I’m not sure if anyone uses the Telegram messenger App. If you do, I have created a ‘bot’ that re-posts the SotaWatch RSS feed to a Telegram Channel.
As this is the RSS feed of the Sotawatch site. It’s not real-time, sometimes the spots are delayed by up to 10 mins, depending on polling of the RSS Feed.
If you add the “SotaWatch” Channel. You will then get the SotaWatch spots on whatever device you have Telegram installed on… Smartphone, desktop, smartwatch etc.
Clicking on that link, I get the message in Firefox:
The address wasn’t understood
What appears in the URL bar is tg://resolve?domain=sotawatch, so I think this is what links to the Windows Telegram program if you have it installed - this would perhaps be a better link: Telegram: Contact @sotawatch (as shown in the text in your post but not the link behind it).
I see on the Telegram website that they state the app is free and does not display ads a different model to Whatsapp, who I guess they are competing against. The link for those wishing to install the app from telegram on their Android phone is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.telegram.messenger
(There’s also a link to an apple version on the telegram website at https://telegram.org/ ).
Did you have to do anything special in the app on your phone to get it to display to the smart watch?
Ed,
There should be two links on the page. One to open the channel and the other to get Telegram, if it’s not already installed.
No nothing needed to be done to get the SPots to show on the watch. Telegram already shows messages on watches. So it just displays whatever message appears.
It works on Android, IOS and windows phones. It also works on all desktop OS’s.
I’m not seeing a 10 minute delay, perhaps 1 minute at most.
It seems some Smart Watches are better on displaying pushed information than others. My “el-cheapo” U8 watch stores the messages received so that you have to open up an app under settings to see them. It appears the Moto360 (and possibly others) display direct to the watch face. More research needed on my watch I think.
Ed, the delay seems to vary. For the most part the spot appears within a minute or so, as you noted. It’ll be how often the Bot polls the RSS feed and when the Spot is posted. Telegram is fantastically easy to make bots for to do all kinds of things.
Hi Andrew,
On your Moto360 smart watch is that a special app that is displaying the messages (notifications) that it receives from your Smart Phone or does that watch always display incoming notifications to the main screen of the watch?
So far I have been unable to make my cheap smart watch display notifications automatically, I have to go into the bluetooth notifications log to get the text.
Hi Ed,
It’s just the Telegram App on the phone, if you enable notifications in the for that channel. Everytime there is a spot the watch should be pushed the notification. I wonder if the watch is not fully AndroidWear compatable. Did you have to install AndroidWear on your phone to make it work ?
I suspect this (cheapo “U8”) smart watch is not Androidwear compatible. It does receive the notifications through Bluetooth Notifications app that is installed on the phone. The text arrives in the messages app on the watch but is not directly displayed over the home page on the watch.
I just had a thought about BT connected watches - as some (ICOM) rigs now come with Bluetooth and some (Yaesu FT-8xx) can have it added, I wonder if some remote control of these rigs might become possible from Smart Watches in the future? I expect audio in and out is possible today as the watch appears to the BT host as an audio device.
That sounds brilliant. We can replace the tiny, cramped unusable controls and menus on the front of our radios with an even less usable interface on our wrists. An interface that most hams can’t see without putting on their “high gain” glasses. Such a major step forward in user experience, sounds a winner to me.
You forgot to mention the comments that people going past and seeing you talking to your watch are going to make under their breath - Wierdo and such … this idea could be a
As Andy points out (your avatar makes me want to call you “Rev I.M. Jolly” ). The watch is not good for a full interface. I think alerts are it’s max capability. But getting the radio to re-tune to a spot from Sotawatch or a DX Cluster might be fun.
Alerts are useful, at least for me. I tend to ignore them on my phone. But with the watch… it’s easy to glance and decide if you want to run to the radio and try and work a summit.
In case anyone is interested, my Avatar is based on Aloysius, from a famous Bavarian fable about a lazy, wheat beer drinking railway porter who dies, goes to heaven and creates so much noise that he’s sent back down to Earth with a special assignment - to deliver “divine guidance” to the Bavarian government. Aloysius takes a detour to his old favourite pub - the Hofbrauhaus in Munich and never ever gets to the Government offices with the instructions, hence the reason the Bavarian government to this day don’t know what they are doing! … or so it is said…
We created the avatar without photoshop - my wife printed out a picture, put it on her artists easel, made the changes and I scanned in the revised picture. So proving that Analogue methods are still possible.
). The watch is not good for a full interface. I think alerts are it’s max capability. But getting the radio to re-tune to a spot from Sotawatch or a DX Cluster might be fun.
