User Guide

This guide covers everything from your first boot to power-user territory.

Table of contents

1. Overview
2. Home Window
   1. Broadcast
   2. Actions
   3. Lock
   4. My Last Broadcast
   5. Received Messages
3. Main Menu
4. Appendix
   1. LoRa: Channels & Passwords
   2. Settings Reference

Overview

Here is an overview of the parts of the Wayfinder you will be interacting with:

1. The primary input buttons. Their actions correspond to the text in the respective corner of the OLED. The buttons are numbered 1-4 from left-to-right top-to-bottom.
2. The encoder knob. Used to scroll through the UI. The knob itself can be pressed as a button in certain circumstances.
3. The compass ring. Provides an intuitive interface for the onboard compass.
4. A 128x128 OLED display
5. The power button. Holding for 5 seconds will turn the device on. Holding for 15 seconds will force a reboot.
6. Two carabiner/lanyard mounting points.
7. (Out of view) USB-C port for both data and charging. This port provides a serial connection to the configuration app.

Home Window

The Home Window is the main point of interaction with the LoRa network. At a glance, you can see your battery life, the current state of silent mode, the current time, and the number of unacknowledged messages. From here you can also begin to broadcast a message, access the quick actions menu, access the main menu, lock the device, view your last ping, and scroll through received messages. See Main Menu below for what’s there.

Broadcast

Pressing button 2 will prompt you to select a location

The default location is “Ping”, which is your current location. More locations can be saved from pings received, the quick action menu, or downloaded onto the device from the configuration app.

Next, you will select a message. The name of the location selected will always be passed in as a message option. You also have the option of selecting any of your saved messages or tagging any of the last 32 people you have received a broadcast from. Similarly to saved locations, you can saved new messages from pings received, the quick action menu, or downloaded onto the device from the configuration app.

The message will send once the message is selected. See LoRa: Channels & Passwords for more information on frequencies and encryption.

Actions

The action menu contains useful shortcuts

Create Status Message

Opens a text editor to create a new status message

Save Current Location

Saves your current location and opens a text editor to select a name

Toggle Silent Mode

Toggles silent mode; preventing the buzzer and haptics from firing upon receiving a new message

Shutdown

Shuts down the device

Lock

Locking the device clears the OLED, enables some power saving measures, and awaits a button combination to unlock the device. The button combination is button 3 -> button 4 and is displayed with the LEDs under the buttons.

My Last Broadcast

Scrolling up displays your last broadcast. You can see the message attached to it, how far away it was, how long ago it was sent, and how many times the message echoed back to you from other users. Selecting resend will enter a state where the message is resent periodically with updated time and location.

Received Messages

Scrolling down from the Home Window will display messages received from other users. The compass ring will point towards the coordinates attached to the message and you can see your distance away at the top. From here, you can save the message or the location attached to the ping. Pressing “Mark Read” will clear the message from your Home Window.

Main Menu

Accessed from the Home Window, the Main Menu holds configuration, diagnostics, and device-level actions.

Item	Purpose
Settings	General device settings. See Settings Reference for more info
Configure via WiFi	Spins up a WiFi AP so the companion app can connect and change settings.
Configure via BT	Same as above, over BLE pairing instead of WiFi.
Status Messages	Create, edit, and delete the saved status messages offered when broadcasting.
Saved Locations	Create, edit, and delete saved locations offered when broadcasting.
Debug Compass	Live compass readings for troubleshooting. You can also calibrate the compass here
Debug Geolocation	Read, enable, and disable your geolocation sources including static location, GPS, and WiFi-based geolocation
Diagnostic Info	Memory diagnosics
Breakout	Breakout game
Reboot	Restarts the device.
Shutdown	Powers the device off.

Appendix

LoRa: Channels & Passwords

Two independent settings control who your badge can talk to: LoRa Channel and Channel Key. They’re unrelated — channel is which frequency your radio is tuned to, key is who among the people on that frequency can actually read your messages.

