Garmin Venu 2 — Watchface + Home Assistant Control App

Two Connect IQ projects for the Garmin Venu 2:

• WatchFace/ — 24-hour clock face with heart rate, steps, stairs, weather, compass, battery, date, and a Home Assistant reachability indicator.
• App/ — standalone watch app for controlling Home Assistant devices (garage door, lights) from your wrist.

Both talk to Home Assistant's REST API over the phone's Bluetooth connection to Garmin Connect Mobile (the Venu 2 has no wifi of its own).

Prerequisites

• VS Code with the Monkey C extension (garmin.monkey-c)
• Connect IQ SDK Manager — use it to install the Connect IQ SDK and the Venu 2 device image
• Java 8 or later (required by the SDK toolchain)
• A Home Assistant instance reachable from your phone, with at least one entity you want to control/monitor (e.g. a garage door cover, a light)

1. Developer signing key

Connect IQ apps must be signed with a personal developer key. This repo does not ship one — generate your own:

1. In VS Code, open the Command Palette and run "Monkey C: Generate Developer Key".

2. Save the generated key pair into the keys/ folder at the repo root as developer_key.der (public/signing key) and developer_key_private.pem. keys/ is gitignored, so this stays local to your machine.

3. Point the extension at it: create (or edit) .vscode/settings.json in the repo root (also gitignored) with:

   {
     "monkeyC.developerKeyPath": "${workspaceFolder}/keys/developer_key.der"
   }

Without this, builds will fail or the extension will prompt you to browse to a key file each time.

2. Home Assistant long-lived access token

1. In Home Assistant, go to your Profile (click your username, bottom left) → scroll to Long-Lived Access Tokens → Create Token.
2. Name it something like garmin-venu2 and copy the token — Home Assistant only shows it once.
3. You'll also need the base URL of your Home Assistant instance (e.g. a Nabu Casa remote URL like https://xxxx.ui.nabu.casa, or your local http://homeassistant.local:8123 if reachable from your phone). No trailing slash needed.

3. Home Assistant entity IDs (App only)

The control app needs the entity_id of each device you want to operate:

• In Home Assistant, go to Developer Tools → States (or Settings → Devices & Services → Entities) and find the entity, e.g. cover.my_garage_door or light.living_room_lamp.

4. Putting it all together

Each project has a resources/settings/settings.xml.template with the fields you need to fill in. Copy it to settings.xml in the same folder (the .template suffix removed) — settings.xml is gitignored so your real values never get committed:

WatchFace/resources/settings/settings.xml.template  →  WatchFace/resources/settings/settings.xml
App/resources/settings/settings.xml.template         →  App/resources/settings/settings.xml

Fill in:

File	Property	Value
Both	ha_url	Your Home Assistant base URL (step 2)
Both	ha_token	Your long-lived access token (step 2)
App only	ha_garage_entity	Garage door/cover entity ID (step 3)
App only	ha_light_entity	Light entity ID (step 3)

The WatchFace and App have separate settings files, so you can point them at different Home Assistant instances/tokens if you want — but normally you'll just copy the same ha_url/ha_token into both.

These same settings can also be edited later from your phone, in Garmin Connect Mobile → device → App Settings, without rebuilding — the settings.xml you create here is just the default shipped with the build.

5. Building and running

From VS Code with a project folder open (App/ or WatchFace/):

• Command Palette → "Monkey C: Build for Device" (or Run to launch in the simulator), choosing the venu2 target.
• Simulator run requires the Connect IQ SDK's device simulator, installed via the SDK Manager.

6. Installing on a physical Venu 2 (Windows, over USB)

The Venu 2 connects over USB as an MTP device, not a drive letter, so it won't show up in a normal file copy dialog. After building a .prg:

$shell = New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application
$device = $shell.Namespace(0x11).Items() | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "*Venu 2*" }
$internal = ($device.GetFolder.Items() | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq "Internal Storage" }).GetFolder
$apps = ($internal.Items() | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq "GARMIN" }).GetFolder
$appsFolder = ($apps.Items() | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq "APPS" }).GetFolder
$appsFolder.CopyHere("C:\path\to\Built.prg", 0x14)

Eject/disconnect the watch afterward so it rescans and registers the new watch face or app.

Security notes

• Never commit keys/ or settings.xml — both are gitignored on purpose because they contain your personal signing key and Home Assistant credentials.
• If a real token or key is ever accidentally committed, rotating/revoking it in Home Assistant (or regenerating the developer key) is not optional — removing it from a later commit doesn't remove it from git history, and this repo is public.