Pebble Developer Blog

In last week’s timeline blog post, we teased a new competition we’re running. This will be a challenge to see who can create the coolest Pebble applications that are optimized for the Pebble Time: we’re interested in seeing apps that use the timeline interface as well as other awesome watchfaces and Pebble apps in color. Winners can look forward to a Pebble Time, swag, and publicity in the Pebble developer community.

The Timeline Challenge will feature 12 winners, one per week for 12 weeks. We’ll start announcing winners on May 4th, so you have plenty of time to develop and submit your apps before the first deadline! Don’t worry though, you can continue to work on your apps throughout the challenge and submit them after the first round of the challenge, but the early bird gets the first Pebble Times!

For the past few weeks, we’ve been releasing updated elements of our new SDK. As many of you know, one of the most important facets of the Pebble Time is the Pebble timeline.

The timeline is a core feature of the Pebble Time that allows users to see important events in their past, present, and future. The timeline creates a unique opportunity for both Pebblers and developers. Not only can users simplify their lives by tracking the important events in their days, but developers can also create applications that push pins directly to their users’ Pebbles.

Last weekend, we were so excited to watch a new group of Pebble Developers blossom. Pearl Hacks, an all women’s hackathon hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, served as an incubator for a class of young women who are a testament to the diversity of backgrounds represented by the Pebble Developer community.

Were these women seasoned hackers? Nope, 60% of them had never been to a hackathon before, and the majority of the attendees had been programming for less than a year! Regardless of their previous technical experience, they created spectacular projects, and we were so impressed by their practical, useful hacks. When we started our workshop to help first time developers get started with Pebble, we had no idea just how many projects would be created over the course of the weekend! Only 4 people in the room of about 40 people had ever heard of Pebble before but in just 24 hours we had 15 teams create Pebble projects!

Space Apps 2014 is taking place this weekend (April 12th/13th) and we are very happy to be a partner of this event. This year, the challenges include a Wearable category but we do not doubt that Pebble will find its way in a lot of the other challenges as well!

We'd like to share with you a great opportunity to learn more about Pebble development through a webinar that is taking place on Monday, March 31st from 14:00 – 15:00 GMT (10:00 AM – 11:00 AM EDT). The webinar is entitled "Use AppCode to Develop for the Pebble Smartwatch" and is being presented by Heiko Behrens, one of the developers of PebbleCam.

Dear Pebble Developers,

Submissions are now closed, and you can vote for your favorite apps in the Pebble App Challenge. Visit the challenge page to review the submissions and cast your vote.

Now is a great time to encourage your friends, colleagues and peers to support your work and vote. The voting period this week is open to everyone, including non-Pebble users.

Voting will be open until Thursday 5 pm PDT. At the end of the week, the Top 16 apps will be selected to compete next week in the Pebble appstore for the grand prize.

May the best app win!

Team Pebble

This February, three Pebble developer evangelists headed out to Philadelphia for PennApps 2014.

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!

Hi Pebblers!

We're really looking forward to our next open lab that we're hosting at Pebble HQ this Friday. If you haven't had a chance yet to join an open lab (in-person) or a virtual lab (online), this is your chance! This is a great opportunity for you to hack on your latest projects and receive help from our developer evangelists, Thomas and Cherie.

Hi Pebblers!

We had a blast at the first open lab that we hosting at Pebble HQ last Friday. We know many of you were interested in joining, but perhaps you don't live in the area, or you just weren't able to make it; to help with this, we're now announcing our first Virtual Lab for Pebble Developers! This is a great opportunity for you to hack on your latest projects and receive help from our developer evangelists, Thomas and Cherie, in an online setting.

One of the most useful additions to the Pebble SDK in the 2.0 beta release is the introduction of PebbleKit JS and the ability to use a webview on your phone to configure your watch app. Since we've been seeing a good number of questions on this new feature, we figured we'd talk about it a little more.

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!

Yesterday, we announced the beta release of our 2.0 SDK and got overwhelmingly helpful feedback from all of you. Today, we are equally excited to announce that your favorite apps are now also available on v2.0, ready to download! We contacted some of the developers to get their feedback on the new SDK, along with some tips and tricks for those of you that are just starting out with the new Pebble SDK.

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.

On september 25th, the Pebble User Group met at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View to discuss two-way communication with Pebble SDK.

The slides are now available for everyone to enjoy - just after the break!

If you were there, you’re probably still talking about it, right? If not, you missed a great opportunity, which you’ll want to take advantage of next time. Create a great Pebble app and be there!

I’m talking about the recent Pebble Developer Retreat, which took place at Pebble HQ in Palo Alto, California, during the waning days of summer on the eve of Labor Day weekend, August 29th to September 2nd. What an amazing event! Way cool, truly awesome -- all that and more!

More than one hundred Pebble software developers, many of whom had already created really cool Pebble watchface and watchapps, converged in a series of presentations, hands-on coding workshops, discussions, and lots of fun, food and fellowship at the Retreat.

It seems the summer days are only increasing the energy of Pebble developers! There were lots of new watchfaces announced on the forums this week. It's getting hard to try all of them!

Watchfaces are a very visible part of the work they are doing but they are also inventing new ways to use the Pebble SDK. Featured this week: how to take screenshots of your apps, getting facebook and twitter on your wrist (for iOS and Android), wearing barcodes and paying your respect to an old Chinese custom!

We love seeing what you guys are doing with the Pebble SDK! Every day there is more amazing apps that pushes the limit of what we thought was possible and contributes to #makeawesomehappen.

Here is a selection of the apps that caught our attention this week. Developers, please let us know about your apps in the forums or on twitter - And if you make a great video like most of the apps shown this week, it's even easier for us to help you!