Ask HN: What Android Wear apps would you like to see? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What Android Wear apps would you like to see?

27 pointsmantazer41 comments

When I'm in town, there is only a bus every 30 mins home.

If I'm in the pub, I don't care what time it is now, I care how many minutes it is to the next bus home.

I want a watch face that just has 2 or 3 numbers, number of minutes to next few buses home.

The last bus of the night should be highlighted quite a lot, with alarms for that.

I wrote an app that does this on my pebble for the DC metro, I should probably get around to releasing that on the app store...

Most of these are Watch ideas:

- Work with "Zombies, Run!" or similar apps to improve the "role-playing exercise" app market

- Breaking news

- Alerts about responses on reddit, HN, etc.

- RSS reader

- Drive the Google Play Music interface on my Android

- Drive the Google Play Music interface on my PC

- Remote control for Chromecast / Google TV / Android TV / Roku

- TODO list / reminders

- Friend RADAR. How close am I to my friends right now

- "Ask me about." I set my list of "Ask me about" topics. You set yours. We glance at our watches, and see we've got some interests in common. Or you have one I'm interested in...

- Process Dashboard / Personal Software Process - basically a timing system for project time

- Sleep monitor that wakes you up near when you want to wake up, but when you're already in the light sleep phase

- CASIO calculator watch mode. Impossibly small buttons emulated as close as you can.

- Pick a list of TV shows that I watch, and have it have a countdown to when the show starts

- Remote control for Power Point or Google Slides presentations (forward, back buttons)

- Push-to-talk phone conference call? Voice-activated mode, too?

- CB radio - chatting with everyone within X distance who is on the same channel?

- Compass

- Remote control for home automation - lights, etc. Garage door opener...

- Mission Impossible mode - just looks cool and has flashy displays with no purpose at all.

- Open WIFI signal strength meter

Part of behavior cognitive theraphy is counting occurrence of negative thoughts throughout the day. So I would like a button that I can press without looking at the watch, and have each press recorded and time stamped.

It's not just CBT either, there could be other events you could want to record, like each time you drink water, or some such. Opening phone to do the record is too disrupting, esp if you're with someone.

Just another data point for this request.

I've frequently started to-do lists and have tried a million different apps for them. I have a watch with all sorts of fancy timers etc.

In the end, I come back to realizing all I want is what OP has requested.

There's already a counter application on Android Wear :-)

Ingress interface, so I could play the game without holding phone in my hand (useful if you want to bike to cover distances between portals faster).

A super lightweight and low friction app for weight lifting that: - Lets you track workouts (exercises, weight, number of sets and reps, etc). - Suggests / coaches you on what exercises to do each workout, what weight to set, how many reps, etc. based on your progress so far in past workouts. - Acts as resting timer between sets and exercises (without having to switch apps or anything). Bonus points for some kind of alert (vibration? sound?) when you have say 10 seconds left.

Bonus points for: - Automatically counts reps you do based on your arm movements, then starts the resting timer once you stop doing reps. - Accurately records your movement and later corrects your posture (say with squats, etc).

Honestly, I don't know what I want on Android wear. I'm not even convinced wearables is that great of an idea. So I guess, though non-specific, I'd like an application that convinces me that I should plop down $x for yet another screen.

I had the exact same thoughts, roughly, and then I got one at Google IO.

When I'm not at the house, it's a godsend. I barely use my phone anymore, and instead just pick up my wrist, say "Ok Google, text wife", a brief pause, and then "Can you pick up some milk? We're running out."

It saves battery life on the phone like whoa, is convenient to know when messages are coming in, but (IMO) less distracting than ringtones. It allows me to wait for urgent messages while I'm in a meeting without disturbing anyone else, and without obviously picking up my phone every few minutes to check for them.

Beyond that, they're much easier (and maybe even safer) to use while driving. At the least, I avoid the whole rummaging-through-my-pocket-to-pull-my-phone-out-because-it-vibrated bit.

I would buy into it if the voice recognition was just a little bit better. It is impressive and nearly there, but I still wind up correcting just about every message I send.

A Bluetooth dongle that tells me when my fly is down.

That's genius.

Thanks, and that's my great contribution to humanity folks. Now I'm going to retire to the rocking chair on the porch and reminisce about the good-ole-days when I first conceived of the Bluetooth fly-zipper.

