately, we want developers to feel comfortable enough with our platform that the reference documentation can be their primary source of information.

We’ve known for a while that our guides section was a bit of a weak link (sorry for the inconvenience!) - and to that end, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, and writing, a new set of guides that should help to better guide you along your path to becoming an awesome Pebble developer!

I've been desperate to write a blog post about the Pebble HealthService API since it's initial release last month, and now I can finally share its awesomeness with you. I'm also going to show you how you can use this exciting new API to build an ultra-cool clone of the Stride watchface by Pebble.

Happy leap day! Today is a once-every-four-years day of bizarre date-related bugs, and thus an opportune moment for us to introduce our latest developer feature: app debugging in the emulator! This gives you a powerful new way to hunt down errors in your apps.

One of the exciting changes introduced in SDK 3.9 was support for including Multiple JavaScript Files to your projects. While this feature doesn’t allow you to run any JavaScript you previously couldn’t, it makes organizing your PebbleKit JS code a heck of a lot easier.

In this blog post, we'll look at how to refactor some exisiting JavaScript 'library code' into an actual module for PebbleKit JS, making it simpler to use and share!

For those that don’t already know, the RePhone smartstrap kit was part of a highly successful Kickstarter campaign by Seeed Studio to create the world’s first open source and modular smartphone. Part of their campaign was to create a smartstrap kit for Pebble Time that integrates with RePhone modules such as GPS, NFC, and external batteries. This is the first commercial smartstrap project I’ve managed to lay my hands on, and it’s awesome!

In SDK 3.9 we will introduce a new feature to the Pebble SDK: the ability to cleanly use multiple JavaScript files in the PebbleKit JS app portion of your project.

The time has almost come for Pebble Classic and Pebble Steel to get firmware 3.x!

This is great news for users who get access to all the improvements and fixes since 2.x, as well as new features such as timeline, Quiet Time, no more eight app limit, Standby Mode, and last but not least one new color (gray)!

But let us not forget about Basalt and Chalk app developers, who also have a lot to get excited about - a huge new user base of Aplite watch wearers!

This blog post aims to help developers using SDK 2.x features and APIs to migrate their apps to a single 3.x codebase. As well as bringing compatibility to all older watches when they upgrade to firmware 3.x, these changes will also serve to remove a lot of complex and ugly conditional code that has needed to exist in the meantime. Let's fix some apps!

With the upcoming release of firmware 3.8 on Pebble and Pebble Steel, and the associated SDK 3.8, we have decided to redesign how image resources work in Pebble apps.

I am pleased to today announce that version 4.0-rc4 of the pebble tool is now available. The key new feature is a new paradigm for dealing with firmware and SDK versions. This makes it much easier to deal with differing SDK versions, or to test code on multiple (emulated) firmware versions.

A note: while the tool is now at version 4.0, the SDK, firmware and mobile apps will not be following. Pebble tool versioning is now completely independent of the rest of the Pebble ecosystem.

In October, we gave developers access to the microphone in the Pebble Time via our new Dictation API, and almost instantly we began seeing awesome projects utilising speech input. Voice recognition is an exciting new method of interaction for Pebble and it has created an opportunity for developers to enhance their existing applications, or create highly engaging new applications designed around the spoken word.

Speech-to-text has been integrated with Pebble by using the Recognizer cloud service from Nuance, a leading provider of voice and language solutions.

Starting with Pebble Time Round, we are moving towards communicating with Bluetooth Low-Energy only. This means there are some updates to PebbleKit iOS to support this. Here are the major changes and steps to take to support the new BLE connection.

What's New

• Companion apps have dedicated, persistent communication channels
• Start mobile apps from Pebble
• 8K AppMessage buffers
• Swift support

You may have heard about Pebble Time Round, our newest addition to the Pebble family which adds a whole bunch of new possibilities, challenges, and opportunities for our dedicated developers to get creative with.

With a new platform usually comes a new SDK to play with. Well, why wait? All developers can now get their hands on the new SDK 3.6-dp2 or use it on CloudPebble. This is a preview of the first Pebble Time Round-compatible SDK, allowing developers to realize their ideas for new and improved watchapps and watchfaces. Have a favorite classic round watchface that looks cumbersome on a rectangular display? Try it out on this one!

