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

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.

30 points | by DGrechko 2 hours ago

7 comments

  • WillAdams 1 hour ago
    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 1 hour ago
      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)
  • fao_ 1 hour ago
    > agentic AI

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

    [-]
    • DGrechko 1 hour ago
      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

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      • freeone3000 38 minutes ago
        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.

  • ClueslessTech99 35 minutes ago
    Is there any pictures of the device?
  • martin_henk 1 hour ago
    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
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    • WillAdams 6 minutes ago
      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...

  • tlhunter 1 hour ago
    This reminds me of https://radiant.computer/
    [-]
    • DGrechko 1 hour ago
      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 1 hour ago
      Any relation to the Daylight Computer folks?

      https://daylightcomputer.com/

      [-]
      • DGrechko 1 hour ago
        Not on my side, but it looks awesome. +1 to the e-ink point above.
  • rnewme 1 hour ago
    Very similar to something I have been building this year. Do you already have hardware side ideas anywhere?
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    • DGrechko 1 hour ago
      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.
  • stefan_ 12 minutes ago
    Another slop Show HN. The repository doesn't even have any particular relation to the bullet points here, theres no hardware, theres just a bunch of tokens spent. There should be a requirement to put (AI) in the title if your project is entirely LLM built.
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    • DGrechko 0 minutes ago
      Thanks for the feedback. The repository contains the OS system that is powering the device, and another one for dataset. I’ve put a lot of effort into documenting both the vision, progress, and practical instructions, but if there are particular sections you think needs more work - would be very happy to hear.

      The hardware component will be open sourced in a separate repo, once the prototype is tested in the field to validate the configuration. I hope to make it public in January.