Find My Phone - No companion app needed!

[digital iron]

I've been frustrated one too many times searching for my misplaced phone, so I built this app to solve that problem once and for all. Best part? No companion app needed - it works directly through the Pebble app!

https://apps.rebble.io/en_US/application/695da4c3fbfdde0009f99799

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Never lose your phone again! Find My Phone helps you locate your misplaced phone instantly with a loud, attention-grabbing alarm - right from your wrist.

Key Features:
• No companion app required - works directly through the Pebble app
• One-button operation - just press SELECT to activate
• 5 alarm melodies to choose from
• Loud audio alert that's easy to hear from another room
• Visual feedback with animated pulsing display
• Haptic feedback confirms the alarm is running
• Continuous alarm until you press SELECT to stop
• Works on all Pebble models

How It Works:
Open the app and press the SELECT button. Your phone immediately starts playing a loud alarm sound. Follow the sound to find your phone, then press SELECT again to stop it. Access settings through the Pebble app to choose your preferred alarm sound.

Perfect For:
• Finding your phone under couch cushions or buried in blankets
• Locating your phone in another room
• Quick phone location when you're in a hurry
• Anyone who frequently misplaces their phone

Requirements:
• Pebble watch (all models supported)
• Bluetooth connection to your phone
• Pebble mobile app (iOS/Android)

Simple. Effective. Essential. No more frantically searching - just press a button and follow the sound!

Now some downsides for this app is since it uses the browsers API, it cannot control the volume, so you just just have to hope you had your volume turned up (not ringer volume, audio volume) when you lost your phone 😂 . Also sadly I cannot get the phone itself to vibrate as a security limitation of background browsers

[proper lily]

oh my gosh this is amazing. I just tried it on my android phone and it worked

if this works on iOS and in the legacy host app i want to put it in rebble picks

like, immediately

[digital iron]

If someone with an iOS device could test this for me, that would be amazing!

[proper lily]

shame about the volume thing, but you can use the watch's music app to turn up your volume in a pinch

[digital iron]

😮

omg ok may have a solution then

I didnt think about that

I can use the pebble SDK to turn up the volume and then the browser to play the sound

[proper lily]

just a built-in firmware-to-host app thing, I'm afraid. music boss uses a Pebblekit Android companion app to adjust volume

[digital iron]

oh thats a real shame. Oh well

[pure lantern]

fun fact, a year or two ago I left my phone on a shopping cart at the grocery store and someone took the cart. They didn't notice the phone because it was under the baby seat. I used my pebble's bluethoot connection to find the circle where the cart might be (it was a big store) and was able to find it

[digital iron]

That's pretty incredible! Glad you were able to find it. It must have been tough to do

[pure lantern]

yeah haha. But it was the only way since it was mute and without vibration because why would i need them if i have a pebble

[covert hawk]

You're on a roll

Using WebAPI is a very clever way to get around needing companion apps, great thinking

[digital iron]

Thanks. I always like to do things as simple as possible. Less friction. Currently thinking up some other app ideas too

[covert hawk]

BTW it works with microPebble as expected, so the official Pebble app isn't a hard requirement

[digital iron]

Thanks for testing that

[minor sable]

is not working for me .
im on ios

[digital iron]

Aww man, is your volume is turned up?

Also what app are you using, the coredevices one?

[minor sable]

core app

I can send you some logs by DM

[digital iron]

yes please

Working on/attempting an iOS fix (P.S I hate Safari)

[covert mantle]

i have iOS. just tested it and no sound...

I really hope there is a way to get this working with iPhones.

[potent robin]

btw I'm pretty sure iOS doesn't use a browser for JSKit

rather it has a small JS engine for JSKit apps

[proper lily]

JSCore is what it's called I think. it's an iOS system thing

it's in there, but it doesn't have its own Internet access, so xhttprequest is plumbed in manually

[minor sable]

are you familiar with the mobileapp core repo?

