What's the best way to deliver on-demand notifications?

[Profanegardener]

Hi,

      I've got a project on where we want to be able to send notifications to an employee's wearable from a central application (accessible via wifi but in our private network). The notifications will be fairly simple, and the linked android device will not be in regular hands-on use (will be nearby though).

 I have played around with creating a watch face and companion app to do the polling back to the server but this is not ideal. I've also been reading that the companion app will unload itself when not in use, so I'm not sure if I can rely on it.

The 2 options I'm thinking of now are:

- Device app polls back to the companion periodically (~5s), which prompts a poll back to the central server to receive notifications (as I said, not ideal). 

- Create a custom Android app that will do push notifications

The first option will be easier (and quicker for a proof-of-concept) but I'm not sure if the companion will stay awake all day. (will it go to sleep/unload if it's constantly getting messages from the app?)

Unfortunately I don't think the Fitbit ecosystem is the right fit for this application in the long run - we need to have several of these watches in use in the one location and don't want to have to have a paired phone for each of them. But it's what I have on hand and the moment and it's the wearable ecosystem that I'm most familiar with. 

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Tim

[JonFitbit]

Right now I don't think there's a suitable solution for this, other than the dedicated Android app sending push notifications.