Thanks to @brdrck for the Pebble render!

Today we're pleased to announce that 2-way communication is now enabled for 3rd party Pebble watchapps! You can download the updated SDK (now known as PebbleKit) at developer.getpebble.com. The major addition is the AppMessage subsystem which enables watchapps to send and receive data from a connected smartphone app. Be sure to install the latest Pebble firmware 1.10.2 as well.

We have also released new documentation including a full API reference

This update enables Pebble developers to create apps these sorts of apps:

• Watchfaces augmented with data from the internet
• Remote controls for internet connected devices
• Multi-player Pebble games
• 4sq/Facebook/Yelp Check-in Apps
• Sports/Weather/News/Traffic tickers
• Emergency beacon activator
• Deeper sports integration (skiing, hiking, surfing, tennis, soccer score keeping)!
• Bitcoin price trackers (most important watchapp?)

The iOS Issue...

In order for Pebble to work with iPhones, we joined the Made For iPhone program (a requirement for hardware accessories to interact with iOS apps). Unfortunately this also means that if you build an iOS app with Pebble 2-way communication, we (Pebble) will need to whitelist your iOS app before you can upload it to the App Store. If you have completed an iOS app with Pebble integration and would like to learn more about making it available on the App Store, please email bizdev@getpebble.com.

We understand that this is a major annoyance. We've got a solution in mind for this problem, and it's on our to-do list (along with exposing accelerometer/magnetometer sensor data and persistent storage). 

Sports API

Over 13,000 Pebblers have paired their Pebble with RunKeeper in the last 2 weeks. Are you a developer of a GPS tracker app? We're proud to open up this built-in Pebble functionality to all developers. Example code and documentation is available.

Orange Pebbles Shipping Soon

Good news on the color front! Orange Pebbles are in production this week and will begin shipping out to Backers next week.

In other color news, we've (finally) been able to successfully make Grey and White lenses in larger quantities! It's been an extremely painful process, but we're glad to be on the other side. Grey and White Pebbles have now passed full reliability and environmental testing (which could only be completed after the final tuning of the plastic chemical composition), allowing us to proceed into mass production with these colors! Finally. More news in the next update about the status of Grey and White.

Pebble Raises Series A Funding. We're Hiring :)

It's been 12 months now since our Kickstarter project closed. In the last year, we've learned how to take a product into mass production, built the core of Pebble OS and shipped nearly 70,000 Pebbles. What will we do in the next year? We'll ship hundreds of thousands of Pebbles but more importantly, we will focus our software efforts to support 3rd party developers creating apps for Pebble. 

To help with this plan, we've teamed up with George Zachary and Charles River Ventures. They understand our vision for intelligent, wearable computers and invested in Pebble to support our goals.

Our 18 person team (today...) is rapidly expanding. We're hiring for a number of positions at our downtown Palo Alto headquarters including embedded developers, designers, iOS, Android, test engineers, developer evangelists and interns/co-ops for this summer and fall. If you love Pebble and wearable computing as much as we do, you should come join us! Apply at http://getpebble.com/pages/jobs.

Thanks everyone!

Team Pebble

The moment that you've been waiting for has now arrived! RunKeeper has released an update for their iOS and Android apps with full Pebble support. 

To use RunKeeper with your Pebble, download the latest RunKeeper app (version 3.3).

Runkeeper for iPhone

Runkeeper for Android

Once you have the new RK app installed and your Pebble paired with your phone, you should see a Pebble icon inside RunKeeper. If you're having any issues, please check out the Troubleshooting guide. If you like this kind of integration, feel free to tweet @runkeeper and @pebble!

Enjoy your run, ride, hike or walk!

Team Pebble

Freecaddie for Android launches Pebble support!

Pebble on the links, courtesy of TomHTweets

For those excited to venture out onto the course after a nice long winter, have we got the app for you! Freecaddie recently announced version 3.0 of their Android app, featuring Pebble connectivity. Freecaddie uses the GPS on your phone and lets you view the current distance to the hole on over 28,600 courses around the world...and now you can view those stats on your Pebble! We've been informed that iOS Freecaddie support is on the way.

