Bangle.js 2 Mobile App - Feature Request - Include Tasker Support

@Gordon I hope you accept this feature request proposal.

I'm a bit surprised not to find a single mention of the swiss army knife of Android micro app maker tool that is Tasker in these forums! Now that Gordon is going to make a dedicated mobile app for the Bangle.js 2 the ability to easily integrate with Tasker is very real now and with very little effort in the application's tooling! I spoke with João Dias, maintainer of Tasker, and he said this is most of what is needed to be done: "[add the] Tasker plugin capabilities to the app he's already building (check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48IVJgDt­u6Y

)". If you don't own Tasker for Android you should buy it. Best $4.50 you will ever spend! Apple people, sorry... wrong ecosystem!

So what's so special about Tasker? Well, think of making your own app (script) to fill in for a missing feature on Android rather than waiting for downloading some untrustworthy app that wants access to your camera and mic. when it clearly shouldn't need that. Also, think about home automation or integration between hardware to software or hardware to hardware through your phone being the middleware. There's a lot of examples online of people doing stuff with Tasker. For those new to it though its best to view some of the more reasonable examples and feature pitches from the maintainer himself to get an idea of what it is and can do.

Some specific examples of what might be possible with Bangle.js 2's mobile app supporting Tasker:

1. Button for garage door opener (requires garage door hardware such as a microcontroller and existing home automation controller).
   
2. Contact family or friends should your heart rate indicate a problem.
   
3. Send you an alert when your watch battery is low and you're near your charger as a courtesy reminder.
   
4. Send you a notification when your watch battery is charged fully or at the desired max level, say 80% if you want to extend battery life over the life of the watch.
   
5. Swap out data like sounds or graphics based on conditions of the day or weather using Tasker to determine when/what to send from watch to phone or vice versa.
   
6. On that same note, display simple graphs like stock market data in near real time.
   
7. Rather than one time notification when a text or call comes in from a person of interest go into all-out nag mode and persistently try to get attention to the missed call/text until its at least read or seen.
   
8. Use your watch as a controller for your home security PTZ camera.
   
   

I bet if you can think it and its fairly reasonable it can be done with integration with Tasker.

Hi,

I think I did answer this a bit when someone asked (I guess it was you?) on KickStarter but.... Tasker sounds good, but in terms of things I make a priority, integration with proprietary paid apps is quite far down my list considering everything else I have to do.

Having said that, I'd mentioned once or twice on KickStarter but not in an official update yet, but:

• When I announced a separate app, a bunch of people emailed me asking if there wasn't a way to still use Gadgetbridge rather than developing something new
  
• I've been talking with Andreas (Gadgetbridge's creator) and he's open to me distributing a 'Gadgetbridge for Bangle.js', which does have internet connectivity turned on as well as the additions I wanted to make for Bangle.js, so that is now what we're doing.
  
• A quick Google reveals that there do seem to be some ways to integrate Tasker with Gadgetbridge as-is, and there's also a PR for Tasker support (although it looks dormant)
  
  

Even without this you can set Bangle.js up to send keypresses, which I bet Tasker can handle just fine. To go the other way, I bet Tasker can display notifications, and those can be handled on Bangle.js just fine too. There's also been a request to allow Bangle.js apps to fire off Intents, so those should work with Tasker too (when implemented).

If you want something smoother then everything is open so you (or in fact Tasker's developer) can add things yourself. But it seems to me that Tasker has over 1,000,000 installs at $4.50 each, so the developer's going to be doing a lot better than I am. He could probably afford to spend some time contributing to Gadgetbridge, which would then help everyone and sell him even more apps.

I don't know what goes on with Gadgetbridge development, but wouldn't it be better to obtain official support of the device from Gadgetbridge rather than creating a separate app?

As far as Tasker integration goes I'll wait to see what opportunity awaits to enable that and pursue when appropriate.

wouldn't it be better to obtain official support of the device from Gadgetbridge

Official support is already in Gadgetbridge, the issue is that Gadgetbridge has been very clear with all its users that the app will never connect to the internet, for anything - it's something they will never change.

However to actually do fun things with Bangle.js you probably do want to be able to connect to the net - so about the only way to make it work is to have a new Gadgetbridge version. The idea is both Gadgetbridges will be built from the exact same source though - just the original won't connect to the internet, and the new one will be able to if you want it to