Control Your Smarthome with Pebble: A Simple Guide

Controlling Your Home with Your Smartwatch

While not essential, the convenience of managing home functions – such as lighting, temperature, and door locks – directly from a smartwatch is a hallmark of modern technology.

Leveraging a home automation hub and a smartwatch, like the Pebble, allows users to experience a truly connected living environment.

Setting Up Home Control

The integration of your Pebble smartwatch with your smart home requires a central home automation hub to function as a bridge between devices.

This hub facilitates communication, enabling control of compatible devices directly from your wrist.

Compatible Devices and Systems

A wide range of smart home systems can be controlled via your Pebble smartwatch, including:

• Lighting Systems: Adjust brightness and turn lights on or off remotely.
• Thermostats: Modify temperature settings for optimal comfort.
• Smart Locks: Securely lock and unlock doors from anywhere.

How to Control Your Home with Pebble

Once connected, your Pebble smartwatch provides a convenient interface for managing your smart home.

Through dedicated apps or integrations, you can send commands to your home automation hub and control connected devices with a simple tap.

This allows for a streamlined and futuristic approach to home management, bringing the convenience of the future to your present.

Essential Components for Home Automation

To follow along with the subsequent home automation guides, a Pebble smartwatch is required. Additionally, depending on the chosen tutorial path, either a Philips Hue lighting system or a Wink-based hub system will be necessary. You can utilize either the GE Link hub, designed solely for lighting, or the comprehensive Wink hub.

We assume prior installation and configuration of your chosen system for this tutorial. If this hasn't been completed, please consult the resources linked within this paragraph for our review and setup guides for each product.

Related: HTG Reviews The Wink Hub: A Cost-Effective Smarthome Brain

The tutorial is segmented into two distinct sections, reflecting the widespread adoption of both the Philips Hue lighting system and the Wink home automation hub. If your setup consists exclusively of the Hue system – or if you prefer a Hue-focused approach to smart lighting management – the first section is recommended.

Conversely, if you possess a more varied smarthome environment centered around the Wink hub, the second section should be followed. Users operating both systems may find the Wink tutorial sufficient, as the Wink hub is capable of controlling both its native devices and the Hue system.

Please note that direct app links, commonly provided for Android and iOS applications, are omitted here. This is due to the Pebble app ecosystem being accessed through the Pebble mobile app, precluding direct linking.

To explore and install applications on your Pebble, open the Pebble app on your smartphone and navigate to Menu > Get Apps > Search, then enter the app's name. For further assistance, please consult this Pebble support article.

Managing Philips Hue Lights with Pebble

The Philips Hue lighting system represents one of the pioneering and most widely embraced smart lighting solutions, maintaining significant popularity today. Consequently, numerous companion applications for the Hue ecosystem are available within the Pebble appstore, with even more experimental options discoverable through Pebble community forums. After evaluating several control applications, only two demonstrated sufficient merit for detailed review, and between these, one clearly excelled in terms of usability and straightforwardness.

Initially, Huebble stands out as a noteworthy application. Although it proved to be the most comprehensively featured Hue control app identified, its interface wasn’t the most intuitive or easily navigated. Users desiring granular control over individual bulbs, including color adjustments and other lighting parameters, alongside features like party mode, may find Huebble suitable.

Interestingly, Huebble lacked a function for activating lighting scenes previously configured within the smartphone application, although it did include four pre-defined presets. Despite offering the most extensive control over detailed settings, Huebble’s simplicity regarding scene selection was a drawback.

In practical terms, extensive interaction with the watch to implement minor adjustments isn’t desirable. If such detailed manipulation is required, utilizing the smartphone linked to the Pebble, with its larger and more comfortable interface, would be more efficient. Instead, a streamlined lighting control experience focused on selecting pre-programmed scenes and toggling all smart lights on or off was the primary goal. Simbble Hue effectively fulfilled this requirement.

The Simbble Hue interface is remarkably uncluttered. Upon launching the application on your Pebble smartwatch, a single click activates or deactivates all lights. Subsequently, only two additional clicks navigate to the scene menu and then select the desired scene. The scene list is dynamically populated from the scenes already programmed within the Hue application itself.

Therefore, Simbble Hue maintains a perfectly streamlined and uncomplicated approach: lights can be turned on collectively, turned off collectively, or a pre-defined scene can be activated. No further functionality is included, and indeed, no additional features are needed; it delivers a flawless, single-click user experience.

Managing Your Wink Hub via Pebble

Individuals utilizing the Wink home automation platform to manage their smart home devices can readily gain control through their Pebble smartwatch. Notably, a complete Wink hub isn't even a prerequisite for this functionality.

If you are employing the Wink application on your mobile phone to operate a GE Link lighting hub, or to integrate compatible devices such as a Nest thermostat and a Philips Hue Bridge, the Pebble control application can be utilized.

Establishing a connection between your Pebble and the Wink software mirrors the process for Philips Hue, with a slight modification. Previously, when configuring Philips Hue, only the official Hue app on your phone and a Pebble app were necessary.

The Wink configuration necessitates three components: the official Wink app installed on your smartphone, a copy of WinkControl for Pebble on your Pebble watch, and the companion application, WinkControl for iOS or Android (priced at $1.99), on your smartphone.

Install WinkControl on your Pebble, launch the WinkControl companion app – which primarily serves to verify your Wink account credentials – and you will then have access to all your Wink app shortcuts directly from your Pebble.