Download Freecaddie on Google Play

Download Freecaddie Pro with extra features

Red Pebbles now shipping

dude2k5 showing off a sparkling red pebble 

Finally, some good news about colors :) Last week, we started shipping the first Red Pebbles. We've nearly finished manufacturing 6,000 Red Pebbles, so many more will be flowing through our shipping system soon. Thanks for your patience!

Orange will be the next colour to come out, followed by Grey and White. As we mentioned in a previous update, if you would like to switch from a color Pebble to Black, you may do so at anytime on account.getpebble.com. We've shipped out the first batch of back-to-black shipments from immediately after the announcement, and on a weekly basis we'll ship out any new Black changes.

Apologies for not keeping ispebbleshipping.com updated. Throughout the switch to colour manufacturing and the back-to-black shipments, tracking has become a bit more complex.

Pebble Watchapps (now on iOS!)

We launched the Proof-of-Concept Watchface SDK three weeks ago. The results have been astounding. Our forums have been buzzing with developers sharing their work and getting help navigating the entertaining build system that is waf. Over 500 watchapps have been published to a community-made site called mypebblefaces.com and our records show over 200,000 watchapps have been installed on Pebbles worldwide.

At first, iOS users were unable to install watchapps but an update to our iOS app fixed that! iOS users, please make sure you have the latest version from the App Store (1.0.6). After that, you can browse to the various sources of pbw files on Mobile Safari and download them directly onto your watch.

Watchface-generator.de

Want to create your own watchface, but your programming skills aren't up to snuff? Try out the awesome watchface-generator.de website, courtesy of @prode81. Remember that Pebble only displays black-and-white on its 144x168 pixel screen.

mypebblefaces.com

If you haven't checked out mypebblefaces.com in a while, we certainly recommend a look :) There are hundreds of watchfaces and watchapps available for Pebble. Try searching by 'most downloaded' to see the current favourites! 

UPDATE: mypebblefaces.com is overloaded with requests. You can find the watchapps referenced below on the Pebble forum here.

Some stellar watchapps:

Revolution (an instant classic), by DouweM

Stopwatch (extremely useful), by Katharine

Nyan Watch (if only it vibrated the song...) by jpitchell

Maurice (very stylish), by zalew

Mac System 3 (great throwback!), by zarumbatus

Pebloid (awesome game), by justdoit

Future SDK update: Two-way communication 

We'll be launching limited 2 way communication in the next update of the SDK (within a month). This will enable apps to receive and transmit arbitrary data back and forth to the phone (for example, upon a button press on the watch).

To make use of this feature, you will need to write an Android or iOS app as well as a native Pebble SDK app. Unfortunately, iOS apps that use this functionality may not be published to the app store at this time (Android apps may be published to Play Store).

Other notes: Watch apps can only receive and send data if they are in the foreground. There are also APIs to launch and kill a watch app (please keep the user's experience in mind when using these)

Pebble 1 Year Fiesta!

If you happen to be in San Francisco on May 16 (maybe for Google IO?), we'd like to invite backers to a small get-together to celebrate 1 year since our Kickstarter project closed. To request an invite, please log onto your Pebble Account and follow the instructions. Please only request an invite if you will be in the area, thanks! Don't worry if you aren't able to get a ticket, this is just the beginning of our meetup plan. For example, a Pebble Users Group (PUG) has already popped up in Silicon Valley, check out the next meetup on May 22 at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View.

Anyways, that's it for this update. Thanks Pebblers!

Team Pebble

PebbleOS 1.10 Update

We've released an updated firmware with a few new features and bugfixes:

• Fix for watch-side battery life bug for some iPhone users. (Some users were reporting that Pebble's battery life was only 1-3 days while connected to an iOS device. Battery life for these users should increase to 4-7 days)
• Support for 3rd party watchapps created with the Watchface SDK
• 'Disable Vibration' option for incoming notifications 
• 'Disable Motion Backlight' option to turn off flick-to-backlight (both options are in Settings->Display)

Haven't installed the update? On iPhone, try rebooting your phone and/or closing the Pebble app like this, then open the Pebble app again and tap the glowing red icon. On Android, use the menu button and click 'Check for FW Update'.

