Pebble smartwatch app for boats

Cardo

Cardo

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www.yacht-tinkerbell.co.uk
So, following on from my previous thread...
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?382460-Raspberry-Pi-(and-Arduino-)-boat-fun
we are now cooking with gas.
Mrs has got a working piece of software that connects to an NMEA stream (in our case a TCP output from Laika's extremely useful Kplex, though it should also be able to connect to any standard NMEA TCP output) and serves up the NMEA data in a JSON format that the Pebble can understand. The software runs on Python 2.7, so should be able to run on any computer you have onboard. In our case, it's a Raspberry Pi, but a laptop running Windows, Mac OS X or practically any flavour of unix should also work.

We're trying to make this as user friendly as possible, and were hoping not to need the intermediary piece of software, but unfortunately due to limitations with the Pebble APIs, this is the best we can do.

So, we're now starting to work on the Pebble app itself. I have the fun job of design. To be honest, I'm going for function over form! The idea is to have preset watch "screens" that can be selected/deselected and rearranged in the config. Each screen will have a basic function and will display set bits of information based on the function of the screen. You will scroll through each screen by pressing the Select button on the Pebble.

I've started off by looking at the NMEA data we will have available and have come up with the following screens:

Manual Steering
DTW
BTW
XTE
Heading to steer
Steer L or R

Manual Steering Option 2
DTW
BTW
COG
SOG

Navigation
WP Name
WP Lat/Long
BTW
DTW

Environment
Boat speed
Depth of water
Wind speed
Wind angle

GPS
GPS status
Lat
Long
COG
SOG

Racing (I know nothing about racing, this is pure guesswork)
DTW
BTW
COG
XTE
XTE L or R
Dest closing velocity

Log
Total distance logged
Distance since reset
Water temperature

Time
UTC time
DD/MM/YYYY
Local time zone offset

These are the ones I've come up with so far. If anyone can think of any extra screens, or a better way to display the info on any particular screens, please do say so.
By default, the data will probably be grabbed every second. This will eat battery, but I guess you won't be using this app 24/7. If feasible, there will be an option to set the data update interval.

There's a couple of other bits of NMEA data that may be available that I haven't put in there, yet. Feel free to make suggestions.

Once this is up and running, we will also add anchor windlass/keel controls. This will require some extra work, and isn't likely to be such a sought after feature, so we're getting the basic data display up and running first.

I don't know how much interest there is in this, but plan is to make this available for free (though donations are always welcome!). Plenty of nerds out there with boats, surely we can't be the only ones! ;)
 
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Personally I'd like to see BTW, DTW, COG and SOG on the same page. Maybe with XTE as well. These (along with heading) are the only ones I really need. When I'm helming I have to crane my neck to see the multi display on the binnacle, and on the coachroof we can only have BTW/DTW or COG/SOG but not both. (wind and depth have their own displays). It would be good to get them on the watch. I'm not bothered about the windlass stuff.

As to interest, there are around 300,000 Pebbles in the wild, but I reckon the number of those that also own boats are not that high!
 
pandroid said:
Personally I'd like to see BTW, DTW, COG and SOG on the same page. Maybe with XTE as well. These (along with heading) are the only ones I really need. When I'm helming I have to crane my neck to see the multi display on the binnacle, and on the coachroof we can only have BTW/DTW or COG/SOG but not both. (wind and depth have their own displays). It would be good to get them on the watch. I'm not bothered about the windlass stuff.

As to interest, there are around 300,000 Pebbles in the wild, but I reckon the number of those that also own boats are not that high!
Click to expand...

Was scratching my head for a bit, then twigged that track made good is COG. :p

Maybe a another version of the Manual Steering screen. Only issue is I don't want to put too many bits of info on one screen, as you'd end up with a small font that might be hard to read. I feel four lines of information is probably the maximum suitable.

Manual Steering Option 2
DTW
BTW
COG
SOG

Does that look ok? It should be easy enough to add pre-configured screens. The difficulty is giving end users the ability to create their own screens, so we're going with pre-configured. :p

As for interest, hey, I'll be using it. If anyone else wants to use it, great!
 
pandroid said:
As to interest, there are around 300,000 Pebbles in the wild, but I reckon the number of those that also own boats are not that high!
Click to expand...

