![]() The Smart Watch Project CUSTOMIZING YOUR IMACWEAR M7 SPARTA by Dalibor Lanik ![]() |
So, you have
iMAcwear M7 Sparta any you like it - but
some things that work with a 10$
watch don't work with your 130$
M7? Well, that's normal, considering
that M7 is a standalone unit - it is not
only smartwatch but a phone-smartwatch,
since it has it's own SIM card. But
would it be nice to have the same
functionality as with those simpler
smartwatches? Of course it would! Tasker
to the rescue! Almost everything is
possible, except one thing. So let's put
that one thing to the side, because it
really can't be done. You can not
transfer audio from your phone calls
from phone to watch or vice-versa.
Period. Android just doesn't support it.
But notifications, remote commands,
instructing watch to dial from phone and
the other way around? Hell, yes! :)
PREPARING
FOR IMPLEMENTATION - NEEDED SOFTWARE
Unfortunately, you will need several apps in order to achieve this. Luckily they are available on play store and are pretty cheap. There are free versions of some of the apps, but their functionality is rather limited and while you could achieve some of the things we're trying to achieve, it is really pain in the ass to work with crippled software, so I urge you to invest and buy these 2-4 apps, trust me, this will be your best investment in software for your smartwatch and your smartphone! And you can do various other stuff with it too! Just think this way: one app costs like 2$. But you can install it on as much devices as you want! The condition is that on these devices you are logged on with your google account. So if you buy i.e. Autoremote for 3$, and install it on 3 devices (phone, tablet and smartwatch), that is 1$ per device!
OK, so here is a list of needed software: First of all you need Tasker. Tasker is the basic tool with which we will create all logic and interface on both smartphone and smartwatch. TASKER
BASICS
There are several Tasker Tutorials out there, so you must know at least Tasker basics. I suggest you google for Tasker tutorials and get to know it. Here I will for convenience only describe basic concepts in Tasker. First of all, Tasker is always running. This is necessary in order to be able to intercept events and act on them. That is why you can always see it in the notification area. As you can see, when you run Tasker, it displays a screen with 4 "tabs". ![]() Profiles
is a list of events and other conditions
that Tasker reacts upon and has
definitions what to do when event occurs.
Tasks contains tasks that can be executed
on events specified in profiles tab.
Scenes is a place where you can design
your own user interfaces, i.e. popups,
windows, dialogs, menues, etc. Vars is
just a place where you see the values of
all variables tasker uses.
Notice the Tasker icon at the top - by long pressing the icon, you can disable (and re-enable) the Tasker. That means it will not react to any events etc. CONFIGURATION
There is not much to configure in Tasker. I would suggest turning off the begginer mode which you can do in tasker settings (menu->settings->UI): ![]()
But Tasker is not able to communicate with other devices, so the next thing we need in order to be able to send messages between phone and watch is an app (actually a Tasker plugin) called AutoRemote. CONFIGURATION
As far as Autoremote is concerned, you have to connect and register your devices. More on that on official AutoRemote pages, no need to repeat what has been published elsewhere. The basics: For each device, you get URL, and you register devices so they can see each other. Both devices need to be registred on each other. The URL is both used for registering your device and for accessing AutoRemote’s web access. Opening this URL in a web browser will open a page where you can send messages to your device. ![]() In
this screenshot from phone,
I have 2 PCs, M7 smartwatch and a
tablet registered. Notice that
Android devices have Bluetooth icon
next to their name, because they can
communicate through Bluetooth as
well, not just Wi-Fi.
![]() You can test this right from AutoRemote app by sending messages and reviewing the logs if the messages have been delivered. You see the right hand side message icon? Well, that's it :) ![]() So, play with AutoRemote a bit until you get the hang of it and are sure it is working 100%. After all, this is a main communication tool for our setup and if it doesn't work, you just can't proceed with anything else.
Other thing we will need, in order to capture notifications on both devices is another Tasker plugin from the same author as Autoremote and is called AutoNotification.
Next app will help us display the contacts list for our own use in remote dialing. It is from the same suite of Auto-apps and is called AutoShare. It can be used for various other things as well but I'll leave that up to you to discover :) CONFIGURATION
In AutoShare, there is only one thing you need to configure - add an intent. You can do so directly from AutoShare or download it from your PC and then copy to SD card and import in AutoShare. At the following adress, you have a list of several intents, and you can download the one(s) you need. What we need is a pick contact intent. That will let us use the built-in contact lister for our own purposes from Tasker.
And the final piece of software that we need is called AutoContacts, ofcourse, by the same author. It does one thing - gets all possible info from the contact(s), i.e. phone number, adress, e-mail adress, etc. WHAT'S
NEXT?
And that's about it! Now that we have this software installed on both phone and smartwatch, we can continue with configuration and implementation. So when you have everything ready, go to the next page - We'll implement our first function, just a simple ping between phone and watch.
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