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Book Description

If you want to design apps for smart watches, it’s important to know that different platforms have vastly different capabilities. Apple Watch and Android Wear, for instance, serve primarily as smartphone extensions with fast CPUs, bright displays, and relatively short battery life. Pebble’s watches improve on this with better battery life and screens that work outdoors. Garmin watches take battery life and durability a step further.

It’s said that if you know how to build a boat, you can build things that will stand up to any environment this planet can throw at you. The "boatbuilders" at Garmin have created watches for long-term use in punishing, sometimes extreme conditions (such as a 24-hour ultra marathon).

In this report, author Brian Jepson takes you on a hands-on tour of Garmin and its Connect IQ SDK. Garmin goes furthest in prioritizing run time and resilience over raw processing power, but as you’ll discover, the watch does not sacrifice the functionality you need to develop first-class fitness- and health-related applications. This report explores both the advantages and constraints of working with Connect IQ.

  • Explore Garmin’s ability to collect data from users and return timely results to them
  • Start developing for Connect IQ by using templates for four kinds of apps
  • Work with example projects in Connect IQ, including ways to read data from an ANT+ sensor
  • Get developer resources for building wearable apps that do more with less

Brian Jepson is an O'Reilly editor, hacker, and co-organizer of Providence Geeks and the Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire. He’s also a geek-at-large for AS220, a non-profit arts center in Providence, Rhode Island. AS220 gives Rhode Island artists uncensored and unjuried forums for their work and provides galleries, performance space, fabrication facilities, and live/work space.

Table of Contents

  1. Preface
    1. Balancing Comfort, Looks, and Ability
    2. How Big, How Hungry?
    3. What Do You Want?
      1. Connections
    4. The Platforms
    5. Inventing the Future of Wearable Devices
    6. Acknowledgments
  2. 1. Big Data and µData
    1. The Garmin “Full Circle Experience”
    2. From the Body to the Cloud
    3. Garmin Health/Wellness
  3. 2. The Connect IQ Platform
    1. Designing for Different Watches
    2. Connect IQ Tools and Features
    3. Designing for Wearables
  4. 3. Getting Started with Connect IQ
    1. What You’ll Need
    2. Install the SDK
    3. Create a New Connect IQ Project
    4. Run an App in the Simulator
    5. Run an App on a Real Device
    6. Exploring the App
      1. Configure the App for a New Device
      2. How the Source Code Is Organized
      3. Fix the Font Size
      4. Menu Button?
    7. A Tour of the Source Code
  5. 4. Projects
    1. Personal Data Tracking
      1. Access the FIT File
      2. Add a New Field
    2. Read Data from a Sensor
    3. Working with an Authenticated Web Service
      1. Activity Summary
      2. Keep It Brief
  6. 5. Our Wearable, Connected Future
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