12/19/2014

Control a PC from Android Wear

So I'm now the proud owner of an LG G Watch.  After reading all the flame wars on whether Android Wear was the greatest thing since sliced bread or the worst thing since un-sliced bread I decided to be conservative and opted for a first gen watch before dropping too much cash on the "newest-greatest".  I'm not going to add to the already gigantic pile of Wear reviews, suffice to say I'm satisfied with it for what it is and what I paid for it.

But that's not the point of this post.  90% of the reason I bought the watch wasn't for what it did, but rather what can I make it do???  So I got it, rooted it, and started sideloading apps (xda).  What I ended up with was an android smartwatch that could:
  • Play a movie (QQPlayer + ES File Explorer + Bluetooth Headset)
  • Run an NES Emulator (NES-FC Lite + Bluetooth controller)
  • Open my garage door (V1_Bluetooth_Arduino app + my bluetooth/arduino garage door setup)
None of these were really way out there as far as plausibility so I continued my hunt to push the limits of what this thing can do.

The one place I feel Android Wear falls short is the 'control' aspect of things.  It is a fantastic little devices for providing you with information, but at the end of the day I should be able to tap the thing on my wrist to control my every day life.......

The closest thing I could find right now is the IFTTT integration.  Bravo in general to this website and moreso for making it compatible with wear.  They get it.  Tap a button to cause an action somewhere in the real or digital world.  

So after playing around with existing recipes (https://ifttt.com/android_wear) I remembered a post I saw a while ago about controlling your computer with IFTTT and Dropbox vis SMS.