Bangle.js Beta Feedback #1398
Replies: 43 comments
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Posted at 2020-01-29 by BrainFooLong I like the watch, i've already created a watch interface "Centerclock". I don't wear the watch currently, because of this espruino/Espruino#1738 For me, i need to turn off the watch display per default and only turn it on with a press of a button. Also i have troubles with bluetooth connection while developing.
I can't describe a way to reproduce, even i can't describe a proper fix. I always tried resetting the watch, settings, etc... until it finally connected again. So, my development of my watch face took a way longer because of the bluetooth issues, but with patience i managed to finalize it. Battery life is really good, when the display don't turn on automatically. Greetz |
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Posted at 2020-01-29 by @gfwilliams Thanks! I'll definitely be getting the watch display stuff fixed soon - today hopefully. Very strange about your BLE issues - it sounds almost like low signal strength. When the upload fails and aborts, does the watch itself reboot? Do you see lower signal strength reported in your Bluetooth settings than you do for other devices? |
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Posted at 2020-01-29 by BrainFooLong Signal strength on the pc is typically fine when it is connected. If the watch has restarted, i don't know. It feels like, once connected via web bluetooth and than reloading the page, which disconnects you and you have to reconnect, the problem start to begin. I will try to invest more time on that issue and summerize that for you in a post. This will take some days probably. Will also try another pc. |
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Posted at 2020-01-29 by BrainFooLong Oh and one tool what would be awesomely handy: Convert ttf/otf fonts (or better: specific chars of that font files) into the required espruino format. I've tried different converters but had no luck. But that's not an issue. Just something what i've required for my watch interface. I ended up taking a default existing bangle font. I like your campaign. That's how crowdfunding should always be. |
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Posted at 2020-01-29 by AkosLukacs What about settings for: Oh, non-english UI maybe? I'm ok with english UI, but others may not Is there a way to store "state"? For example the pedometer resets every time I long-press button 3 or go to settings. Is this a known issue? Regular alarm clock app (for example wake me up at 6:12 each weekday) Timer app (for example alarm in 23 minutes) BLE connectivity: feels like (didn't investigate too deeply) turning ON in the menu doesn't have an immediate effect. Turning BLE off in the menu, and going to "make connectable" seems to work mostly. |
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Posted at 2020-01-29 by JumJum I would like to have a gesture-collection-generator
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Posted at 2020-01-30 by @gfwilliams Thanks! To try and sum up...
There is a bitmap font converter at http://www.espruino.com/Fonts#custom-fonts which works from bitmaps. It's an interesting thought - there's no reason you couldn't have an online font maker that generated bitmap fonts for you at the size you want - I just added espruino/EspruinoDocs#535 There is also a (beta) tool to generate vector fonts from TTF at https://github.com/espruino/Espruino/blob/vector_font_roboto/scripts/create_vector_font.js but right now they have to be compiled in... Allowing custom vector fonts is something I might add later, but for this release I think it's too much of a push. It might be interesting to have an online converter that generated a new
12/24hr seems like a good plan. There's an issue for it at espruino/BangleApps#76 - I'd be really interested if you have any ideas about how to do it such that clocks don't have a bunch of extra work to do. Maybe a date format string? Metric/imperial - good idea, but again is there a nice way to do this without putting too much stress on app developers? I notice out of the 80 beta watches there haven't been many apps submitted so I don't want to add extra hurdles!
