Plug the USB plug into a wall outlet, and use the cable to connect it to the Tidbyt. Your Tidbyt should turn on immediately and show a screen like this:
Now, open and login to the Tidbyt app on your phone (Android, iPhone). Select the option to Set up new Tidbyt. Your phone should now find and connect to your Tidbyt, and ask you for some details to get it up and running.
If everything goes well, you’ll end up on a screen that looks like this:
Earlier today, I got a new router and couldn’t figure out how to reconnect my Tidbyt to Wi-Fi. Thankfully, I stumbled upon this comment thread. Thanks for the detailed instructions, @rohan!
Hey James, yes, you would. We need to have a better solution for this, but in the meantime please let me know when you’re setting up the device again and I can restore your apps from backup.
I just set mine up with the app and it was super simple!
One thing that wasn’t immediately clear to me, is that the Tidbyt will automatically iterate through all the “apps” you select for it, which is the default behavior I wanted. I think the app could perhaps make this a bit more clear during setup?
(I see there’s also an “experimental” feature where you can set the duration of default app cycle time?)
Anyway, great work! Super smooth setup!! I’m lovin’ it.
Good morning,
I think this happened to my Tidbyt this morning. It was connected to an Wifi-Extender and probably lost connection overnight. This morning it showed the message “connecting”, but did not connect. I turned it off and on again (just unplugging), but it did not connect. So I reset as described by Rohan and reconnected to the WiFi. This time to the main WiFi. Let’s see, if it remains connected throughout the coming days.
I’ve had my tidbyt for awhile now but the past few days it’s just been displaying “connecting”. I decided to reset the device and gif is picture on the app. Is there something I’ve done wrong here?
It didn’t look like there were any issues recently on the Tidbyt server side based on their status dashboard. If nothing in that above link helps, then here are some ideas I would personally try if you haven’t already.
Double check that my phone and Tidbyt are on the correct Wi-Fi network and that I didn’t auto-join something unexpected during setup.
Delete and re-install the Tidbyt app from my phone.
Unplug the Wi-Fi router from power and plug it back in.
Is there currently any method to enable “headless” device setup? I don’t have an issue using a phone, but relying on an app and/or some servers off somewhere works very well until it doesn’t (see: Pebble). As hackable as this is, I presume that’s already quite possible, but isn’t surfaced. Can we get some docs up on the matter?
If you dig around the board more, or hop on Discord, you’ll find other people in the community working on custom firmware that could allow something like you mention. I imagine we’ll eventually see Tidbyt devices doing all kinds of things outside of this initially provided functionality.
A quick side note, myself and others are still rocking their Pebbles daily! Enthusiasts formed The Rebble Alliance to keep them alive and well: https://rebble.io/howto/
Just opened the box and tried to link it to the app and I get this, “Found a device, but it appears to be broken or in a bad state“. Tried resetting twice and restarted. Same thing.
Hello Rohan.
I just reset my Tidbyt and saw this comment of yours.
Although it’s been a while, is it still possible to get my apps back from your servers?
Fingers crossed.