The 'dingle dongle'?

Maybe it could be done with an iBeacon attached to your zipper?

Well, I figure the zipper would have built-in Bluetooth so it would alert me when I start to travel some distance while down.

You could probably figure out if you're dangling without a dongle by using your accelerometer. The key would be to see if there is any measurable difference between your pace when your fly is zipped versus when unzipped. You may need to get seed data by walking around a bit in either state in each of your pants. If it's precise enough, it could then detect which pants you are wearing and the state of the fly based on differences in your movement. If it's not quite there yet, the user could just select pants at the start of the day to use the right data set.

There you go. Build your company.

A service requesting app that can be shared with large businesses (property owners?), govts, etc.

e.g. I see a broken sprinkler, I quickly can mark it w/GPS picture, and report it.

Another example would be refuse on the street, parks, sidewalks (like a couch, tv, etc)

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A wearable that goes on a pet's collar that then ties into the owners watch, so the owner can always find their pet.

I think Whistle already has a product like the pet collar you mentioned. http://www.whistle.com/gps/ (also, I love the video :) )

I was running a project about the refuse on the street, trust me there's not enough to make it usable anyhow :( But maybe I should reactivate it? ;)

Anything that is low input and high output.

What I mean is that most apps / wearable tech seem to require lots of manual data input (in my case, MyFitnessPal, Runkeeper, etc.)--although some of this has gotten better with say, tracking steps. Regardless, I feel like a lot of my life is currently data input.

Whatever future app development ideas come to fruition would benefit heavily from having a high level of simplicity and automation on the side of the user while still doing some difficult data crunching that is VALUE added.

I think this is one of the reasons Mint.com is so popular. It requires very little input from the user and quickly generates a LOT of very useful information.

Imagine how useful it would be if my nutrition information, blood pressure, glucose levels, etc. were all recorded for me automatically. Then I wouldn't have to think about them everyday, I could just examine them when I'm curious.

I built a one time password system a while ago (https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=69e92695-f6eb-42e...).

I'd like very much to display the OTP pad on a watch and enter the code into either a desktop app or a phone app.

I dont know if it the hardware has more sensors than the phone, but for a watch I would like to get stats of my body, temperature, blood pressure, blood oxygenation, pulse, pedometer, etc etc

No actions, just a log and some kind of visualization.

Maybe some kind of walkies talkie like Nextel, push to talk

A small gps that gives you where to go and distance to it

hope it helps!

Remembrall: An app that gives a slight beep or vibration after 1 min, 3 min, 10 min, 30 min, 2 hrs, and 6 hrs. When I want to remember something (like the name of someone I just met) I tell the app and whenever it alerts, I review the fact in my head to refresh my memory.

Something that lets me scan a NoSQL database, like in the movie "Disclosure"

A clip for those who don't know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkyV7d5t8o

* Open my garage door

* Shopping list

* Location based reminders (e.g. remind me when I am at the shop)

I think Google Now will do the last one for you already (location based reminders). I use it for reminding myself about things when I get to work or home. Just say "Okay google remind me to <thing>" and then there's a location option for when.

I don't own a watch, but I think they probably implement this feature.

Shopping list + location based reminders -> look at Google Keep, it has list integration with the watch + location based reminders :-)

Nothing super new; just a Strava app with a map and directions and some stats.

Perhaps a few swipable screens. Map - swipe - next instruction - swipe - stats.

This would be so nice while biking.

That would be dangerous since most android wear screens are so small. I'd be scare to look at them while i'm biking.

Now if the wearable simply alerts me via vibration then that would be cool.

Stochastic polling - i.e. ask me a user-defined question ("how are you feeling?") at random intervals (6x daily, or 3x daily, randomly).

"Connect to iPhone", perhaps? :)

yes please

Apple is rumored to be working on a watch, correct? May be you could wait for that one :)

Baby monitor - Show me a waveform of an audio stream when it goes above a certain point that I can tap to hear.

Tag song button for Soundhound/Shazaam/GooglePlay/etc. Use the watch microphone.

Google Authenticator voice action to display the current 2FA code for some account

Alarm when phone gets out of range, so I know when I just left my phone in a cab.

Exists, it's called Wear Aware

Movado Face

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