New App development

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  • New App Development

    It would be nice to have somewhere to discuss and find new apps. New apps do of course appear in the downloader, but they can get lost among the large number of existing apps. To get things started, here are some apps that I have been working on. They can be loaded from https://jeffmer.github.io/JeffsBangleApp­sDev/.

    The first app gpstrack displays a track recorded by gpsrec together with the duration and length of the track. The app uses equirectangular projection both to map the track to screen and for distance calculation. This is accurate for small distances and requires much less computation than a Mercator projection.

    The second app is a small boat navigation app. It displays the current course and speed together with bearing and distance to a waypoint. The display includes an animated linear moving compass display. The red triangle is the current course and the blue circle the bearing to the waypoint. When both line up as in the picture you are on course to the waypoint. The app is compatible with the gps recording widget. The app takes a file waypoints.json with a set of waypoints. I am waiting for a tutorial on downloading files using interface.html!

    I also have a set of clockfaces which are largely modified versions of the existing clocks. Here are two of them:

    Firstly, a large font clock which can be read in sunlight:

    Secondly, an analogue clock with moving second hand:

    I have linked together these and other clock apps so that I can change the watch face using BTN1 and BTN3 to cycle through them. I have found this useful when outside when I cannot read the analogue display in bright sunlight.

    I am currently looking at Apple's ANCS to see if IOS notifications can be displayed on Bangle.js. There are some Arduino examples so it should be possible.

  • I guess this forum is a good place to discuss new apps...

    There are ideas to make new apps (and more) visible in the App Loader being discussed on GitHub:
    https://github.com/espruino/BangleApps/i­ssues/249

    Nice apps by the way.

  • Nice work.
    Do you want to make a pull request to the official app loader?
    I would really like the gpstrack app in it.

  • I am a bit nervous about a a pull request as I have made changes to my forked repository that I am sure will conflict and as you can probably ascertain from that, I am a little ignorant of pull requests in general:-). On my bangle.js, I use both the official app loader and my forked loader. Your advice on how best to proceed would be appreciated!

  • I have my own, manual copy (not fork!) of the bangle.js github.
    This is where I do all my crazy development stuff.
    As soon as something is ready to be published, I copy the files over to my fork of the bangle.js github. Then I test if app installation is working as expected.
    The I crate a pull request.

    This way I keep the crazyness and too many commits out of the fork and out of the bangle.js github.

    No idea if there is a better way.

    Example:
    My bangle.js copy: https://github.com/Purple-Tentacle/Bangl­eAppsDev
    My bangle.js fork: https://github.com/Purple-Tentacle/Bangl­eApps

  • Thanks, that's helpful, I will try to create a clean copy and update that one with gpstrack.

  • This all looks great! And I love the waypoint app.

    I'll try and get on the interface.html tutorial this week :)

  • Thanks Gordon - it’s a really great platform and a lifesaver in maintaining my sanity during lockdown.

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New App development

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