Pebble Android App Update

We've also released an update to the Pebble Android app, now at version 1.7.0. Please update your app to get these new features:

• Watchface SDK Support
• Rearranged settings screen
• Bugfixes

Please note there is still a major bug in Android 4.2.2: After 32 connect/disconnection cycles, Android OS refuses to allow Pebble to connect. The only workaround is to reboot your phone. Follow the excitement that is filing an issue with Android here: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41110 

Pebble iOS App Update...coming soon

We submitted an update to our iOS app 2 weeks ago, so iOS users may see a new update soon! This update will enable 3rd party watchface loading on iOS.

Proof-of-Concept Watchface SDK

On Friday, we released the first version of Pebble's Watchface SDK. We want to be extremely clear on this: what we have released is a proof-of-concept designed to give eager developers an early chance to hack on native Pebble apps. It's not the final native watchapp SDK by any means, more of a early start :)

The PoC Watchface SDK is:

• An extremely early prototype of our SDK, specifically for watchfaces and simple games
• Designed for developers who have experience working with command line and compilers
• Strictly C based
• Missing an emulator. You need a Pebble to test your code.
• Designed for Mac OS 10.7 and 10.8, and Ubuntu 12.10
• Not optimized for entry-level developers
• Risky: developers can potentially brick their Pebble by purposefully going beyond the limits of the public API functions
• Not guaranteed to work perfectly. Apps compiled using the PoC Watchface SDK are also not guaranteed to work.
• Subject to change. There is a 99.9% probability that we will adjust or deprecate major portions of the API over time, requiring major code changes.

Another major point: the current Pebble iOS app on the iTunes app store does not allow 3rd party apps to be installed on Pebble. It's in the iTunes approval process now (see above). This means that iOS users cannot install apps created with the PoC Watchface SDK at this time. Developers with iOS devices can install their apps using libpebble.

Without further ado, here is the Pebble PoC Watchface SDK

developer.getpebble.com

Documentation is available here: http://developer.getpebble.com/1/welcome with example source code here: github.com/pebble/pebble-sdk-examples

Share your creations on the Watchapp Directory: http://forums.getpebble.com/categories/watchapp-directory or Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/pebble

This is the first step for native Pebble watchapps. Expect more progress from us over time, with major changes like accelerometer support, enabling communication from a watchapp,  persistant watch-side storage and more. We welcome all feedback through our forums: http://forums.getpebble.com/categories/developer-discussion 

With that having been said, it's been a pretty incredible 24 hours so far. Over 2,500 people have already downloaded the SDK. Lots of activity on Reddit and the forums. These watchapps are not all ready for the prime-time, but it's an excellent sign for the future.

Pebble-Pixel by jdiez17 Reddit Post, Source

Stopwatch by Katharine, Thread

Contributions to libpebble

Developers on IRC (#pebble) have been big fans of Pebble, for which we're extremely grateful. In particular, Hexxeh started a excellent project called libpebble to reimplement our Pebble Protocol as a python library. Pebble's dev team recognized that this utility had the potential for being even more useful than our internal tools. We decided to contribute to the open source project by adding support for the Lightblue Bluetooth API and yesterday hexxeh accepted our patches (yay!).

Team Pebble is committed to contributing to open source projects, and releasing new developments back to the community. You can follow our OSS contributions on github.com/pebble. 

It's been a pretty big week for Pebble, but as you all know, our work is never finished. We've got a lot more color Pebbles to ship out, and more software to write (and bugs to fix). 

Normally these updates are signed off by me (Eric), but I think it's time to change that practice. The sheer amount of work that we pushed live this week is a testament of our talented team, and these updates need to reflect that. The whole team is responsible for the product that we've created. I hope you can join me in thanking the (rapidly expanding) Pebble Team: Andrew, Steve, Rahul, Brad, Nick, Sarah, Joseph, Matt, Martijn, Ryan, Paul, Ben, Philip, Asad, Melanie, Sigrid, Ali, Kareema and Kristen.

