Portable reminder gadget (smartwatch?) recommendations?
June 18, 2021 9:19 PM Subscribe
I deal with WFH but pottering away from my laptop by setting iPhone alarms so I can arrive at, wrap up, and end my meetings (3-8 nonrecurring meetings/day, 1-4 alarms per meeting to help me facilitate others + protect my time, custom text reminding me alarm's pupose). I need something lighter than my phone + easier to setup. Is there a smartwatch (or other gadget: I only want this one feature and dislike having surveillance/text/calls/web/apps) that can do this for me?
Specific needs:
1. really easy to set up many alarms (3-20/day x for coming 5 day workweek), like either:
a. able to enter alarms for the whole coming workweek via computer and transfer to watch, OR
b. automatically creates alarms from Outlook or iPhone calendar meeting AND either allow rules to automatically create additional alarms for each meeting (5min before meeting, 5min before meetings ends, meeting end time; do not want to add these all to my calendar) OR make it easy to manually insert these custom alarms around the calendar-automated alarms
2. can use vibration rather than sound
3. as minimal as possible; don't want/need text/calls/web/apps nor their menu clutter; less worry about loss/theft than e.g. an Apple Smartwatch would be nice
4. if possible, avoid surveillance (no health/fitness or other data being shared anywhere, no camera/mic)
Non-smartwatch gadgets would be fine, too! Looked at children's, potty training, and Alzheimer-support smartwatches, but these seem limited to ~10 custom alarms no meeting topic text, with alarm setup much more difficult than current iPhone system. Thanks!
Specific needs:
1. really easy to set up many alarms (3-20/day x for coming 5 day workweek), like either:
a. able to enter alarms for the whole coming workweek via computer and transfer to watch, OR
b. automatically creates alarms from Outlook or iPhone calendar meeting AND either allow rules to automatically create additional alarms for each meeting (5min before meeting, 5min before meetings ends, meeting end time; do not want to add these all to my calendar) OR make it easy to manually insert these custom alarms around the calendar-automated alarms
2. can use vibration rather than sound
3. as minimal as possible; don't want/need text/calls/web/apps nor their menu clutter; less worry about loss/theft than e.g. an Apple Smartwatch would be nice
4. if possible, avoid surveillance (no health/fitness or other data being shared anywhere, no camera/mic)
Non-smartwatch gadgets would be fine, too! Looked at children's, potty training, and Alzheimer-support smartwatches, but these seem limited to ~10 custom alarms no meeting topic text, with alarm setup much more difficult than current iPhone system. Thanks!
Best answer: Some research shows that only old hacks seem to work, and since this hack involved IFTTT, which had since gone premium only, this is more of a curiousity's sake...
TL:DR -- create TWO calendars... One for your main events, another for automated "reminder for event end". Then basically, have one IFTTT recipe trigger on any new event added, to send an email to a different inbox with the event. Then the other IFTTT recipe monitors the inbox, do a little math, and create an event w/ alarm of no duration, on the event's endtime.
Original QA here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22676235/end-of-event-reminder-in-calendar-app
If you run Android, you may be able to hack something with Tasker or similar automation packages. And it MAY be possible to play with Google App Scripts to create something, but I am afraid I have no expertise in that arena.
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/
posted by kschang at 7:55 AM on June 19, 2021
TL:DR -- create TWO calendars... One for your main events, another for automated "reminder for event end". Then basically, have one IFTTT recipe trigger on any new event added, to send an email to a different inbox with the event. Then the other IFTTT recipe monitors the inbox, do a little math, and create an event w/ alarm of no duration, on the event's endtime.
Original QA here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22676235/end-of-event-reminder-in-calendar-app
If you run Android, you may be able to hack something with Tasker or similar automation packages. And it MAY be possible to play with Google App Scripts to create something, but I am afraid I have no expertise in that arena.
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/
posted by kschang at 7:55 AM on June 19, 2021
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I was all set to suggest a solution with a combination of Google Calendar and forwarding invitations to a specific account, but then I noticed you want automatic creation of reminders based on event end time. I've never heard of anything doing that.
posted by Pacrand at 10:02 PM on June 18, 2021