We launched the first version of our new SDK with support for Pebble Time two days into our Kickstarter campaign. Since then, we have updated it every week, releasing six iterations of our developer preview. Some of these versions included major new features like support for color in the emulator and support for the timeline. Some other features were more subtle, like the new antialiased drawing mode and the updates to the animation system. All these changes together, and a bunch more that you have not seen yet, will form the SDK that you will use to build watchfaces, watchapps and timeline apps for all models of Pebble watches in the coming months.

These updates include lots of changes, and no matter how hard we try to document everything there are a lot of unanswered questions. Some subjects have just not been addressed by the developer previews yet, some need more explaining and as always there are things we just missed in our communication efforts.

In this update, I want to answer publicly the most frequent questions received from the community in the last few weeks. I will cover components that have been released but also those that are still to come so you have the information needed to plan ahead and prepare your apps for the Pebble Time launch.

Many of you have read about smartstraps on our Kickstarter page and contacted us for more details. Today we are releasing mechanical and electrical designs so you can start working on the next generation of straps: Straps that expand the functionality of Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel.

The smartstrap connector is situated on the back of your new favorite watch. Smartstraps can extend below the watch to reach that connector while Pebble Time is worn. In the 3D files we are releasing today, you will find a generic connector that can work with most straps. Of course, you can also design completely new straps if your project calls for one!

You might have noticed on the Internet that we announced the brand new Pebble Time on Tuesday. Almost 50,000 members of our community have already backed the project on Kickstarter this week.

Most important for all of you is that today we are announcing the first developer preview of Pebble SDK 3.0. This new SDK is available right now to all Pebble developers, via CloudPebble or to install on your computer. Both versions include an emulator with support for the new hardware, and of course the color screen!

We're thrilled to announce the latest addition to CloudPebble: a Pebble smartwatch emulator!

It's a brand new year, which for developers and hackers can mean only one thing - a new year of hackathons! Throughout January and beyond, Pebble will be making appearances at various events (large and small) so if you spot an event near you, be sure to come along. We will be giving away Pebble swag and selling refurbished Pebbles for $50, and will also be on hand to answer any questions you have as well as help you create the best hacks on Pebble. We saw some awesome apps and hacks arise from hackathons in 2014, but we think the best is yet to come!

See below for details on the most immediate dates, or the Pebble Developers website Events page for all our plans for future events. If you are organizing a hacking event that we could attend, be sure to get in touch.

Hey Pebble Devs!

It's been a great year for us at Pebble as well as all the awesome community developers that come up with ever more surprising and useful apps for Pebble. We would not be where we are today with over 5000 apps without all the hard work that you guys put into your apps, so thank you!

We look forward to another amazing year with you in 2015, May your hands always be busy!

Alex, Cherie, Chris, Heiko, Katharine, Katherine, Łukasz, Matthew H, Matthew T, Thomas

The official Pebble Android and iOS apps have been updated to 2.2 and 2.6 respectively. These updates add support for the French, German and Spanish languages. The Pebble firmware, the mobile apps and the appstore are all translated.

Here's another newsletter blog post to keep you up-to-date on the Pebble community happenings. This time we've got stories of success and tips on expanding your app's audience!

Another newsletter detailing our new releases for the Pebble firmware, Android and iOS apps is reproduced here for your blog reading pleasure. In addition, we also have some exciting news about the Pebble appstore!

There was so much to pack into the last newsletter, we had to make a blog post about it!

Can you believe it's already been a month since the developer retreat? This blog post is long overdue but it was waiting for some very important content so that I could share some highlights from the retreat! I asked the retreat attendees what their favorite presentations/parts of the retreat were and I think these represent some of the best. If you don't agree, then tell me in the comments!

Check out the full developer retreat recap broken down day by day in the community section of our new developer website! We're still working on a video montage of the robotics competition so that should be on the website soon! For even more detail on what this awesome group of 100 developers from around the world got up to check out our full schedule.

CloudPebble today gains significantly enhanced support for code completion, as well as inline syntax checking and the ability to "go to definition".

Check it out!

