In 2018, I had the privilege of meeting a friend Lester who gave me his Pebble Time Steel as he has since moved on to Apple Watch. Two years in, this same watch I received is still serving me well, even in Singapore's COVID-19 circuit breaker.
As Pebble web services shut down 4 years ago in 2016, I've switched the boot URL to point to Rebble web services instead, breathing new life into this watch.
Pebble for SafeEntry
Though I very much appreciate the work that the government has put into working on this movement/contact-tracing system, having to queue to scan the QR codes at every turn is slightly annoying.
At times, there's only 1 QR code for the whole queue, which is usually not a problem until the day I had to wait a whole 2 minutes for someone just ahead of me to scan the QR code. Other times, the role is reversed and I found myself feeling bad about taking longer than I should have to scan the QR code.
Additionally, being a perfectionist myself I always try to remember to check-out of places I've checked-in to, but there were a few times where I had already closed the tab and I wished I had the QR code once more to check-out.
Hello Skunk!
I was just flipping through the Rebble app store and I found this app known as skunk.
Skunk is an app that allows you to store barcodes and QR codes, great for membership cards, identity cards (ill-advised) and of course, SafeEntry QR codes for your frequented locations.
Skunk works by having you enter the data that the selected Barcode/QR code is supposed to store, and the app encodes your data and generates the bar code for display on your watch. Neat right?
Pebble for working from home
In my room, I don't have a wall clock ever since the Echo Wall Clock I bought a year back gave up the ghost due to leaking alkaline batteries. The wall clocks out there really aren't the lookers either and so I ended up not buying one.
Working from home during COVID-19 has exacerbated this need to check the time due to frequent meetings and I've always had to either double tap my phone or move my mouse to the top of my screen in MacOS to show the status bar and the clock in it. A small pain, but it accumulates nonetheless given that
Serendipitously, I have another great friend YH who recently decided to deprecate his old Pebble Time. Truth be told, I was supposed to collect the watch from him in March but COVID-19 came and I've not been able to meet him until recently. Thankfully he was kind enough not to toss it away and he held on to it until the day we met.
Since I already have a Pebble Time Steel as my primary watch, an idea came to me:
Why not turn it into a desk clock?
The watchface used here is Squared 4.0, where in the watchface settings, there is an option to leave the backlight on while charging. The colors are also customizable, making this quite the fun and minimalistic desk clock to have.
Rebble?
If you have a Pebble that you'd like to resurrect, check out Rebble.io for instructions on how to switch to Rebble Web Services.
Otherwise, I'm always open to donations of your old Pebbles! 😉
