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  • Field Test: Scout on a Plane

    Took Scout along on a trip from Cleveland to Phoenix last fall to visit a little hot springs place with rescued cats.

    Tested it on the flight to see what it’d do. Wasn’t designed with airline speeds in mind, so it kept crashing.

    But it kept restarting gracefully. Same screen, last-known position, pretty much ready to go. One of the design goals on Scout is always to have helpful information. So mission accomplished 😉

    A few firmware tweaks since to handle plane rides without panicking.

    More from this trip coming. Desert maps, field-test scenes, whatever turns up in the camera roll.

    Verne

  • What Scout Was Doing While I Was Cutting Dice

    Last post here was July 31, 2025. The work didn’t stop. The writing about it did. Here’s where things are.

    Quick version: my dice business at dicemakers.com had a busier holiday season than I expected. Late November through early spring I was downstairs in the workshop most days, running the dice machines and packing orders. Working on Scout firmware was about all I could do while babysitting the dice machines. The blog went quiet. Scout didn’t.

    The biggest thing that changed is power. Scout now sleeps when you stop moving and wakes up when you start. The battery life is looking very promising.

    There’s also a safety screen. Hold any button for ten seconds and Scout shows your emergency contact info, full-screen, even from deep sleep. The idea: if something happens to you and someone picks up your Scout, the first thing they see is who to call. GPS keeps recording your track in the background while the screen is up, in case search and rescue ever needs it.

    You can drop pins on the map now. You can load images onto the SD card and read them on the e-paper. I’ve been carrying the Red Cross First Aid guide on mine. Freely redistributable, I converted it for Scout, and it’ll probably ship with Scout. Useful in places where I don’t want a phone. Let me know if you have links to other PDFs or freely redistributable info that should be included with Scout.

    About battery life: it’s looking like a 6,000 mAh lithium gets about a week of trail life right now, and the device is becoming something I actually want to carry this summer. The GPS is the biggest power draw on Scout, and the new one going into the shipping product is more capable and pulls dramatically less. With it, I’m calculating closer to two weeks under the same use pattern. Not yet field-tested, but close.

    Indiegogo this fall. Aiming for late October. I’ll be uploading a run of videos demoing everything Scout can do. The blog stays for longer write-ups like this one. Newsletter sign-up here gets you trail footage and launch updates, about once a month.

    Thanks for being patient with the silence. Gotta keep the lights on 🙂

    Verne

  • Scout Power Savings

    Been working on power usage this week with excellent progress. Was able to get consumption low enough for 10ish days with a 6000 mah lithium battery.

    Tested with a paging app that displays .bmp files in order. I put a freely distributable first aid pdf that I converted on the sdcard to view. It works great. I’ll do some better processing of the pdf to bmp prices, but it’s going to be included on Scout. I’ll publish my conversion process and you can put your own stuff on there too

  • Scout Dev Update: What’s Working, What’s Left?

    Scout is your mapping companion for hiking, biking, and exploring. Scout is readable in full sun; Sips battery power; and never needs an app, Wi-Fi signal, or login to work.

    So … what’s the current status on Scout?
    I’ve finalized the feature list and am on track to send prototypes to a few trusted beta testers in late August, with a launch on Indiegogo in late October. I’m aiming for 400–500 pre-orders, with a target ship date of March 2026.

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    ✓ Join the newsletter for updates + preorder alerts.
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    ✅ What’s Working

    • SD-card map tiles
    • Location Reticle & breadcrumb trail
    • Live clock overlay
    • Optimized partial-refresh logic
    • Solid and fast GPS
    • Saves zoom & last-known position on power loss
    • GPX route loading

    🔧 What’s Left to Build

    • GPX track recording of breadcrumbs
    • INI-file settings (refresh behavior, movement thresholds)
    • Power-management refinements
    • Mode-switch framework
    • Final case design
    • UI refinement
    • Custom, Optimized Map Tiles

    Feedback or Questions? Yes, please!

  • Testing partial refresh at Mogadore Reservoir

    The GPS location reticle now updates via distance traveled (3m atm). If the reticle will be drawn too close to the edge of the screen, the entire screen will be redrawn with the location in the center. Also it was a beautiful day 🙂

  • Saving location between power outages

    Scout can save your most recent location between power interruptions or off there is no gps signal. Scout displays your last known location centered on the map until you have gps signal again.

    There are new “Mobile Atlas” maps to test as well as the 1st case draft.

    More soon!

  • Refined breadcrumbs over a test map

    Making breadcrumbs with random motion. If the random trail gets too close to an edge, it resets in the center of the screen.

  • More partial refresh with breadcrumbs

    Testing what will become the breadcrumbs functionality over the map.

  • Testing partial refresh

    Doing some test code on the epaper display via Conrad’s Game of Life.

  • Scout Status Update

    Working Demo

    Scout currently is in the “Working Demo” phase.

    Scout can quickly lock on to GPS satellites for time and location. Every set number of seconds the entire screen refreshes, centering the current location on the screen, drawing the location indicator, and updating the time. You can change the zoom level which also initiates a screen refresh.

    I’m currently reorganizing the code preparing for more efficient refreshes, and refreshing the location based on distance moved.

    I’m also processing large amounts of map tiles to test and see what info looks best at what zoom levels.

    Watch the YouTube Video to see Scout in action!

    Most Recent Scout Prototype – Map Centered on GPS Location