If you'd like to join Team Pebble, we're currently hiring talented iOS Developers and experienced Software Engineers in Test for full-time positions in Palo Alto, CA. You can apply by sending your resume and portfolio to jobs@getpebble.com

As always, thanks for backing us and keep on Pebbling!

Team Pebble

We’re happy to report that all* black Pebbles for Kickstarter backers have left the factory and are making their way through the fulfillment process to their owners now. That is over 55,000 black pebbles shipped!

Color backers: we know you’ve been waiting patiently...and we’re extremely sorry about the color delay. If you would like to swap for a Black Pebble that will ship sooner, you can now do that at http://account.getpebble.com (see below).

*If you haven’t yet received your black pebble, log into your Pebble account to see the status. If your account status shows ‘processing shipment’, you should be receiving a tracking number from us within a week.

In the meantime we’ve been working on manufacturing color Pebbles, which have proven more difficult to produce in large quantities. We’ve been tuning and tweaking the plastic injection parameters for each color to achieve a close fit between the lens and bottom housing, and to eliminate flow marks. It took us awhile to perfect red and orange for mass production. We are working on the Grey and White now (which are more problematic at this time).

Unfortunately, just as we were starting final assembly of red Pebbles, a quality issue came up on the production line with the hard coating layer on the lens. We had to shut down the line for a few days as we figured out the problem (following the 8D resolution process to identify the root cause and fix the problem). The problem has been solved and production has now restarted, but sadly this has delayed our color Pebble shipments further.

We expect the first red Pebbles to be in our distribution centres and ready for shipping in 2-3 weeks, but do not yet have a projected date for the other color Pebbles. Orange will be next, with Grey/White following. We will provide updates as we have more specific information.

Switching from Color to Black

Since we haven't been able to manufacture color Pebbles as fast as we'd planned, we modified the Pebble Account system to let backers change their color selection back to black. We have a lot of Black Pebbles in stock now, so if you switch to black, your Pebble can ship within two weeks.

If you’re a color Pebble backer and would like to switch some or all of your color Pebbles to black, simply log into your account at account.getpebble.com. We will issue a small refund for fees you may have paid to opt for color in the first place. Details will be available to you when you log into your account.

(This is not clickable here...find it after logging in at account.getpebble.com)

You are welcome to keep your current color Pebble selection, we just can’t provide a firm shipping date yet. We expect the first red Pebbles to be available for shipping in 2-3 weeks, but do not yet have timeframes for the other color Pebbles. You can change to black at any time (up until your Pebble is ready to ship) if you change your mind.

Our FAQ has been updated on help.getpebble.com with more details: http://help.getpebble.com/customer/portal/articles/1085347-color-production-questions

12 Hour Versions of Watchfaces

We've heard your requests! A lot of people were keen to see 12 hour versions of the popular digital watchfaces. We've modified the watchapps and re-uploaded them to the watchapp library (you may want to delete the previous versions from your watch).

• Big Time
• Just A Bit (binary clock)
• Tic-Tock-Toe
• Simplicty
• 91dub

Make sure that your Pebble has been upgraded to Firmware 1.9.1 before installing these apps. The 12/24hr switch requires 1.9.1, but more importantly, we fixed a major bug in the firmware.

To enable 12 hour mode on these watchfaces, change the setting on your watch by going to 'Settings' -> 'Date & Time' then clicking the check mark until you see the option for 12H and 24H.

Watchface SDK

A few notes about the upcoming watchface SDK: you'll need a Pebble to test your apps (no simulator or emulator right now), and the SDK is designed to run on Mac OS 10.7, 10.8, and Ubuntu Linux. If you're on a PC, we recommend compiling inside an Ubuntu VM.

Busy week ahead, thanks for bearing with us.

Eric + Team Pebble