[digital iron]

I'm pretty sure it uses webkit. But yeah sadly due to safari limitations it doesn't seem to work. So at the moment there isn't anything I can do. But I will be working on a firmware and pebble mobile app update so that developers have more access such as playing sound. Once that is all working I'll be creating a PR

[proper lily]

not particularly, but alice has chatted with me a little about how pkjs works

[covert mantle]

That sounds fantastic! If you are building something like that, and have the skills, it would be awesome if developers also had access to the battery level of the phone, and its current state (charging/charged/unplugged). I posted a request for this here: https://github.com/coredevices/mobileapp/issues/89

(Never mind, I just realised it was you who made the other app as well!)

[digital iron]

Don't worry, will also be adding that in, so it's easier to get access on iOS

I got a whole list of things I want to expose to app/watchface developers

First step I'm working on is screaming up exposing the RSSI so I can get a janky distance reading for this app. I should hopefully have that PR finished this weekend. Once that is done I'll be able to jump onto the other items

Then I will be able to show far away, med, close etc

(instead of -xx dBm)

[covert mantle]

That’s really great to hear. It’s clear that with their tiny team, Core Devices probably have many higher priority items before they are ever going to be able to focus on these sorts of features, so it’s great to know that you are planning to help with this.

This is another feature I have thought would be a great addition: https://github.com/coredevices/PebbleOS/issues/663

I also think many of the features currently implemented by watchface developers would be better as part of PebbleOS itself, set via the settings menu - e.g. vibrate on Bluetooth connect/disconnect, vibrate on the hour etc.

It seems kind of unnecessary that watchface developers frequently end up developing the same commonly requested feature in each of their watchfaces.

[minor sable]

Mm

[covert hawk]

This is a good idea, though it seems Eric wants to push those to the mobile app instead of configured on watch

[covert mantle]

That would work too. It would still be an improvement over having it as part of the watchface. I wonder why he wants these settings in the mobile app but perhaps it is to avoid cluttering the watch settings with too many options?

[digital iron]

I have just pushed a SDK/Firmware PR to PebbleOS to give app developers the option to control the phones volume level https://github.com/coredevices/PebbleOS/pull/798

If/Once this gets merged, then I will be able to push an update to this app to support that

[covert mantle]

I noticed your PR. Will this work for iOS as well?

[digital iron]

The volume stuff for the PR will, but the main issue stil remains for iOS which is it doesn't allow the sound to play. That is still something on my ToDo list, but it will be later down the line as its quite involved and will require updates to the core devices app itself along with the sdk and firmware

[covert mantle]

I have a Ring doorbell, that manages to play a sound on my iPhone, even when it is locked. I wonder how they accomplish this?

[covert hawk]

A companion app most likely

[digital iron]

Oh that's different, they use the app to play the sound. The whole point of my app here is that is doesn't use a companion app

[covert hawk]

Or HomeKit?

[digital iron]

So we would need to update the core devices app for it to be able to play sound

So tldr, pebble watch apps actually start a "web browser" in the background of your phone and that web browser is the thing that plays the sound here. But because it's in the background iOS has more limitations compared to if it was visible in the foreground

[covert mantle]

Oh I see, I was thinking that this capability would need to be added to the Pebble mobile app itself.

It would be better if I had read the replies to the bottom before replying…!

[digital iron]

There is a lot of messages here, wouldn't have expected you to 🙂

[covert mantle]

I’m hoping you can get it working.

When I switched from my old Apple Watch to my P2D, I figured I wouldn’t miss it that much, but I’ve already had a few occasions when I needed it. You don’t need it until you need it but it’s so annoying not having it when you do!

[digital iron]

100% I will be working on it!

