GPS, GLONASS, Galileo
A Quectel L96 receiver. The phone can hand over its time and position for a faster first fix.
Open source hiking navigator
WANDERNAVI
A small offline navigator with a 7-color e-paper display. It does not give turn-by-turn directions. It shows where you are, on a real map, next to the track you want to walk.
No signal, no subscription, no cloud. The maps are on the SD card, and the screen stays readable in full sun.
The device
Built for hiking and not getting lost. The screen refreshes once a minute and keeps its picture without power, so the battery goes into finding satellites and not into lighting pixels.
Your track on the map
The GPX track with direction arrows, waypoints and a height profile, on top of pre-rendered map tiles.
One button
Short press switches between 100 m and 500 m scale. Hold it to switch on or off. That's it.
Fully offline
Maps and track live on the SD card. Every walk is logged to log.gpx, a new segment per boot.
Bluetooth LE
Paired with one phone by a 6-digit passkey on the display. Time, position, settings and firmware updates.
Own WiFi
Plug in the charger and the device opens an access point and shows a QR code. Scan it, upload maps.
Careful with power
Deep sleep with button wake-up, charge detection and a "battery empty" screen before it runs dry.
Safe updates
New firmware comes from the app over WiFi or Bluetooth. If it crashes in the first minute, it rolls back.
Seven colors, no backlight
The screen is a Waveshare ACeP 5.65" e-paper panel with 600 × 448 pixels. Every pixel is one of seven inks. The app converts OpenStreetMap tiles into exactly these colors, mixing two of them in a dither pattern where the map needs a shade in between.
The pure colors are the ones the firmware works with. On the panel they look calmer and darker, like paper in daylight. The preview in the app shows the maps that way.
- 0 Black
- 1 White
- 2 Green
- 3 Blue
- 4 Red
- 5 Yellow
- 6 Orange
How it works
-
1
Pick a track
Open or share a GPX file with the WanderNavi app. It keeps a library of your tracks.
-
2
Prepare the map
The app loads the map tiles around the track for both zoom levels and converts them to the seven display colors.
-
3
Send it over
Scan the WiFi QR code on the display. The app copies track and tiles to the SD card, with a progress bar on both screens.
-
4
Go walking
Switch it on and put the phone away. The navi finds its position and keeps the map up to date every minute.
The companion app
WanderNavi for Android does the heavy lifting the little device can't: finding places, fetching map tiles and turning them into e-paper colors. It looks like the device, too: seven colors, black outlines, square corners and the same pixel icons.
- Track library: open GPX files from any app, pick the one to send
- Map with search for places and coordinates
- Color filter: tune how map colors become display colors, with a live preview
- Transfer over the device WiFi or your home network
- Bluetooth: pairing, time and position, display settings, firmware updates
Inside
| Controller | ESP32-S3, 16 MB flash, 8 MB PSRAM |
|---|---|
| Display | Waveshare ACeP 5.65", 7 colors, 600 × 448, SPI |
| Positioning | Quectel L96 (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo) |
| Storage | microSD, FAT32 or exFAT, 4-bit SDMMC |
| Radio | Bluetooth LE (NimBLE), WiFi access point and client, mDNS indianavi.local |
| Map | 256 × 256 tiles, 4 bits per pixel, zoom 14 and 16 |
| Firmware | C on ESP-IDF via PlatformIO, OTA with automatic rollback |
Open source
Everything is on GitHub. Build one, fork it, send a pull request.
From IndiaNavi to WanderNavi
The project started as IndiaNavi, a navigator for adventurers with a hat and a backpack.
The product is called WanderNavi now, but the old name still shows up: the device calls
itself IndiaNavi-XXXX over WiFi and Bluetooth, and the repositories carry it.