Watch face ideas

Former Member over 10 years ago

I have a couple idea for watch faces I think would be fun to develop, but I've never done any programming before. Looking for someone who would work with me, or help me out as I try and create this myself.

After reading the forums for a bit, what I'm trying to do might not be feasible as a watch face.

I was looking at the IQ app store today and saw the Fringe app for the Fenix. At the same time I was using my to-do list on my iPhone and thought it would be great if your calendar could integrate into your watch face so that you have a visual representation of how much time you have left to complete whatever it is you're working on/when you need to leave to get your next appointment.

travis.vitek over 10 years ago

...thought it would be great if your calendar could integrate into your watch face..

Unfortunately, that would require access to the Communications package, and that isn't available to watch faces. You could definitely implement a widget or app, but you currently can't do that from a watch face.

kmag37 over 10 years ago

The idea that I have but do not know if it is possible is this: A watch face that show two separate time zones at the same time. When I'm traveling I usually need this function. The watch I currently wear is digital/chronograph. The digital readout shows London, while the chronograph shows US eastern time zone. Is the possible to program and develop?

travis.vitek over 10 years ago

That shouldn't be a problem if you just want to display the current local time and then another time that is a fixed offset from that.

It does get complicated if you want to properly handle daylight saving time transitions (the clock jumps forward or back one hour in your time zone, but doesn't jump back/forward for that time zone for a few hours or it already did). I don't know if other applications handle this or not, but I'd expect them to if the daylight transition data is available. This information isn't directly available on a Garmin device, but it could be retrieved (for Apps and Widgets, but not Watch Faces or Data Fields).

Former Member over 10 years ago

The idea that I have but do not know if it is possible is this: A watch face that show two separate time zones at the same time. When I'm traveling I usually need this function. The watch I currently wear is digital/chronograph. The digital readout shows London, while the chronograph shows US eastern time zone. Is the possible to program and develop?

I've been thinking about something like this as well, but to really make it useful for everyone you would need to be able to configure which timezones to display. I don't see a way to configure this until the configuration API is available (see https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?187406-What-types-of-configuration-support-can-we-expect).

jim_m_58 over 10 years ago

I've not really looked at the SDK, but a friend asked me if it was possible to have a picture as the "wallpaper" for a watch face. I'm thinking that you can't, but does anyone know for sure?

Brandon.ConnectIQ over 10 years ago

@jim_m_58: Yes, you can have a picture as the watch background. The only limitation you'd need to be concerned with is the resolution of the device's screen (another limitation is the image file size, but our resource compiler helps with that). For example, some devices only support 16 colors, so an image would have to be indexed to a pretty restricted color palette. This could make some images look pretty bad, but with careful selection it can be done.

jim_m_58 over 10 years ago

Brandon, thanks for the info, but I'm betting that getting a picture that works would take more time than developing the app! (the request came by way of a friend, when she put in a pre-order for the vovoactive)

Former Member over 10 years ago

The VivoActive supports the full 64 color palette of the display, and most images look reasonably good with dithering (which the resource compiler will do for you).

If you experiment with images on VivoActive, I recommend viewing them on the device if possible. They generally look better on the device because the PPI is higher than your typical computer monitor.