Timer Clock Review

I've just found the Timer Clock application and I'm quite impressed. It's probably going to replace Rebble (I'm an ex-Pebbler) as my clock.

What I really like about it is that is brings together in one spot the basic watch functionality I expect from a digital watch - all the way back from watches I was wearing 20 years ago. That is: time, alarm, stopwatch, countdown timer.

If it was up to me, I'd make this the default clock for the Bangle! :-)

I do have some comments (of course), and these relate to how I was trying to use it on my Bangle 2.

I started by swiping right and got to the timers. So far so good. I immediately tried to swipe left to go back to the clock, but that didn't work. Swiping right got me more timers, but the only way to go back to the clock was to press the button.

Swiping left from the clock to go to the stop watches was fine, but continuing to swipe left didn't get me more stopwatches. I had to swipe right for those.

In short, I'd prefer the left/right swiping actions were like swiping a viewport right/left. The clock is in the middle, the timers extend off to the left of the clock (so you swipe right to get to them), and the stopwatches extend off to the right of the clock (so you swipe left to get to them). That would allow you to 'undo' your swiping to get back to the clock. The button press would remain as an 'instant back to clock'.

The only comment I have for the alarm is the same comment I have for the "Default Alarm & Timer" app. I'd like to set my alarm for work days only!

This next is probably only workable on a Bangle2, but I wonder if it would be easier to set times by tapping on a digit to select it first (and de-select it when done), then swiping up/down to change it? That way, when I want a half-hour alarm (e.g. "XX:30") I only need 3 swipes instead of 30!

Anyway, this is looking really nice so far. Good work!

After using it for a bit, it appears the Alarm widget is opposite - it shows when no alarms are enabled, and is hidden when an alarm is set.

Also, I'd rather the sub-apps (tclk Alarm, tclk Stopwatch, tclk Timer) didn't show up in the launcher. It loses what is in my opinion one of the benefits of having integrated functionality - less clutter.

Thanks for doing the review and bringing this app to my attention, I had not spotted it and I enjoy looking at other ideas. Its a good but of work.

It falls down (in my opinion) on the touch controls as the library is using on('drag') which is really insensitive to touch. It would work a lot better and be more responsive if it was using on('touch'). I do this in my Stopwatch touch App.

The author has actually built a number of seperate apps which get launch and share date with timer clock. In order to hide apps like this (and I think there is a use case for hidding apps) then it would need a setting in metadata.json to say 'hide in launcher'.

There is a 2nd way to build such apps (more what you are after) which is to have one large app that does everything. Then switching between screens is superfast. However there are limits on that approach on a Bangle 1 as you can run out of RAM very quickly. I built Kitchen Combo with that approach in mind on Bangle 1 and ran into lots of issues as I was pushing the watch to its limits.

I had thought about doing something similar with Stopwatch touch so that you can flip back and forth to it., and write the state to a JSON file so it can be picked up when the app reloads. You are right in that basic digital watches and other smart watches do this kind of integration seemlessly, but they are fixed, you can never do anything else. We do have a lot of different UI options open to us on Bangle 2 - which is in its early days. The number of Apps that go beyond a clock, date and font is still quite small at the moment. But its great to see someone build an app like this that is trying to push the boundaries of what can be done. In doing so it raises the bar for everyone else.

Glad you liked, Rebble. I'm probably not going to revist it though. I did try and develop some nice weather icons for it but they are very time consuming to get right and look nice. I'm working on other stuff right now.

I haven't dug into the code - too busy working on my own app this weekend.

After fiddling some more, I've found the alarm widget is actually OK, it appears that when you press 'X' to delete alarms, it forces the current alarm active.

I have found that when timers expire, the timer settings are altered so that the timer is doubled and however long it took you to acknowledge the alarm is added as well. For example, you set a timer for 3 minutes and when it finished you took 4 seconds to acknowledge it. The timer would be changed so it is set to 06:04.

that all sounds a bit odd. I could not figure out how to stop the count down timer, but I did not read the README file - so should do that.