Pebble Timeline Challenge Week 4 Winner - Pushbutton

The core goal of IFTTT (If This, Then That) is to use the Internet to simplify your life, and there is no better device to help with that goal than your Pebble! Pushbutton, the 4th winner of the Pebble Timeline Challenge, works with any IFTTT Do Button action to help you create shortcuts for your daily life.

The options are truly endless: you can set up daily weather reports, create a way to find your lost phone, put a notification on your timeline everytime a stock increases, etc. One of our developers already created a hack to use his Pebble and the IFTTT Gmail channel to make a personal voice note taker.

Pushbutton was the brainchild of Collin Fair, a Canadian developer and current University of Waterloo student. Here are some of the Pebble features and external resources he used while developing the app.

• PebbleKit JS for IFTTT API magic, timeline setup, geolocation
• Flask server for login page, timeline schedule management & pin pushing
• Animations
• Persistent storage for instant launches
• Basalt Compatible PNG support for channel icons
• Timeline app launch_args for one-click action triggering

Read on for a look into Collin's history as a Pebble Developer!

Q&A with Collin

Do you have a background as a Pebble developer?

Strangely enough, my first experience developing for Pebble was during an internship on the firmware team - I was working behind the scenes on PebbleOS before I had written my first app! But, it wasn't long till I was drawn in. By far, my favourite part of developing for Pebble is pushing the limits of the platform, digging into the internals of the SDK and OS to create the perfect experience.

What inspired you to develop Pushbutton?

I'm a big fan of the idea of IFTTT - not to steal their marketing line, but it unlocks the true power of the Internet, no programming required. Having that power on your wrist just makes sense. Many actions are things that people do every day, like emailing someone that they're on their way home: a perfect use for the new timeline. And, as people might know, IFTTT support was promised in the original Kickstarter back in 2012 - so I thought it was about time that promise was fulfilled.

Could you tell us a little bit about the creation of Pushbutton?

The original design placed a much bigger emphasis on the icon of each action - after all, why waste that colour screen on boring text? But this ran into issues: downloading the large icons over AppMessage, even using the new Basalt PNG support, wasn't particularly fast. Furthermore, Pebble UX is all about "glanceability" (if that's a word), and if you had more than one SMS or GMail action you'd be stuck squinting at the tiny text below the uselessly large icon. So, I took advantage of the new colour screen to make the action name front and centre, still backed by the familiar Twitter blue or Evernote green, solving both problems at once.

Of course, since its release I've had many great suggestions to improve the app further, so I'm sure I'll keep tweaking things. It's great to see the clever ideas people have come up with using the app in the first five days alone!

Any favorite moments while making the app?

It's a small thing, but the first time I hit the button on my Pebble and saw something actually happen via IFTTT. It wasn't until quite late in development that I hooked up the real button-pushing magic, so seeing the final piece fall into place was very satisfying.

Did you face any significant challenges during the development process?

The Pebble C SDK does a good job of hiding the trickier parts of embedded development, but there are still rough edges to be found. For instance, complicated animations can slow down AppMessage transmission - so I had to be careful that I wasn't sacrificing an efficient user experience for superficial (if cool-looking) animations.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I'm looking forward to see how everyone else puts the timeline to work - it's completely changed how I think about my Pebble.

Two Months to Go!

Developers, you have 8 weeks left to secure your spot at the Developer Retreat! Don't give up this chance to win awesome prizes and meet the Pebble team.

If you're still stuck about what to make, check our some of our examples and explore our timeline guides to give you that first burst of inspiration.

We're so excited for you to #makeawesomehappen!

Past Winners

• Week 1: Battery+
• Week 2: FitCat
• Week 3: Leaf