Pebble Steel + Rockwork = ...

Moem

Pebble Steel + Rockwork = nothing, so far.
I have acquired a Pebble Steel smart watch, and installed Rockwork on my OpO.
I managed to pair the Pebble by Bluetooth to the phone, it is showing as connected. But Rockwork does not know, or care; it keeps telling me that no Pebble watch is configured yet, and to connect it using System Settings.

I have tried:

uninstalling the software and installing it again,
uninstalling and deleting the cache files, then installing it again,
letting the Pebble and the phone forget each other and then re-pairing them.

Nothing has helped so far.

Does anyone have any pointers please?

Moem

Update!

It looked bad for a while, after I did a factory reset, but it is not bricked; I have managed to unfreeze it, found some information, made some progress. I can now connect it to an old Android, which has the Pebble app; they seem to be able to interact. It seems the Pebble even got a firmware update (!)

But the Android does not only show by name on the Bluetooth screen of the Pebble, it also has the indication Connected. The OpO is only shown, the word Connected is missing even when the phone itself shows the Pebble as connected!
So it seems that I have learned that the connection between the OpO and the Pebble is incomplete and that is why Rockwork does not see it as connected.
Progress!

OhneZ

@moem said in Pebble Steel + Rockwork = ...:

For me it was like this, after factory reset I had to initialize the Pebble with an old Android. in the Nexus 5 I deleted the watch from Bluetooth and let search again. Important !! do not pair the LE version. after that Rockwork worked great.

Moem

@ohnez Wow, that really helped a lot! With your hints, I managed to connect them late last night and install a watchface.

Now it seems to work halfway, but I get a little further than before:

they see each other
watch asks to pair
phone offers the PIN on the watch and asks me to confirm
I press the button to pair on the watch
I tap the button to confirm on the phone
But the watch doesn't see that the PIN has been confirmed.

I'm going to keep tinkering now that I know it's definitely possible. Thank you very much!
I'll mark as solved once I can reliably connect.

Moem

Some more information...
I found this from 2017:

I am also using my Pebble Time Round with Rockwork on my OPO with UBports devel. When connected, it works fine, but every now and then the phonse loses contact with the watch. After that it is a nightmare to reconnect. I get multiple istances of Pebble Time F77D in the bluetooth settings and it won't connect properly. When that happens, I am prevented to "forget the device" from the settings and I have to fiddle a lot to get it to reconnect.

This matches my experience pretty well, including being unable to 'forget a device'.
I'm hoping a future update will make things easier, but realise that Bluetooth is just tricky.

Moem

@moem said in Pebble Steel + Rockwork = ...:

I tap the button to confirm on the phone
But the watch doesn't see that the PIN has been confirmed.

This problem is persistent. It looks like something goes wrong with the protocol; the message from the phone, that the pin has been confirmed, is not sent out in a way that the watch understands.

I also can't 'forget' the watch as a device in my bluetooth settings.

OhneZ

@moem
Oh ok!
With the Pinephone and Nexus 5 it was so that you first had to confirm the pin on the phone and then confirm on the clock that the pin was confirmed.
That with the forgetting of the Bluetooth devices is tricky. for me helped from time to time UT Tweak Tool. Clear cache from system settings.
sometimes it helped to connect both Bluetoooth devices (LE & other) and then remove these devices from the list of known devices.

Moem

@ohnez Thank you for more good hints!
I tried the 'deleting cache' trick using UTT tool. It did not seem to help.

I also tried confirming the PIN from the phone first, but it's like it does not even get send (or the watch does not receive or understand it): if I then press Pair on the watch, even after waiting for 5 seconds or so, the watch then tells me to confirm the PIN on the phone. Eventually it gives me the 'not sucessfully paired' screen.

I'm now looking at pairing over the terminal as per this post. If I can manage to connect a keyboard somehow, that might help, or it might give useful information.

