Hero Hacks

Hero Hacks took place this weekend in SF. There were other hackathons taking place in SF the same weekend, as well as the popular music festival "Outside Lands", so attendance was low.

Hero hacks was a wearable hackathon. There were many sponsors providing devices for the weekend including Oculus, Pebble, and Jawbone.

I used the hackathon as an opportunity to explore Pebble. It is the only smart watch currently on the market that supports iOS to my knowledge. As an avid iPhone user, it made it the best smart watch to develop for.

Pebble has an online IDE that makes getting started with Pebble easy. You'll need a Pebble smart watch as there is currently no simulator. You should also have an iPhone or Android phone. You need to have Bluetooth turned on on the smart watch as well as your phone and you'll need to pair the devices. You also need your computer and phone to be on the same wi-if network. If you have all that, you can create an account on cloud pebble, create a new project, and load it on to your watch.

Making a watch face is simple and it was all I was able to accomplish in the 24 hours. More interesting are the watch apps. I started the process of making a game for the watch. I found it a little different than mobile game development.

The input available consists of 4 buttons and an accelerometer which you can also use to detect screen taps. However, it is not a touch device and there is no way to see where the user tapped. The display is black and white and fairly small.