Show HN: Waycore – an open-source, offline-first modular field computer

[DGrechko]

Hi HN,

I’m building Waycore, an open-source project exploring what a flexible, offline-first field computer should look like for outdoor, survival, and off-grid scenarios.

The core goals are adaptability and resilience:

modular hardware (external sensor/tool modules)

extensible OS with support for external apps (guidelines in progress)

no required internet connection — maps, models, and knowledge work offline

optional LTE/Wi-Fi when available and explicitly enabled

A major focus is on-device agentic AI, not just chat or image recognition. The AI is intended to:

read live sensor data (GPS, compass, environment)

reason over offline knowledge

use apps and core APIs

assist with navigation, safety checks, logging, and communication

Main project repo (OS & architecture): https://github.com/dmitry-grechko/waycore

There’s also a separate repo curating freely downloadable survival & outdoor PDFs for offline use: https://github.com/dmitry-grechko/waycore-knowledge

I’m looking for feedback and contributors around:

UI/UX for rugged touch devices

hardware modularity & interfaces

offline/edge agent architectures

small models that work well without internet

high-quality public-domain or permissive survival knowledge sources

Happy to answer questions or hear critique.

[WillAdams]

Will the screen be daylight viewable? (and no, trying to out-bright the sun on a battery-powered device is not a valid answer)

E-ink or transflective LCD or maybe the modified LED used by the Daylight Computer folks.

Agree that AI needs to go as not reliable enough for life-death situations.

[DGrechko]

Good point, I’ll be testing both. e-ink is great from power management standpoint, but I want to see how some apps will be rendering (ex maps)

[DGrechko]

Just wanted to elaborate on the state of the project and the goal.

think of it as a modular field computer inspired by Flipper Zero, but aimed at outdoors/survival/trades folks instead of security people.

Right now I'm deep in the software/OS layer - getting the core system working (Qt/QML UI, Docker services, on-device AI with Phi-3, offline maps, Meshtastic integration). Once I validate everything with field tests, I'll finalize the hardware design. It's built on Raspberry Pi 5 + ESP32-S3 doing the heavy lifting for LoRa mesh comms and always-on sensors.

The big idea is making something that's flexible like Flipper Zero but for different use cases - you could run apps for hunting, survival navigation, plant identification, whatever fits your lifestyle. The app ecosystem is key - I want developers to easily build specialized tools that work in their workflow.

Communication-first design too - Meshtastic for long-range mesh when networks are down, with graceful degradation from LTE → WiFi → LoRa → GPS beacon. The whole thing is designed to work offline-first - max functionality with zero internet dependency.

Still super early (hence the software focus first), but the goal is a rugged platform that people can actually build on and customize for their specific needs. Not trying to replace phones, just be the reliable tool that works when phones don't.

[fao_]

> agentic AI

Yeah I don't want LLMs near anything life or death, where a hallucination can kill, thank you very much.

[DGrechko]

Agree with you on that, it was my concern too, but the way I think about it is access to information, the goal is not to provide hallucinations with a straight face (aka GPT), but rather use it as a way to extract necessary information fast. For instance, I have a built-in RAG that reads of growing collection on books on medical, survival, etc. (https://github.com/dmitry-grechko/waycore-knowledge) that AI agent is using to answer questions. Moreover, it has a built-in safety loop to always inform users on the accuracy of the information, but also if the information request has an impact on health & safety, it will warn users about it too.

So, I certainly see the inherited risk and problems, but mostly think about it as a means of information extraction

[freeone3000]

Putting the lookup in the AI means it can hallucinate the lookup. Putting the assesment of risk in the AI means it can fail on the assessment.

Please reconsider using a full text search index instead.

[DGrechko]

Good point. I’ll add it to the roadmap. I still want to experiment with AI features as I feel it can add value despite hallucinations, but safety and transparency are crucial - completely agree.

[tlhunter]

This reminds me of https://radiant.computer/

[DGrechko]

Thanks, haven't seen it before, but love the idea of it. It certainly takes the concept a lot futher that I intended with this project. My goal is far is to relyt on well-supported open source tools and frameworks, and give both the software and hardware flexibility for people to create what they need. Think of it like FlipperZero, but for outdoors

[WillAdams]

Any relation to the Daylight Computer folks?

https://daylightcomputer.com/

[DGrechko]

Not on my side, but it looks awesome. +1 to the e-ink point above.

[martin_henk]

wonderful... this is something I hope would come up going forward. I see this a little in the japanese electronic dictionaries still being developed and released

[WillAdams]

Yeah, ages ago, I installed all of Microsoft's Encarta on a CF card which I was using as a drive on my Fujitsu Stylist 2300ST --- it was way cool to be able to haul it out and look things up w/o a network connection (or a CD-ROM drive).

Wonder if that would run in a current version of Windows...

[rnewme]

Very similar to something I have been building this year. Do you already have hardware side ideas anywhere?

[DGrechko]

Love that I am not alone in this thinking! I test it on embedded systems (ex now Raspberry Pi 5) coupled with ESP32 as a sidecar. So, the core OS is running on the Pi and is reading data off the ESP32-connected sensors, basically.

[ClueslessTech99]

Is there any pictures of the device?

[DGrechko]

There are only AI renders and photos of the first prototype works, but I’m working on the actual schematics and renderings that I’ll publish once the hardware open source repo is ready.