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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by the16bitgamer@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

Just wanted to share an idea I had, in order to hope that another developer learns from my lessons, and hopefully either finds a work around or a better solution to this problem.

I wanted to find out if it was possible to locate your iPhone from your watch based on the latency of Bluetooth messages, since RSSI (signal strength) isn't available. I made a simple app, and started sending messages back and forth between my phone and app.

After much testing, the conclusion is no. Mostly because Bluetooth is amazing and the average latency for a message is 58-62ms. And because as Erik pointed out... apple just sucks.

I am hopeful PebbleOS can be updated to see RSSI or the app can expose the notification api to the PebbleKit JS.

If anyone want me to publish my code, let me know.

The raw data is here if you want to see it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Yr5XX0CXh5TifsnW3yOp10ZoaA_xx0q189f_fG8rMTU/edit?usp=sharing

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[-] dan@upvote.au 7 points 1 day ago

Hopefully the EU goes after Apple for having APIs that only their own watch can use, since it's anticompetitive.

this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
20 points (95.5% liked)

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