I’ve been meaning to make new dev projects for a while. But finding the time to sit down to just code is difficult for me these days. However I wanted to make a watch face for my new watch and I just said screw it.
Through a mix of using the Pebble SDK documentation, and referencing a few AI chatbots, mainly GPT-OSS I’m running in Alpaca, I was able to make it, make it run, and since it’s in C, I was able to have no memory leaks (according to the logs).
I’ve uploaded the source code to Codeberg if you want to look at it, I’ve yet do document it, so hopefully it’s not too hard to understand and not a spaghetti mess.
https://codeberg.org/the16bitgamer/poketech-dx
** Notes on my experience using AI to aid in coding **
When I was taught to coding, Google-fu was the goto way if/when the documentation fails you. However with both how old, and incomplete the Pebble SDK docs are, Google-fu wasn’t helping since the info it would pull was about a decade or older and mostly out of date or hard to decipher information on Stack Overflow. I would almost say using an AI along with the actual documentation and tutorials was a necessity for me to even finish this project.
The AI wasn’t perfect, endlessly gas lighting me, telling me to do over the top things for functions I already implemented, and putting me down rabbit holes going no-where. But compared to what I could get from Google, and it’s ability to try and break down what the code is doing, it was a lot more helpful than I thought it would be.
My watch face, eyeing it carefully for bugs. Paranoid I forgot something 🤣 (loving it though and happy I can get a Aqua color like in platinum)
The Time 2, loving it. Had the original time and it feels like it but smoother and faster. Time has moved on and I hope Pebble will make a more expensive one which has GPS for actual fitness tracking. But as a smartwatch, it’s crazy that no one else has made a superior product.
The Framework 13, best laptop I’ve ever gotten. Now I got it at a time when RAM and storage was cheap, so it was a lot cheaper than it is today. But even the base AMD machine is a beast when it comes to development and gaming. Not as good as a steam deck, but I don’t think I have a need to upgrade for a long time.