Yes - there's an event called E.kill now which is called in every case except the watchdog reset (2 button press). I need to modify the pedometer widget to make it handle that and save the state. Just filed an issue for that at espruino/BangleApps#84
Good point. I've added an issue at espruino/BangleApps#83
Yes, it doesn't change as soon as you modify the setting - you have to go 'back' first
Yes, absolutely. There could be a website you go to, connect via Web Bluetooth, and it collects data for training. This is something I've wanted to do but as it's all server-side I'm going to wait until I have a bit more time! Issue filed at espruino/BangleApps#85 |
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Posted at 2020-01-31 by AkosLukacs Settings: IMO if there is a "global" option the app's developer can just use it (or ignore it), so they don't have to figure it out: "should I create another speedometer app with miles/hour? Or should I implement my own settings mechanism?" A date format string would be good. Of course depends on how many people would want to use a different one. And afaik, there is no built-in date formatting in javascript / Espruino, right? A minor issue: The delete confirmation doesn't fit on screen if the app's name is long. See the attached picture. (I deleted the pedometer, because it felt like in the last days battery drain was higher. And didn't use the pedometer earlier. Might be wrong tho...)Attachments: |
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Posted at 2020-01-31 by @gfwilliams Thanks - good point re settings. I don't want to bloat the menu too much so I reckon I'll add a 'locale' page or something like that which handles this kind of stuff. I also just added an issue for the app manager - adding a newline should be trivial. There is a date format function but it seems non-standard: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/toLocaleFormat We have an issue open for some kind of formatting at espruino/Espruino#1703 - but maybe it's better to just do it as a module |
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Posted at 2020-02-05 by ConorONeill Few things for me are:
Still love it! |
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Posted at 2020-02-05 by @gfwilliams
I did add CRC in the latest builds just in case - but could you check the dev console and see if anything is reported? Maybe make another post if there's anything. It's always been solid for me.
Just filed an issue for this: espruino/BangleApps#90 The lack of proper build numbers (because travis doesn't pull in the full Git history for some reason) screws this up a bit. Right now I'm still treating these as beta and trying to make sure I get things in a good state for release more than I care about making people update everything - realistically you'll only have to wait a few more weeks and it'll stabilise though. Also, there's now an
There's already an issue for this one :) espruino/BangleApps#79
I think this was due to the way the settings app forcibly tried to change settings on boot even when there was nothing to change. I made some changes yesterday and I'm hopeful it'll be a bit better now.
Just filed an issue for this: espruino/Espruino#1752 I haven't been using it on mine so far so hadn't come across it as a problem. If you can find a way to actually force a crash then it'd make life a lot easier debugging.
Yes, sounds like a good plan. Issue filed at espruino/BangleApps#91
Yep, it's on my list... espruino/Espruino#1748 |
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Posted at 2020-02-05 by ConorONeill
Awesome re CRC. I'm doing a few watches this week and will check. Several of us having the problem here. Usually when installing a bunch of apps in quick succession.
Yeah figured it would make more sense when everything stabilised.
Ooh I'll tell our intern! They'll be very happy to hear that.
For everyone it just randomly crashes the watch when HID enabled but doing nothing, and not connected, just walking around. They only know it has rebooted because clock has reset to 1970. So will be hard to replicate. Unless it's on a timer of some sort. Thanks again. |
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Posted at 2020-02-05 by @gfwilliams
Might be some issue with clicking upload on one app before the last has finished? If so it might be easy to reproduce - however I just tried and it worked ok.
If you clone the repo you can modify
Hmm, really strange. I'll leave it enabled and see what happens |
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Posted at 2020-02-06 by vitorio Hi! Recently started wearing my Bangle.js as my daily driver, and apart from the other issues already summarized at the top, I've found I bend my wrist up into the watch buttons a lot. I've reset the time, turned BT off/on, and launched apps this way. Some way to "lock" the watch buttons would be useful. Holding the buttons down won't help; it'd have to be something like tapping the screen multiple times in a row to unlock. Locking it by going through the menus would be fine, I think. |
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Posted at 2020-02-06 by AkosLukacs +1 :) |
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Posted at 2020-02-13 by @allObjects Noticed that the battery widget is pretty big... could it not be a bit less wide and still communicate the expected information? There is way to show even more information AND shorten it more: instead of 'vertical lines going fully thru the filling (green bar)' use side alternating notches or 'misalignments'. I chose a single pixel (vertical) line for 10% of battery capacity each, starting and ending with a complete vertical line... but leaving one or both full lines out works as well and simplifies implementation. Attached 'shopped' pics hint implementation options... from elaborate to simple, with last shot being to pixel scale (EDIT: Added charging arrow after @MaBecker made the point in next post #31).Attachments: |