[covert hawk]

I pulled and built off this PR, looking forward to testing the app out

I might play around with adding a "now playing" entry to my watchface

I do not want to use Core's Pebble app and it seems that's where Eric wants to shove all the features and config settings to

[digital iron]

Eric has asked me if I can build a native version of this directly into the firmware and app. So because of that, the app side will also be open source so side could also be built into the phone app side you are using if you are dont want to use the native one. I could possibly help with that too

[proper lily]

oh exciting!!

definitely should be a built-in universal feature. lcp and I did some thinking last year about how it could look: https://discord.com/channels/221364737269694464/1372277654178365653

[covert mantle]

That’s great news. It definitely should help the iOS situation if Core can request special permission to play background audio, as Eric mentioned in his comment on GitHub. Hopefully Apple won’t find a way to refuse the request…

I had not realised till a few days ago, when I was re-reading Eric’s roadmap post from November, that this is actually a feature that Core have wanted to add. See “Pebble Mobile App” under “Core Plans”: https://ericmigi.com/blog/how-to-build-a-smartwatch-software-setting-expectations-and-roadmap/

[digital iron]

I'll have a read

I should hopefully have a bit of time today to start on it

[covert mantle]

I feel like pebble needs a control centre feature like Apple Watch has which gives you quick access to features like “Find My Phone” as discussed here: #firmware-dev message

you don’t want to be hunting though your app lists when you are trying to leave the house in a hurry and can’t find your phone. A control centre, that is accessible via a quick launch would be great.

@sand dagger already built something like that, or at least a POC.

They shared a video here: #firmware-dev message

I’m imagining a situation where you could use the back+up pinch combo to open a “control center” menu, from where you can trigger ‘find my phone’ etc https://github.com/coredevices/PebbleOS/pull/707

[covert mantle]

Just had a read through. I really like the love birds idea. Very cute. Very Pebble.

[patent delta]

This doesn’t seem to be working for me on iOS with one of the old watches (pebble 2 HR) is it only supported for the new watches?

Thanks for making this regardless though really missed this feature when I switched from the Apple Watch 😆

[minor sable]

It doesn’t work for iOS

[patent delta]

Dang. Good to know cheers.

[minor sable]

it needs some new features from the mobile app, one day it will work but for the moment it does't

[snow sphinx]

How about Gadgetbridge?

[halcyon drift]

Gadget Bridge doesn't support the features needed for this to work

[coarse mulch]

I got my old Pebble Round up and running, but when I installed the find my phone app that does Not have the companion app and tried to run it, it buzzes on my watch and does nothing on the phone. It plays the alerts fine in settings. Anyone have any idea how to fix this? Thanks in advance

[digital iron]

Are you on android or iOS?

[coarse mulch]

iOS

[digital iron]

Oh it currently doesn't work on iOS sorry. This is due to a limitation on the iOS side of things. However I am working on a native version of this that is built into the OS

[coarse mulch]

Ok! Good luck with the IOS version

[covert mantle]

@digital iron Did you have a look at this?: https://discord.com/channels/221364737269694464/1372277654178365653

I really like the 'birds tweeting at each other' concept that @proper lily and @willow prism were working on. I love how it goes the extra mile to inject a lot of personality into what could be a fairly dull, utilitarian feature, on most other smartwatches. The first time people use it, it will make them smile. It's these little extra touches that have always made Pebble, Pebble. It would be great if a system "Find My Phone" app be something like this.

[digital iron]

Oh no, this is the first time I have seen that. Thanks for pointing it out

[willow prism]

I could probably draw something for that

[willow prism]

maybe this kind of thing?

[willow prism]

I do think I like lav's simpler design though

[proper lily]

gotta figure out how the animation is gonna work

[willow prism]

yeah

[proper lily]

birb

[willow prism]

that is a birb

[proper lily]

did i ever send you the SVG?

[willow prism]

I can remake that in 10 seconds

[digital iron]

I appreciate that, this would be awesome. I have had limited time at the moment as I have just started a new job, so going a bit slower with this than I would like

[minor sable]

Im working in the mobile app to support play sound for iOS

[digital iron]

Awesome! Yeah sadly I have been too busy with work to have the time to implement it natively