OhneZ

@moem
oh I forgot to say, you must of course also in the Peeble under Settings / Bluetooth remove the Phone (OPO).

if it does not work with the terminal
I can write on which way I have managed.
but this applies only to Nexus 5 and PinePhone.

Moem

@ohnez said in Pebble Steel + Rockwork = ...:

@moem
oh I forgot to say, you must of course also in the Peeble under Settings / Bluetooth remove the Phone (OPO).

Yes, thank you, that makes sense.

if it does not work with the terminal
I can write on which way I have managed.
but this applies only to Nexus 5 and PinePhone.

Always worth a try. I will report.

Moem

So... this was interesting. Did not work, but was interesting.
In a terminal, using the program bluetoothctl, this is what happened:

# pair B0:B4:48:AF:3A:64
Attempting to pair with B0:B4:48:AF:3A:64
[CHG] Device B0:B4:48:AF:3A:64 Connected: yes
Request confirmation
[agent] Confirm passkey 516792 (yes/no): yes
Failed to pair: org.bluez.Error.AuthenticationFailed

So, it failed again. But now we can see it happen!

Moem

HOLY it's working! How did that happen?! Maybe the 'trust' action that I did in the terminal did the job?

dances the Happy Dance like Snoopy

Moem

More observations = more data!

On OTA15, Stable, the Pebble will not stay connected and reconnect as reliably. In fact it's pretty impossible to connect.
On the Edge release channel, the Pebble works much better ~~but the phone screen stops rotating!~~ I have since been informed that this can happen sometimes and it's usually cured by a reboot.

BUT...
on the Release Candidate channel, the Pebble will auto-reconnect as it should ~~AND screen rotation works!~~

Moem

More Pebble adventures. With the help of @AntiDroid and @Keneda, I created an icon in Launcher Modular that immediately reconnects the Pebble when it's unconnected because it's been too far from the phone, or because it's not detected any movement for half an hour (stand-by mode).
The icon triggers this command:

rfkill block bluetooth && rfkill unblock bluetooth

and that results in the Pebble reconnecting instantly.
Here is the image I'm using for the icon in case anyone wants to use it:

Moem

Moar Pebbles, moar problems!
My Steel works really well with UT and Rockwork these days. Now a new friend came to my door today: a Pebble Time Steel. I would love to use both Pebbles alternatingly, depending on my plans for the day.
But Rockwork sees only the Steel, connected or not, and does not offer a way to connect a second Pebble. I can connect the Pebble to the bluetooth of the phone just fine, but I can't use Rockwork to interact with it.

Ideally I want Rock work to show two Pebbles, and connect to the one that I'm wearing that day. As a workaround, a separate instance of Rockwork with its own settings might also be an option.
Does anyone have any ideas about whether this is possible, and if so, how?

Since writing this I have learned that Rockwork does work with more than one Pebble! Just connect the new Pebble to the Bluetooth of the phone, and it will show you the option to manage one Pebble, or the other.

Moem

@moem said in Pebble Steel + Rockwork = ...:

Ideally I want Rock work to show two Pebbles

~~Three~~ Four Pebbles...
Yes, things have taken a turn for the worse.

Lioh 0

@moem Thanks for all the information. With your help I was able to pair a Pebble Time with my Pixel 3a (Xenial, as Rockwork is not available on focal yet). I guess the 'trust' option in bluetoothctl did the trick. Are you still using your Pebbles?

Moem

@lioh-0 said in Pebble Steel + Rockwork = ...:

Are you still using your Pebbles?

Yes! Today it's the Time Steel's turn. Glad to hear you found the topic useful!

Lioh 0

@moem Great! May I ask which Firmware version you are running on the watch? I am still on 3.6.1 here.

Moem

@lioh-0 I'm on v4.3 which I got from Rebble.io. As far as I know, you need an Android for that (I keep an old, wifi-only Androidish, just for that). Nowadays, it might be possible to run a Pebble app on Waydroid too. I haven't tried.