INTRODUCTION

Published March 30, 2016 © GPL3+

Control your Particle Photon from a Pebble smartwatch

Control your Photon from a Pebble, like you do with the tinker app.

BeginnerFull instructions provided1,896

Control your Particle Photon from a Pebble smartwatch

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Pebble Watch

Particle Photon

Software apps and online services

Pebble Cloud IDE

Particle Cloud IDE

Story

INTRODUCTION

This is a smartwatch version of the particle Tinker app, that let you control all the pins of Photon board, from your pebble.

I tested it only with Photon, but should work also with Core and Electron.

On the board side, all you need to do is upload the tinker.ino scketch, available on on the example section of the Particle cloud IDE, or in the software section of this article.

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Then install the watchapp from the Pebble App store.

Here is a little demo

SOFTWARE

For the watchapp a used Pebble.js, which is very easy to use, and lets you code in JavaScript. Here is the reference page.

The software I wrote is quite simple to understand. I only create some menus to list pins and actions, and a window to show information from Photon , and interact with it.

Remember to replace your device id and access token in the code.

var DEVICE_ID = '123456987456321456987456'; //Replace with your photon device ID
var ACCESS_TOKEN = '1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdf123456789'; //Replace with your particle access token. Remember not share it

An important thing you have to know is that when you write your app with Pebble.js, the JavaScript code is run on your smartphone, and UI changes are sent to the watch through bluetooth when needed.

For this reason, Pebble.js guidelines say that you should avoid using setTimeout, setTinterval and friends in your code, because the app can stop at any time if the connection between phone and watch is lost.

I discovered this only after finishing the entire project, thats why I used it in my project.

To communicate with Photon I used REST APIs, which let you interact with your board using HTTP requests.

In this case I used the API for calling functions exposed by the device.

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I didn't find any documentation of how command has to be sent to use the fuction of the already existing tinker.ino sckecth, but looking at he code you can understand it;

command to write a pin: PIN_NAME VALUE
command to read a pin: PIN_NAME

When reading data from the board, I refresh them every 500ms, but you can change this delay

var intervalID = setInterval(function()
{
    readValue(e3.itemIndex === 0?'digitalread':'analogread', e.item.title);
}, 500); //Change this value

tinker.ino

/* Function prototypes -------------------------------------------------------*/
int tinkerDigitalRead(String pin);
int tinkerDigitalWrite(String command);
int tinkerAnalogRead(String pin);
int tinkerAnalogWrite(String command);

/* This function is called once at start up ----------------------------------*/
void setup()
{
	//Setup the Tinker application here

	//Register all the Tinker functions
	Spark.function("digitalread", tinkerDigitalRead);
	Spark.function("digitalwrite", tinkerDigitalWrite);
	Spark.function("analogread", tinkerAnalogRead);
	Spark.function("analogwrite", tinkerAnalogWrite);
	Serial.begin(9600);

}

/* This function loops forever --------------------------------------------*/
void loop()
{
	//This will run in a loop
}

/*******************************************************************************
 * Function Name  : tinkerDigitalRead
 * Description    : Reads the digital value of a given pin
 * Input          : Pin
 * Output         : None.
 * Return         : Value of the pin (0 or 1) in INT type
                    Returns a negative number on failure
 *******************************************************************************/
int tinkerDigitalRead(String pin)
{
    Serial.println(pin);
	//convert ascii to integer
	int pinNumber = pin.charAt(1) - '0';
	//Sanity check to see if the pin numbers are within limits
	if (pinNumber< 0 || pinNumber >7) return -1;

	if(pin.startsWith("D"))
	{
		pinMode(pinNumber, INPUT_PULLDOWN);
		return digitalRead(pinNumber);
	}
	else if (pin.startsWith("A"))
	{
		pinMode(pinNumber+10, INPUT_PULLDOWN);
		return digitalRead(pinNumber+10);
	}
	return -2;
}

/*******************************************************************************
 * Function Name  : tinkerDigitalWrite
 * Description    : Sets the specified pin HIGH or LOW
 * Input          : Pin and value
 * Output         : None.
 * Return         : 1 on success and a negative number on failure
 *******************************************************************************/
int tinkerDigitalWrite(String command)
{
    Serial.println("digitalwrite: "+ command);
	bool value = 0;
	//convert ascii to integer
	int pinNumber = command.charAt(1) - '0';
	//Sanity check to see if the pin numbers are within limits
	if (pinNumber< 0 || pinNumber >7) return -1;

	if(command.substring(3,7) == "HIGH") value = 1;
	else if(command.substring(3,6) == "LOW") value = 0;
	else return -2;

	if(command.startsWith("D"))
	{
		pinMode(pinNumber, OUTPUT);
		digitalWrite(pinNumber, value);
		return 1;
	}
	else if(command.startsWith("A"))
	{
		pinMode(pinNumber+10, OUTPUT);
		digitalWrite(pinNumber+10, value);
		return 1;
	}
	else return -3;
}

/*******************************************************************************
 * Function Name  : tinkerAnalogRead
 * Description    : Reads the analog value of a pin
 * Input          : Pin
 * Output         : None.
 * Return         : Returns the analog value in INT type (0 to 4095)
                    Returns a negative number on failure
 *******************************************************************************/
int tinkerAnalogRead(String pin)
{
    Serial.println(pin);
	//convert ascii to integer
	int pinNumber = pin.charAt(1) - '0';
	//Sanity check to see if the pin numbers are within limits
	if (pinNumber< 0 || pinNumber >7) return -1;

	if(pin.startsWith("D"))
	{
		return -3;
	}
	else if (pin.startsWith("A"))
	{
		return analogRead(pinNumber+10);
	}
	return -2;
}

/*******************************************************************************
 * Function Name  : tinkerAnalogWrite
 * Description    : Writes an analog value (PWM) to the specified pin
 * Input          : Pin and Value (0 to 255)
 * Output         : None.
 * Return         : 1 on success and a negative number on failure
 *******************************************************************************/
int tinkerAnalogWrite(String command)
{
    Serial.println("analogwrite: "+ command);
	//convert ascii to integer
	int pinNumber = command.charAt(1) - '0';
	//Sanity check to see if the pin numbers are within limits
	if (pinNumber< 0 || pinNumber >7) return -1;

	String value = command.substring(3);

	if(command.startsWith("D"))
	{
	    Serial.print("is digital:" );
	    Serial.println(value.toInt());
		pinMode(pinNumber, OUTPUT);
		analogWrite(pinNumber, value.toInt());
		return 1;
	}
	else if(command.startsWith("A"))
	{
		pinMode(pinNumber+10, OUTPUT);
		analogWrite(pinNumber+10, value.toInt());
		return 1;
	}
	else return -2;
}

Credits

Mohamed Fadiga

8 projects • 35 followers

Teaher/ Maker / developer / IoT addicted / Sprinter 📚💡🤓💻. Passionate about anime, manga and pop-punk music. 🍥📖🎬🎸

Control your Particle Photon from a Pebble smartwatch

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

INTRODUCTION

Code

tinker.ino

Pebble Tinker

Credits

Mohamed Fadiga

Comments

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Control your Particle Photon from a Pebble smartwatch

Control your Particle Photon from a Pebble smartwatch

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

INTRODUCTION

Code

tinker.ino

Pebble Tinker

Credits

Mohamed Fadiga

Comments

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