A minimalist, elegant, nerdy Garmin Connect IQ watch face that displays the current time using Braille digits.
Available from the Garmin Connect IQ Developer portal.
Note
Braille Time is part of a collection of unconventional Garmin watch faces. It has been developed for fun, as a proof of concept, and as a learning experience. It is shared as is as an open source project, with no commitment to long term maintenance and further feature development.Please use issues to provide bug reports or feature requests.
Please use discussions for any other comments.All feedback is wholeheartedly welcome.
The Braille Time watch shows the time as HH:MM:SS using Braille digits. The digits 1-9 and 0 correspond to the letters A-J:
The watch face does not use an actual Braille font to show the digits, but rather draws them from scratch (with the fillCircle and drawCircle library functions).
The Braille digits scale appropriately to the watch screen resolution.
The Braille Time watch face supports the following features:
| Screenshot | Description |
|---|---|
 |
Braille time Time displayed as Braille digits. Each digit is composed of six circles (dots), filled (when the dot is raised) and empty (when the dot is flat). There are two groups of two digits, one for the hour (in white color) and one for the minutes (in orange color). |
 |
Standard time Standard time can be toggled on and off by the user with a setting in the Customize menu on the device. Standard time is displayed in a small, light gray font beneath the Braille time. |
The Braille Time watch face uses custom fonts:
- Ubuntu for the standard time (regular).
The development process was as follows:
- The fonts were downloaded from Google Fonts as True Type (
.ttf) fonts. - The fonts were converted to bitmaps as
.fntand.pngpairs using the open source command-linettf2bmpconverter. - The font sizes were established to match the Garmin Fenix 7X Solar watch 280x280 pixel screen resolution.
- The fonts were then scaled proportionally to match other screen sizes available on Garmin watches with round screens using the included utility script.
The table below lists all font sizes provided for the supported screen resolutions.
| Resolution | Shape | Element | Font | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 148 x 205 | rectangle | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 16 |
| 176 x 176 | semi-octagon | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 19 |
| 215 x 180 | semi-round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 19 |
| 218 x 218 | round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 23 |
| 240 x 240 | round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 26 |
| 240 x 240 | rectangle | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 26 |
| 260 x 260 | round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 28 |
| 280 x 280 | round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 30 |
| 320 x 360 | rectangle | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 34 |
| 360 x 360 | round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 39 |
| 390 x 390 | round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 42 |
| 416 x 416 | round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 45 |
| 454 x 454 | round | Standard time | Ubuntu regular | 49 |
To modify and build the sources, you need to have installed:
Consult Monkey C Visual Studio Code Extension for how to execute commands such as build and test to the Monkey C runtime.
You can use the included Makefile to conveniently trigger some of the actions from the command line.
# build binaries from sources
make build
# run unit tests -- note: requires the simulator to be running
make test
# run the simulation
make run
# clean up the project directory
make cleanTo sideload your application to your Garmin watch, see developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/connect-iq-basics/your-first-app.