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Posted at 2020-02-13 by @MaBecker Well, it changes when charging. Attachments: |
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Posted at 2020-02-13 by @allObjects Well... in deed!Attachments: |
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Posted at 2020-02-14 by @MaBecker just opened a new conversation Battery widget - how should it look like? |
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Posted at 2020-02-14 by @gfwilliams As you noted it's long because some space was needed to show the charge indicator, but it could easily be tweaked. One option might be to change the solid bar to an animation of some kind when charging (since at that point power usage is not a huge concern). Of course if you want to do something totally different then go for it - it'd be nice to have some different options so everyone can install what they want to. |
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Posted at 2020-02-22 by opichals @gfwilliams One thing I think about is the size of the font used. The app selector contains 3 lines of apps where the icons are decent size but the text is quite small. The Settings app has got like 10 lines and I find that to be the reason it is not too convenient to use. I would say using a font that would read nicely in 4-5 lines on full screen would be of great benefit to the overall usability of the whole Bangle.js platform. |
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Posted at 2020-02-23 by vitorio Following up on posts #15, #18, and #19, the updated firmware does seem to reduce accidental menu selections! I had some travel days this past week, though, and in moving luggage around, getting through the airport, etc., I still caught it in the menu or settings screens a few times, so it hasn't completely eliminated them. I'll follow up if I try swapping the bands and wearing it upside-down. |
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Posted at 2020-03-03 by AkosLukacs One more thing: The GPS status icon that's shown when the GPS recoder is active is kind of hard to see in sunglight. Red on black is not the best I think :) |
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Posted at 2020-03-03 by @gfwilliams Interesting... Can you not even make out the blinking? While I'm making a bunch of big breaking changes I've got an issue open for allowing widgets to have a dynamic length. While I'm doing that I might change the way the icons for the GPS recorder work so the widget is invisible while off, and I guess I could use some kind of animated satellite icon. If you cope up with some icon set you'd rather have then I can include that. I'm paid up with https://icons8.com/icons/set/satellite-signal so if you found one of those it's no problem to pull it in. I guess we'd need two icons for the animation when it has a lock, and another one for when it's searching |
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Posted at 2020-03-03 by AkosLukacs I think it's the red color and the small text of "No GPS signal" that makes it hard to see. Looking at it I see that is pulsing slightly. |
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Posted at 2020-03-03 by @gfwilliams Thanks - I wonder whether a lot of that is down to the contrast issues on the Beta watches LCD screen: espruino/Espruino#1758 |
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Posted at 2020-03-06 by AkosLukacs The new contrast / gamma looks better, thanks! |
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Posted at 2020-03-06 by AkosLukacs Erm, I think I have done something wrong, updated firmware to 2v04.384 (previous one was a 2v04.377), and now I can't connect to it via BLE. The morphing clock does "Resetting without loading any code" doesn't really work: Even stranger: When I try to boot without any code, long-pressing BTN3 erases the screen. But if I let display turn off, and raise, so the motion sensor turns the screen on, the morphing clock shows up. But seconds are not ticking, battery and bluetooth widgets not shown. (The previous comment was with an F18, not a proper Bangle Beta. Updated from a much older version, that one is working just fine. But did clear storage before updating) |
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Posted at 2020-03-06 by AkosLukacs Flashed back to 377, erased storage, flashed to 384, and seems to be working again! |
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Posted at 2020-03-06 by @gfwilliams Thanks - probably related to espruino/Espruino#1766 which I'll try and get sorted soon |
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Posted at 2020-01-29 by @gfwilliams
Hi! We're getting close to the time that KickStarter watches will arrive and software will be flashed onto them, and I wondered if anyone had any feedback about the Bangle.js Beta and Nodeconf badges...
While obviously stuff can be tweaked and added later, do you think there's anything specific which needs doing before the Bangles are sent out, since most users won't update their firmware initially?
So far, I have:
Please make sure you're running up to date Espruino firmware and apps before mentioning a problem as a lot has changed recently, and issues you had with earlier firmwares may have been fixed!
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