I had bought the AutoWear Tasker plugin even before I had the watch and knew that it could do some pretty cool things, but I had trouble coming up with any kind of practical use that I could develop. I've tried to think of some way to tie the watch into my Digital Dash project, but nothing really seemed appropriate. So I went in a different direction.
I work in educational technology at a university and am occasionally asked to give presentations to other members of the technology community about what's happening in my area. I decided it would be neat to be able to give those presentations directly from my phone and control them with my watch, so that became my first AutoWear project.
The port on my Galaxy S4 can put out HDMI video using a special cable that I picked up awhile back and all the presentation rooms are equipped with HDMI-capable projectors, meaning that I don't need to haul a laptop (or even a tablet) around. My phone, my watch, and the cable are all I need.
The project, which I call "Slide Wear", is pretty simple and straight-forward, but has all the functions I need to give a normal presentation.
To start, I hook up my phone to the projector. Then I shake my wrist to bring up AutoWear's voice control screen on the watch and say "Start Slideshow". (Kind of geeky, I admit, but I'm usually talking to technologists who don't mind that type of thing.)
Once I say the command phrase, the phone turns on, gets forced into landscape mode, and displays the first slide in my presentation. At the same time, it pushes a simple interface card to the watch that shows the current time, the number of the slide being displayed, and the number of slides remaining in the presentation. The time is shown using AutoWear's built-in <time> command, so it isn't just a static display; it's an actual clock that you can use to keep your presentation on track. The watch also gets put into a screen-always-on mode so that it doesn't go to sleep and remove the card.
The card has several functions associated with it:
Tap - A single tap anywhere on the screen advances in the presentation and displays the next slide.
Double-Tap - Double-tapping backs up and displays the previous slide, if there is one.
Long-Tap - A Long-tap brings up a new interface card that shows a scrolling list of all the slides in the presentation, complete with miniature thumbnails. Tapping on any entry in the list causes that slide to be displayed on the screen, essentially giving you random access to any part of the presentation.
Vertical Swipe - a vertical swipe on the main interface screen causes the currently displayed slide to fade out, leaving a bank display. This can be useful if you want to have a discussion in the middle of a presentation and don't want people to be distracted by what's on the screen. Swiping again will cause the slide to fade back in. Even though the screen might be blanked, the interface on the watch is still active. That means you can do something like blank the screen and while you're talking, tap to advance to the next slide. Then, when you swipe again, the new slide is shown, giving you a way to do a dramatic reveal.
Horizontal Swipe - Swiping the main interface screen to the left will reveal a large, circled "X". Tapping that ends the show. The phone is shutdown automatically and the watch is returned to normal operation.
Whenever you Tap, Double-Tap, or choose a thumbnail from the scrolling list, a new main interface card is pushed to the watch with updated information on the currently displayed slide number and the number of slides left to go.
This project was fun to put together and (I think) serves as an interesting way to show a different side of what wearables can do.