There's enough to get panbo interested :-)
http://www.panbo.com/archives/2013/12/seanav_app_now_with_ar_gofree_and_pebble.html
I do think though that maybe this project might be received with more interest on cruisersforum.com with its more international audience. My experience is that the Scandinavians, Germans, Dutch and French tend to have more of an interest than the brits in home-brew nautical geekery, and that the Americans tend to own more toys.

MTW. Oh yes. Imagine sailing south from Atlantic france, britain or heaven forbid, someone further north in winter. Every time you get up for your watch you can look at the water temperature and see how life is slowly getting better :-)
 
laika said:
There's enough to get panbo interested :-)
http://www.panbo.com/archives/2013/12/seanav_app_now_with_ar_gofree_and_pebble.html
I do think though that maybe this project might be received with more interest on cruisersforum.com with its more international audience. My experience is that the Scandinavians, Germans, Dutch and French tend to have more of an interest than the brits in home-brew nautical geekery, and that the Americans tend to own more toys.
Click to expand...
Not quite as smooth as SeaNav's automatic integration, but maybe Panbo will be interested in our little project, when it's done. :p

MTW. Oh yes. Imagine sailing south from Atlantic france, britain or heaven forbid, someone further north in winter. Every time you get up for your watch you can look at the water temperature and see how life is slowly getting better :-)
Click to expand...

Can you suggest which screen I could squeeze the data into??
 
Cardo said:
Can you suggest which screen I could squeeze the data into??
Click to expand...

Not the obvious "environment": water temperature isn't really going to affect your sailing decisions like the other info there.
If you didn't want to create another screed I'd display it with the time. Plenty of phones are configured to display a weather widget under the time. This would be similar. Today's water temperature is 26 degrees with a 90% chance of margaritas!
 
laika said:
Not the obvious "environment": water temperature isn't really going to affect your sailing decisions like the other info there.
If you didn't want to create another screed I'd display it with the time. Plenty of phones are configured to display a weather widget under the time. This would be similar.
Click to expand...
No worries creating another screen, but it seems a bit silly to have a screen with only the water temperature! I guess I could stick it in with the time, at least for now.
Today's water temperature is 26 degrees with a 90% chance of margaritas!
Click to expand...
It's always time for margaritas!
 
:D
boatnerd.png

The "NO DATA" field is because the NMEA feed we're using to test with doesn't have any COG data.
 
Thinking about it, we could probably do with some beta testers in the not too distant future. We'd appreciate some volunteers.

Requirements:
Pebble watch
Either latest Android beta app (until the OS 2 final comes out) or iOS developer Pebble app (You need to be able to side load JS apps)
NMEA-0183 TCP output
Computer to run a python script (the server app) Will require installing a python library (pynmea2)
The computer needs to be on a wireless network so the app on your smart watch can connect to it!
 
pi

I'd be interested in Beta'ing it for you. Any danger of wind being a dial? Wonder if the pooter could be replaced by a 'pi, or better still one of digital yachts magic boxes, same thing basically, spitting Nema to the phone / device.
 
DanWash said:
I'd be interested in Beta'ing it for you. Any danger of wind being a dial? Wonder if the pooter could be replaced by a 'pi, or better still one of digital yachts magic boxes, same thing basically, spitting Nema to the phone / device.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the interest. Sadly, the project has been somewhat on the back burner for the last few months as the Mrs has been in the UK earning us pennies to carry on cruising next summer.
However, that being said, we're hoping to have a basic version up available for curious folk before the summer.

As for the machine it runs on, we've designed it with the idea of running it on a Pi (that's what we have here) connected to an NMEA feed and boat WiFi. Unfortunately, there needs to be a "server" running on some sort of machine, as the Pebble can't take a direct nmea tcp input, it needs specially formatted data. A future project may be to build a smartphone app that does the parsing, but that's something for another day!
 
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