Today we released SDK 2.6.1, which includes support for background workers. This enables great activity tracking apps like Misfit and Jawbone's Up to keep counting in the background — and you can use them too! Head over to our background worker guide and read through the API documentation to find out how.

We have also added APIs for direct access to the framebuffer, and to retrieve information on the watch, including its color and firmware version.

Browse through the release notes for full details.

Almost two months ago the XDA Forums and Pebble set out on a mission to find three amazing apps/watchfaces and their developers. We called it the XDA - Pebble Developer Challenge and last Friday it all came to a close! These three developers have taken the Pebble and truly stretched its limits to create some amazing products and we want to show them to you!

The XDA - Pebble Developer Challenge was a 3-week competition - your opportunity to pitch your proposal for the best Pebble app and bring it to life with a Pebble of your own. Of the 20 proposals that we selected for the second phase, the developers of the best three Pebble apps have been invited to attend the 2014 Pebble Developer Retreat in October. We also gave each of them a Pebble Steel to flaunt!

There were a lot of really great entries to the second phase of the competition and all of them deserve a quick download! Check out the complete list of apps and watchfaces that were made during the competition on the XDA forums.

We are pleased to announce that we will soon be automatically updating apps installed from the Pebble appstore. We believe this will be a significant improvement to your ability to get your work into the hands of your users, as well as to the user experience.

However, as developers, you need to make sure that your app is ready for these updates. In particular, you will need to make sure that your app conforms to our new version numbering, and that it can tolerate persistent storage left over from old app versions.

Today we're adding a new feature to CloudPebble that will make it easier than ever to build your watchfaces and watchapps! The new UI Editor will let you graphically build the user interface for your C app; you can then use the generated C to build anything you like.

Can you #MakeAwesomeHappen? Your app idea could win a Pebble and a trip to our 2nd Annual Pebble Developer Retreat in Mountain View, CA!

The XDA - Pebble Developer Challenge is a 3-week competition - your opportunity to pitch your proposal for the best Pebble app and bring it to life with a Pebble of your own. We'll be awarding Pebbles to the 20 best app proposals to give even first time developers a chance to work on our platform. Of the 20 proposals that we select the best 3 Pebble apps created will be invited to attend the 2014 Pebble Developer Retreat in October and we'll give them each a Pebble Steel.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards the Play Store to be born?

Sign up for the Pebble Android Beta Channel to find out!

New Pebble Android releases will be made available to beta testers on this channel. Once you have joined the Google Group, you will need to opt-in. Once signed up and opted-in, you will receive beta versions of the Pebble Android APK through the Play Store. There may be a delay before Google Play transitions you from the release channel to the beta channel.

Last week, we released both the 2.1 Pebble firmware, as well as the 2.1 Pebble SDK. Please make sure you have the latest version of the SDK (2.1.1) -- the latest update is available from the developer site.

To help make your Pebble development experience even better, CloudPebble can now display the API documentation for any function directly in the editor view.

We now have an even easier way for you to deploy apps to your watches! No longer will you have to launch the app, turn on the development server, and type in your IP address. Instead, you now simply need to select your phone from a list.

UPDATE: The next round of Pebble App Challenge voting—narrowing down our 16 finalists—has been postponed for now. We will update the voting schedule after a recent issue with the iOS Pebble app has been resolved.

The public has spoken! The Top16 finalists for the Pebble App Challenge have been selected!

It's now even easier to get started with Pebble development or prototype new ideas!

CloudPebble recently gained support for building Simply.js projects – which means you can now write, build and install simple apps entirely in JavaScript and inside your web browser.

Dear Developers,

We are celebrating the launch of the Pebble appstore on Android by announcing the Pebble App Challenge, featuring a $5000 grand prize for the first place app developer(s) and a Pebble Steel for each of the Top 16 finalists.

The Pebble App Challenge starts today. Enter your Pebble application(s) in the challenge now!

Android Beta 11 was just released. This version is a huge improvement to BETA10, it fixes the most annoying bugs in BETA10 but also improves stability considerably.

Until today, installing the Pebble SDK meant downloading and unzipping the SDK and arm tools, installing some python requirements and updating your bash_profile.

Update: A new version is available.

Dear Developers,

We just published Pebble Android 2.0 Beta 10. We are getting close to a final release and you can help by testing this build on your devices.

