Regatta Timer

→ regatta-timer.johnhringiv.com

A sailing race start timer for Wear OS (built for and tested on the Pixel Watch 3). Fully standalone — no phone, no companion app, no account, no network. Built because nothing on the market handled a real start line: the screen must never leave the timer mid-sequence, and a missed start press must be correctable at the next gun.

🙋 Beta testers wanted

The beta is live on Google Play (closed testing) — no sideloading needed. Google requires 12 testers enrolled for 14 days before the app can go public, so every tester genuinely helps. If you sail (or just own a Wear OS watch):

1. Get invited — email play@johnhringiv.com the Google account email you use on the Play Store (closed testing is invite-only)
2. Opt in — once you're added, accept at the opt-in page
3. Install from a computer — open the Play listing in a browser, hit Install, and pick your watch. Updates then arrive automatically like any app. (The Play Store on your phone will say "not compatible" — that's normal: there's no phone app, and the phone store can't push to a watch.)

Features

• 5-minute (RRS 26) and 3-minute start sequences
• Sync to nearest minute — tap SYNC at any gun to correct the countdown (3:22 → 3:00, 3:40 → 4:00)
• Automatic count-up after the start for elapsed race time
• Haptic signals: double buzz at 4:00 (prep), long buzz at 1:00, ticks through the final 10 seconds, gun blast at 0:00
• Screen never leaves the app while armed or counting down; count-up dims to an always-on ambient display
• Wet-proof: countdown, display, and haptics keep running even when water forces the watch into ambient mode; huge half-screen touch targets; long-press-guarded reset so splashes can't kill your sequence
• Quick-launch tile: swipe from the watch face, tap 5 min or 3 min, and the timer opens pre-armed
• Watch-face complication: weather-style ring where the dot is time remaining, ticking countdown in the center — one tap starts the last-used sequence right from the face
• Survives interruptions: an in-flight countdown or race is restored at the correct time even if the app is closed — or the watch reboots
• Battery guard: an armed timer releases the screen after 10 idle minutes (any tap re-arms it); the countdown itself always holds the screen
• Free, no ads, no tracking: GPL open source; no account, no network, no data collection — about 2 MB

The app

Armed	Countdown	Wet (ambient)	Race

The tile

Swipe from the watch face. When a timer is in flight the tile says so instead of offering to arm a new one.

Ready to arm	Timer in flight

The complication

Put the timer in a watch-face complication slot: a ring where the dot is time remaining, a ticking countdown in the center, and a sailboat at the bottom (on faces that render ranged values, like the Pixel defaults). Armed, it shows the last-used sequence (5m/3m); one tap starts it with the app opening mid-count.

Armed on the face	Counting down

Worth knowing: in always-on (ambient) display, watch faces refresh complications about once a minute, so the countdown on the face can read up to a minute stale until you turn your wrist — identical to the built-in stopwatch/timer complications. Inside the app, the countdown stays live to the second even in ambient.

Install (sideload)

Grab the APK from Releases, then:

1. On the watch — enable developer mode: Settings → System → About → tap Build number 7 times. Then Settings → Developer options → enable ADB debugging and Wireless debugging (watch and computer on the same Wi-Fi).
2. Pair (one time) — on the watch open Wireless debugging → Pair new device; on your computer:

   adb pair <ip>:<pairing-port> <6-digit-code>
   

3. Connect and install — the main Wireless debugging screen shows a different port:

   adb connect <ip>:<port>
   adb install RegattaTimer-v<version>.apk
   

Needs Wear OS 5+ (minSdk 34). adb ships with Android platform-tools.

Building from source

./gradlew :app:assembleDebug        # debug build
./gradlew :app:assembleRelease      # release (signed if keystore.properties exists, else unsigned)
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest    # unit tests

Requires JDK 17+ and the Android SDK (compileSdk 37). Release signing reads keystore.properties at the repo root (gitignored); CI restores it from the KEYSTORE_B64 / KEYSTORE_PASSWORD secrets.

After cloning, enable the repo hooks (auto-formats Markdown with Prettier on commit; CI enforces):

git config core.hooksPath .githooks

Versioning

• versionCode (integer) — bumped on every change pushed to a feature branch; CI rejects PRs where it hasn't increased past main.
• versionName (e.g. 0.5) — bumped once per PR to main; CI enforces it differs from main. Merges to main automatically publish a GitHub release with the APK.

License

Copyright © 2026 John H. Ring IV

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Stopwatch glyph from Bootstrap Icons (MIT, compatible).