Hardware

Three roles, three reference configurations

A Waycast mesh is built from devices playing three roles. These are not concept renders — each configuration below is hardware we run today, listed exactly. Build guides and firmware downloads arrive with the open release; until then this page is the honest inventory.

DRIVE

The car device FIELD-PROVEN

A windshield-class navigator that needs no network and no account: offline street map, hazard overlay, two-tap reporting, confirm/deny votes, and a local corkboard that unfolds when you park. Everything it knows arrived by radio from other participants.

  • ESP32-P4 dev kit with 7″ 720×1280 touch panel
  • LoRa radio: SX1262 HAT on the 40-pin header, or a USB LoRa dongle — both profiles supported
  • GPS: USB G-mouse receiver (NMEA)
  • Map storage: microSD tile pack, or tiles embedded in flash for a self-contained demo unit
The Waycast device: 7-inch panel showing the driving view — live street map with route ribbon, a Slowdown warning 460 m ahead, and the Report button
the driving posture — offline map, the next hazard ahead, one fixed Report button. Every item arrived by radio.
The Waycast device showing the parked town square: a feed of notes — slowdown, lodging, farmers market, debris with confirmations, and a crash report
stopped, the town square opens — every note alive on the mesh right now, each with its source, age, and expiry. Gone when they expire, kept nowhere.
ANCHOR

The town node RUNNING 24/7

A fixed node with a concentrator-class radio that hears every spreading factor on multiple channels at once — the best ears in the mesh. It relays traffic, and it injects public information: today that means live National Weather Service alerts for its area, polled from the public API and broadcast with their real expiry times. It knows its own position and keeps accurate time from GPS, so it stays trustworthy even with the internet down.

  • Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi OS Lite
  • SX1302 LoRa concentrator HAT (SPI) — widely available LoRaWAN gateway hardware, given a second life
  • u-blox GPS on the HAT — position + disciplined clock
  • Provisioning: one script takes a fresh SD card to a self-starting appliance — survives power cuts, needs no keyboard, ever
ANNOUNCE

The shop beacon PROTOTYPE

A small station for a business or a community point: it serves a local page where the owner writes what passersby should know — opening hours, today’s offer, “we have fuel” — and announces it on the mesh so nearby drivers see it on the corkboard. No platform, no account, no fees: your announcement radiates from your own roof.

  • Any Mac/PC (Raspberry Pi version planned)
  • USB LoRa dongle as the radio
  • Composer page served locally — write once, the mesh carries it