Scriptable allows you to write your own widgets using JavaScript and run the scripts on your iOS device. Anil Patro shared a starter template to create a ThingSpeak Graph widget using JavaScript on GitHub. You can use Anil’s code and modify it for your ThingSpeak channel and style.

Here are some steps to help you put a ThingSpeak widget on your iOS device:

1. Install Scriptable
2. Get the starter code on your device using iCloud sharing and edit on your desktop
3. Add a new widget to your Home Screen
   1. From the Home Screen, touch and hold a widget or an empty area until the apps jiggle.
   2. Tap the Add button  in the upper-left corner.
   3. Select a widget, choose from three widget sizes, then tap Add Widget.
   4. Select the Scriptable app
4. Customize the widget:
   1. Hold down on the widget and select Edit Widget.
   2. Enter a new parameter for your channel: CHANNEL_ID | FIELD_ID | results=X

iOS widgets refresh rate is controlled by the device. The widgets will update themselves on some schedule and eventually synchronize with recent ThingSpeak channel data.

Enjoy making custom widgets for iPhone and iPad thanks to Scriptable and Anil’s work. Anil also posted some widget code for CheerLights.

At the recent Boston TechJam, MathWorks had a ThingSpeak People Counter that used face detection to count people that came over to our booth and learned about our demo. The people counter uses MATLAB to identify faces in a live video stream from a webcam, count the number of faces, and send the results to ThingSpeak. The code and instructions for the ThingSpeak People Counter project are on File Exchange.

I used the new ThingSpeak gauge widget to show the visitors the lastest people count. The gauges are easy to set up, you don’t have to edit JavaScript code, just point-and-click and configure options. You can add custom colored ranges, units, and display options. If you want to learn more about ThingSpeak channel display widgets and gauges, visit the MathWorks Documentation for ThingSpeak.

Now that we have the infrastructure for widgets on ThingSpeak, we can more widget types. What other widgets would you like to see on ThingSpeak?

Check out ThingSpeak Docs for more information about Plugin Widgets.