Watch Face: Flight - a watch for pilots, with fuel check reminders, zulu/local and multiple timezone
EmileVictor
Posts: 13Member
Hi guys,
A friend of mine asked me to design him a watchface which would do local/zulu time, flight time and give vibration reminders to check fuel on 30 minute intervals.
Because Pebble does not yet have a way of getting the current GMT offset, I've had to automatically compile a different copy of the watch app for every single timezone (except those in :30 offsets).
To get it for your timezone, check this folder:
flight0 is GMT+0, flight10 is GMT+10, flight-11 is GMT-11, etc. Just download the one(s) relevant to your timezone.
I will be doing lots of work to get this more up to speed - I hope that we can have GMT info from the phone soon, so that you don't end up having to change the watchface.
New update to this watchface, including the following changes:
1. Updated so that the fuel alert doesn't buzz your wrist for the entire minute at the 30 minute interval.
2. Improved my maths a bit so that you wouldn't start exploring 28 hour territory 
3. Some small bugfixes
4. Generated all possible half hour time GMT offsets. I.e. GMT+9:30 for Adelaide, Australia.
You can download your offset in the +30 minute folder here: http://www.emilevictor.com/files/pebble/flight/+30mins/
flight9.pbw in this folder is actually GMT+9:30.
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4. Generated all possible half hour time GMT offsets. I.e. GMT+9:30 for Adelaide, Australia.
and this (less pragmatic, but nifty because it sort-of-resembles the lay out of a Breitling Aerospace)
Would be happy to. Thank you!
Appologies for the length of the below. Post in two parts.
As you can tell, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and would be happy to answer any other questions you might have about this. I would personally be happy to pay upwards of $40 for a watch face that does all these things well, and imagine many other pilots would be happy to pay $5-$10.
I. General idea:
(1) local time on top,
(2)zulu in the middle; and a
(3) timer (starts at zero and counts up) on the bottom.
Timers are on the bottom because when they are being used, they are by far the most important thing on the display, and reflections / glare on a watch face viewed in a regular cockpit disappears from the bottom of the watch face first, as the watch is rotated into view – so reflection / glare would disappear from the timers first, if they were on the bottom of the face layout.
II. Clocks:
All times should be toggelable between 24 and 12 hour time (so that the gmt time might be used as some other second time zone while traveling / not flying). All times should always indicate if they are in 12 or 24 hour mode (thus the “A,.” “P” and “24” indicators.) This way the risk for potential confusion between say 1 am and 13:00 is greatly mitigated. Also, I’ve run across at least one FBO that used 12 hour time for their record keeping (it’s a bad idea, but they did it anyway), so it is nice to have the option.
These do not need to display seconds, because the Timers can be used to measure things down to the second.
II(a). Local:
Should correspond to whatever a connected companion device (i.e. cell phone) says it is, and carry on without connection to companion device
II(b). Zulu:
Would be nice if it could be adjusted via a setting in the phone, but no worries if it is downloaded-face-specific.
III. Timers:
There are two separate ideas here : (1)) a Count-Up timer that always starts at zero like a stop-watch or chronometer (thus the “CR” label in the bottom face), and a (2) Countdown timer. Turning any single Timer on or off ought to only require a single button press, assuming it is already queued up.
All timers should count seconds.
III(a). Countdown Timer:
Pilots really only need one Countdown timer: it should be pre-set to 2 minutes, since 2:00 is the time for a Standard Rate Term, and a Standard Hold is 4:00 (so easy enough to just run it twice). That said, the ability to configure many Countdown timers on a companion phone, including naming it and setting a Vibration Interval (see below), would be sweet.
It would be great if the Countdown Timer could be set to begin counting up after the preset countdown time has elapsed, so that, if for example you are taking too long in your hold, you will automatically know by how much you were too slow.
III(b). Count-Up Timer:
This is where the maximum value is. Pilots like to time lots of things that do not count down to an easily predetermined end point, such as time till missed approach, fuel burn, time till further instructions, etc.
Count-Up Timers should count up cumulatively – i.e. many start / stops should be possible wherein additional starts only add to the time already accumulated.
It would be ideal if a given Count-Up Timer could also be reset to zero via input on the Pebble, but doing so ought to require a complex series of button presses, so as to avoid accidently clearing a cumulative time value of importance.
III(c). Toggleability / Labeling of Timers
Since many Timers running on the watch at once would be highly desirable, it would be ideal if the various timers could be assigned labels (that would display on the Pebble in the Timer row) via a companion device, and then loaded into the Pebble. 5 characters ought to be enough for any label.
After being loaded into the Pebble such timers ought to be able to function without any connection to the companion device (i.e. start, stop, rest, etc… but no need to be able to change labels via the Pebble itself). It ought to be possible to toggle (i.e. scroll) through the various Timers loaded into the Pebble with the up and down buttons on the Pebble, and then select one, start, stop, or reset.
Ideally, Local and Zulu time should always be visible, such that toggling Timers can be done without
III(d). Vibration Interval:
This is the most valuable thing that could possibly be done with the Pebble that has never really been well implemented by anyone else before.
The idea here is that any type of Timer could be configured to vibrate at any user input interval, from as frequently as once every second, to as infrequently as once every many many hours. It would be ideal if the interval could be set on a connected companion device, and loaded into the Pebble, such that the Pebble need not be connected to the companion device to use this functionality.
The interval value set by the user ought to be displayed in the Timer view (i.e. bottom row), so as to greatly mitigate the risk of relying on a timer with an incorrectly configured interval.
With respect to the timer aspect – the bottom row in the top face - the “AL: 15” indicates the “alarm interval.” In the instance shown, the
III(e): Various Types of Vibration:
Different types / patterns of vibration might be assigned to each of several timers via companion device - i.e. single vibrate, double-rapid-vibrate, long-short-long vibrate, etc... to indicate to the user which of several simultaneously running timers has hit its Vibration Interval without requiring the user to toggle through several simultaneously running timers to identify which has hit its user defined Vibration Interval.
IV. Day / Date / Time?:
Might be interesting to consider making a toggleable a day / date readout for the timer row.
V. Ani-Digi Design:
The idea with the hybrid Analog-Digital Face is to include all the functionality describe above, expect that the local time is displayed on the analog dial. The upper-row would be zulu, the lower-row would be the Timer functions.
VI. Battery Level Indicator:
The four little white dots in the lower corner of the digital layouts, and the four dots around the center of the Ani-Digi design are intended to 100% / 75% / 50% / 25% battery indicators. Actual voltage remaining on the display would be even better. Point is, if you are going to rely on a Pebble while flying, you don’t want the battery dying on you at a crucial moment, so some sort of battery level indicator needs to be integrated.
VII: Extra Idea: Take Off / Landing Counter:
When flying the pattern all day to do a ton of touch-and-go’s, it becomes easy to forget exactly how many you’ve done. It seems like it ought to be easy to build a function into Count-Up timers to tell you how many times they’ve been started / stopped. Such might be viewable on the Pebble itself or only on connected companion device. Even more impressive would be the ability to download and view the time between splits on a companion device. The Hamilton Kahoka Flight Timer has a function somewhat like this.
Final point: Actual time shown should be as large as possible given the display, but don’t worry about having tiny secondary indicators like “A,” “P,” “24,” Alarm Interval, or even Battery Voltage. Pilots on the whole have good eyes, so that making stuff that will not need to be viewed frequently tiny is no big deal.