Files
MeshCore-Solo/docs/solo/navigation.md
T
JakubandClaude Opus 5.5 a733b8bcf5 docs(solo): bring the docs up to date with the L1 refresh
- Home pages as they are now (Status, quick panels, Map page), the Status
  screen's tabs instead of Diagnostics / GPS / Sensors, lock clock Big /
  Compact and the hint on a key press, battery curve on L1 and L2, "+ Send"
  and a failed send, trail pin, vector map behind -D MAP_VECTOR.
- Developer guide: drawScreenHeader, soft frames, InfoKit, TabBar, a status
  bar without blinking, toast and millis() rules; ui-core status; build
  flags (GPS_SKYVIEW, MAP_VECTOR, HIST_ARCHIVE added, ui-tiny-only ones out).
- New simulator screenshots: the clock page and the Status page.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-02 14:23:15 +02:00

5.9 KiB
Raw Blame History

Navigation

Everything here works from the device's own GPS; no magnetometer or extra hardware is needed. Distances and speeds follow Settings › System › Units (metric or imperial).

Trail

Tools › Trail records your route in the background while you use the rest of the device (a pin in the status bar). Straight stretches are stored as their two ends, so the 512 points cover a long route. Left / Right switches between the Summary (distance, time, speed or pace), the Map (your route, waypoints, people sharing their position, the target) and the point List.

Hold Enter for the trail menu: start / stop, mark a waypoint, the waypoint list, Track back (retrace the route to where it started), share your position, the trail file, and the trail settings:

  • Min dist: how far apart points are recorded.
  • Auto-pause: pauses the trail after you stop for 1–5 minutes and resumes when you move, so breaks don't count.
  • Mark avg: averages the GPS for 5–30 seconds when marking a waypoint.
  • Auto-save: saves the trail when the device powers off, including a low-battery shutdown.

The trail lives in memory: save it (Trail file › Save) or turn on Auto-save to keep it through a reboot.

GPX export

Connect USB, open the USB tools on the Solo site in Chrome or Edge and click Connect device, then on the device choose Trail file › Export. The GPX includes your waypoints. Without a browser, uv run tools/trail_export.py does the same. Disconnect the phone app first if it's connected over USB.

Note

Wio Tracker L2: the trail holds 32,768 points, every GPS fix 5 m or more from the last one (no simplification and no Min dist setting), about 160 km on foot. A copy on the SD card is updated every minute, so a restart or a flat battery doesn't lose it: the trail comes back at power-on, still recording if it was. It is drawn on the map and keeps up with your position. Its controls (start / stop, save, load, track back, reset) are in the map's Map tools, the settings in Settings › Map. GPX writes the trail to trails/ on the SD card; take it off with the card as a USB drive (Hardware) and open it in the USB tools for a preview.

Waypoints

A waypoint is a saved spot (the car, a camp, water) with a short label, up to 16 of them, kept through reboots. Add one with Mark here at your position, or + Add by coords to type coordinates. The list starts with Trail start, so you can always go back to where the trail began.

Hold Enter on a waypoint: Rename, Delete, Send (as a message to a contact or channel) and Set as target.

Note

Wio Tracker L2: up to 64 waypoints. The pin button on the map opens the list; hold a spot on the map to make it a waypoint or the target.

Navigating to something

Navigate on a waypoint, a node in Nearby or a location in a message opens the navigation view: the distance, the bearing To the target and your own heading (Hdg), with the time to arrival once you're getting closer. Turn until the two bearings match. The heading comes from your movement, so it shows -- while you stand still.

Tools › Compass shows the same heading as a scrolling tape with the degrees and direction.

Note

Wio Tracker L2: the target is drawn on the map with a line to it, and a bar with distance, bearing, heading and time to arrival. The Compass app is a turning dial.

Sharing locations

  • Once: Share my pos in the trail menu sends your position to a contact or channel you pick.
  • A waypoint: Send in the waypoint menu.
  • Live: Tools › Live Share sends your position while you move, to one contact or channel, for 1 to 12 hours. It only sends after you've moved (50–500 m) and never more often than you set; an optional heartbeat repeats it while you stand still.

With Track loc on in Live Share, other people's shares show on the map and in Nearby, with live distance and bearing.

Locations travel as ordinary text ([LOC]lat,lon, or [WAY]lat,lon label for a waypoint), readable in the phone app and on other firmware. On the receiving side, hold Enter on the message to navigate to it, save it or set it as the target.

Locator

Tools › Locator alerts you when you cross a circle around a target: arriving at a waypoint, leaving it, or a person coming near or moving away.

  • Target: a waypoint (a fixed place) or a contact (follows their live share, else their last known position).
  • Radius: 50 m to 1 km.
  • Mode: alert on arriving, leaving, or both.
  • Beeper: ticks faster as you get closer, even when the sound is muted.

Set as target in Nearby, the waypoint list or a message sets the target in one step. The target shows as a flag on the map.

Map

The Map home page shows a small map on the left (your position, the trail, people sharing their position and the target) and four lines beside it: GPS, the trail's distance, live shares, and the distance to the target (or the waypoint count when there is none). Enter opens the trail map; hold Enter shares your position.

Note

Wio Tracker L2: a real map with offline tiles on the SD card. Drag to pan, +/− to zoom, the crosshair follows your GPS again.

  • Download: frame an area on the map and download its tiles over WiFi. Downloaded areas can be renamed, refreshed or deleted.
  • Live tiles: with WiFi on, tiles for where you look are fetched and cached, up to the size set in Settings › Storage.
  • Vector regions (only in a build with -D MAP_VECTOR, unfinished): whole regions as packs made with tools/maps/osm_vector.py, copied to the card.

The minimap on the home screen shows your surroundings at a glance; tap it for the full map. The Nodes map is the same map with every node that has a position on it; Back returns to Nodes.