Channel — which frequency you’re on

The LoRa Channel setting picks one of 8 frequencies in the 902–928 MHz band, spaced 1.5 MHz apart:

Channel	Frequency
1	904.5 MHz
2	906.0 MHz
3	907.5 MHz
4	909.0 MHz
5	910.5 MHz
6	912.0 MHz
7	913.5 MHz
8	915.0 MHz (default)

This is a radio-level split, not a software filter — badges on different channels can’t hear each other’s transmissions at all, the same way two walkie-talkies on different channels can’t. Channel 8 is the default so a badge fresh out of the box can always talk to another fresh badge.

Channel Key — which chatroom you’re in

The Channel Key setting (labeled “password” in spirit, up to 21 characters) controls encryption for everyone sharing a channel:

• Empty key → plaintext. Every message you send is readable by any badge on your channel, and you can read theirs. This is the default.
• Any non-empty key → encrypted. Your badge and every other badge using the exact same key string can read each other’s messages. Badges using a different key — or no key — cannot decrypt them at all, even though they’re on the same channel and physically receive the same radio packets.

Think of a non-empty key as naming a private chat room layered on top of the shared channel. It isn’t a personal password protecting your badge; it’s a shared secret that anyone can be given to be let into the room. Everyone who knows the string reads every message in that room — there’s no per-person access within it.

Under the hood, your key string is stretched into an AES-128 encryption key (PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256, 10,000 iterations), and every message is encrypted with AES-128-CBC using a fresh random IV. Two badges with the same key string always derive the same encryption key, which is what lets them read each other — and why the key is case-sensitive and must match exactly.

How they interact

Every badge relays every message it hears on its channel toward the edge of the mesh, regardless of whether it can decrypt that message — routing information (sender, message ID, hop count) is never encrypted, only the message content is. So a badge sitting outside your chat room still helps carry your encrypted traffic further; it just can’t read what it’s carrying.

If a message doesn’t decrypt — wrong key, or no key against an encrypted message, or a key against a plaintext one — it simply never appears on your Home Window. There’s no error, no notification that a private message passed through; it’s indistinguishable from mesh noise.

Settings Reference

Reached from Main Menu → Settings. Every setting is saved to the device immediately and survives reboot and firmware updates.

Identity

Setting	Default	Notes
User Name	User	Up to 12 characters. Attached to messages you broadcast so recipients know who sent them.
Device Name	Wayfinder_XXXX, unique per device	Up to 20 characters. What the companion app sees when scanning for your badge over WiFi or Bluetooth.

Appearance

Setting	Default	Notes
Theme Color	Green	One of Custom, Red, Green, Blue, Purple, Yellow, Cyan, White, Orange. Choosing Custom switches the UI accent to the RGB values below.
Theme Color Red	0	0–255. Custom accent color, red channel.
Theme Color Green	255	0–255. Custom accent color, green channel.
Theme Color Blue	0	0–255. Custom accent color, blue channel.

Clock

Setting	Default	Notes
24H Time	Off	Switches the clock between 12-hour and 24-hour display.
Timezone	US/Eastern	One of 16 preset zones covering the US, Europe, and Asia/Pacific.

Notifications

Setting	Default	Notes
Silent Mode	Off	Same toggle as the quick action menu. Mutes the buzzer and haptics on incoming messages.

LoRa

See LoRa: Channels & Passwords for what these actually do.

Setting	Default	Notes
Channel Key	(empty)	Up to 21 characters. Empty = plaintext; any value = encrypted.
LoRa Channel	8 - 915.0 MHz	One of 8 channels, 904.5–915.0 MHz.
Num Broadcasts	3	1–5. How many times your own outgoing broadcasts are repeated on the air, with a randomized delay between each, to improve the odds a distant badge catches at least one copy.

WiFi

Setting	Default	Notes
WiFi Mode	Off	Off, AP Mode, or Station Mode. Controls how Configure via WiFi connects.
WiFi AP Password	esp-pass	Up to 21 characters. Password for the hotspot the badge creates in AP Mode. Change this from the default before relying on it.