Update: A new version is available.

We just released a new version of Pebble Android 2.0 Beta with the Pebble appstore.

Update: A new version is available.

This morning we released the Pebble appstore for iOS. We love Android and feature parity is extremely important for us. We are releasing today a beta of the Pebble Android mobile app that includes the Pebble appstore to all developers.

This is a big day for Pebble developers and the wearable ecosystem in general! Almost one year after the first version of Pebble SDK, this morning we have released a new version of the Pebble iOS app including the Pebble appstore. For the first time in the history of wearable computing, users can browse and download third party apps: your apps.

This is an important milestone. First and foremost we want to thank you for your journey with us. In just 3 months since the first beta of SDK 2 you have blown us away with your talent and creativity!

Attention developers! Pebble SDK 2.0 BETA7 just landed on the developer site! Go get it now and do read the release notice. iOS users will need to delete any existing Pebble app before they can upgrade.

Another week and another release of Pebble SDK 2.0. In this version you will find that the iOS application now includes the Pebble appstore and will give you a chance to see how your application looks and feels with the new store. If you had a 1.x application, you should also make sure that the automatic upgrade works properly for your app.

We've had a pretty awesome start to 2014 and we couldn't have done it without you! First, we kicked off the year by sponsoring the wildly successful AT&T Developer Summit hackathon, which was followed shortly after by our announcement of the new Pebble Steel during CES. In addition, we announced that 2.0 will be publicly released along with the Pebble appstore at the end of January. Here's a sneak peek of what the appstore will look like.

Dear Developers,

Have you submitted your apps to the Pebble appstore?

Eric announced this morning at CES that the appstore will be officially released in late January. The 2.0 BETA period is coming to an end; users will soon get their hands on the amazing apps you have created.

Eric also announced a brand new Pebble: Pebble Steel. We have a few to give away to the developer community. Keep reading for more information!

Busy times for the Pebble elves! Beta3 last week, the app store announcement on wednesday and now a new BETA! Pebble SDK BETA4 is available on our website now. Existing iOS developers will receive an email with a link to install it; if you are not on that list yet, please fill the form to request it.

We are extremely excited to announce the Pebble appstore! Many of you, as developers, have asked for it and we are happy to announce that it will go live with Pebble SDK 2.0 early next year.

Pebble appstore will be included in the official Pebble smartphone application and will be the first place where Pebble users look for Pebble apps. For developers, the Pebble appstore is the best way to promote and distribute your Pebble applications to users.

This holiday season is off to a great start and the Pebble community is getting larger every day! We wanted to take the time today to thank you all for your ongoing support and feedback on the Pebble SDK, and more importantly, for sticking with us through all of the bugs and issues. You are the most amazing people we could have to work with -- thanks!!!

We recently introduced our Pebble SDK 2.0 beta and we're excited to now also announce a new way for you to earn a Pebble to develop your 2.0 apps on!

Hi Pebble Developers!

Today we are excited to announce Pebble SDK - Version 2.0. This new release adds tons of new features and makes it even easier for developers to build awesome apps and watchfaces for Pebble.

Since we launched the first version of our SDK in April, we’ve been getting feedback and suggestions from developers around the world, and we’ve been working hard to incorporate your suggestions in this new release.

Hi Pebblers!

It's no secret that we've been hard at work developing better software for Pebble and this Wednesday, November 6th, we'll be making a very important announcement. You're invited to join our livestream event at 10AM PST to hear what awesome new things we've been working on to make Pebble a more robust and feature-rich platform. To tune in, visit https://www.getpebble.com on Wednesday morning after 9AM PST to obtain a link for the livestream. After the live broadcast hosted by Eric and our very own Thomas, we will be leading a Reddit AMA discussion at noon (12PM PST) to answer any lingering questions you may have.

Hi Pebblers!

It’s been awhile since our last update to the developer’s blog, but we have some exciting news to share!

As many of you have probably noticed, the developer evangelism team here at Pebble has been growing over the last few months and we’re excited to introduce our newest additions!

Pebble firmware 1.12 was released earlier this week. The changelog announced "lots of goodies for watchapp developers" and many of you are curious to see what they are!