Under development
Godwit
The head unit for your whole rig. Navigation, calls, texts and music up front, and everything behind you on the same screen.
Demonstration and test software only. Do not install it in a vehicle you drive.
Drive It Yourself
Try it right here, no hardware needed. Turn the knobs, tap the screen, answer a call, or pick a destination and let it guide you there.
Turn your phone sideways, or tap Full screen, for a bigger view.
Drag around a knob to turn it, tap to press, hold for its second action. On a keyboard: left knob a / d / s, right knob j / l / k, Shift for hold.
The map is set in Bend, Oregon. To drive: tap Where to?, type a place such as Smith Rock, press Start, then shift to D.
This is a demonstration. Godwit is test software and is not for use in a vehicle you drive.
The cabinet, door and fridge warnings show how those alerts will look. The TrailCurrent modules that send them are being connected now.
What's Inside / Flagship
One Screen for the Whole Vehicle
In a van or a motorhome, the vehicle you drive and the home you live in are the same machine. Godwit is being built to treat them that way: a head unit designed for the dash that talks to the chassis and to TrailCurrent, and brings both onto one screen.
Follow a route with no cell signal. Take a call and hear your texts without picking up your phone. And if a cabinet swings open on a washboard road or the fridge loses power, you find out while you are still driving, not when you get to camp.
The Elecrow link carries our affiliate tag. It costs you nothing extra and sends a small cut back to the project.
Where It Stands
Godwit runs on real hardware on the bench, and much of it works today. What is left is the vehicle side: reading the chassis, and the alerts from the rest of TrailCurrent.
Working on the hardware
- Live on the Radxa Dragon Q6A and the Raspberry Pi CM5
- GPS position, offline maps, destination search and turn-by-turn routing
- Music streaming from your phone over Bluetooth
- Phone calls, placed and answered from the head unit
- Text messages announced, read aloud and answered by voice
- Wi-Fi and Ethernet
- Volume control, with separate levels for music, directions and calls
Still ahead
- Reading the chassis and TrailCurrent CAN buses, so climate, energy, tanks, leveling and gear show live values
- Cabinet, door and fridge warnings from Picket and Switchback
- The finished enclosure
Two Knobs You Can Use Without Looking
A touchscreen asks for your eyes. A knob only needs your hand.
They change with the moment
On the map, the left knob is volume and the right is zoom. When a call rings, they become Answer and Decline. When a text arrives, Read and Dismiss. Each has its own small round screen that says what it does right now.
The ring tells you at a glance
Five lights around each knob show the volume, count down to the next turn from cyan to amber, spin green for an incoming call, and flash red for a warning. You can read them from the corner of your eye.
Touch works too
Everything the knobs do, you can also do on the screen. Tap the knob's label at either end of the bottom bar and its controls appear above it.
Built for Where the Signal Ends
The places worth driving to are rarely the places with good coverage. So Godwit does not lean on a connection for anything that matters on the road.
The map, the address search and the routing all live on the head unit, from the same offline map bundle Headwaters uses. The voice that reads your directions and your texts runs there too, and so does the speech recognition that turns your spoken reply into a text.
Your messages are never shown on the screen, only spoken. Your voice never leaves the vehicle. Your vehicle, your data.
Where it follows you
The map follows your position from the GNSS receiver, and turns with you if you like. Drag it to look ahead, and one press brings it back.
Back on track by itself
Miss a turn and Godwit plans a new route from where you are, without being asked.
Quiet when it should be
Directions stay silent while you are on a call. Your music pauses for a call and picks up again when you hang up.
Built on Open Source
Godwit's maps, search and navigation stand on the work of these projects. Thank you to everyone who builds and maintains them.
Map data and tiles
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OpenStreetMap
ODbL
The roads, trails and places themselves, mapped by volunteers around the world.
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OpenMapTiles
CC BY 4.0 schema, BSD style
The vector tile layout, and the map style Godwit's look starts from.
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Planetiler
Apache-2.0
Turns OpenStreetMap into the map tiles Godwit carries.
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PMTiles
BSD-3-Clause
Packs the whole map into one file the head unit reads straight from disk.
Drawing the map
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MapLibre Native
BSD-2-Clause
Draws the map on the head unit.
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MapLibre GL JS
BSD-3-Clause
Draws the same map in the demo on this page.
Search
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Photon
Apache-2.0
Finds places, addresses and campgrounds as you type, with no connection. Built by komoot.
Routes and directions
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Valhalla
MIT
Plans the route and writes the turn-by-turn directions you hear.
The voice
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Piper
MIT
Speaks directions and reads your texts out loud, on the head unit.
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whisper.cpp
MIT
Turns your spoken replies into text, on the head unit.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Tile schema © OpenMapTiles. The full list of components and licenses is in the repository's THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md, and on the head unit under Settings › System › About & Legal.
The Chassis and the Coach, Together
For vans, Class C and Class A motorhomes, and other chassis-based rigs.
The vehicle you drive
One CAN port connects to the chassis. That is where Godwit will learn which gear you are in, so the rear camera comes up the moment you shift into Reverse and the knob rings become park distance displays.
The home you live in
The other connects to TrailCurrent: battery and solar, tanks, lights, leveling, and the sensors on your cabinets and doors. The same modules your wall screens and phone already use.
Some checks are built in. Leave the jacks down or the shore cord plugged in and shift out of Park, and Godwit stops you before you drive off.
What It Runs On
Off-the-shelf boards and a printed enclosure.
| Computer | Radxa Dragon Q6A or Raspberry Pi CM5, running Automotive Grade Linux |
| Screen | Touchscreen, 1024×600 |
| Network | Wi-Fi and Ethernet |
| Knobs | Two Elecrow CrowPanel 1.28" rotary displays (ESP32-S3), each with a round screen and a ring of five RGB lights, connected over USB-C |
| Vehicle | Two CAN ports, classic CAN or CAN FD: one for the chassis, one for TrailCurrent |
| Position | GNSS receiver, the same module Bearing uses |
| Cameras | USB cameras for rear, left, right and front views |
| Phone | Bluetooth for calls, contacts, texts and music |
The Elecrow link carries our affiliate tag. It costs you nothing extra and sends a small cut back to the project.
Under the Hood
The interface is a Qt 6 app that draws straight to the display with nothing in between, so it is the first thing on screen after power-on. It runs on an Automotive Grade Linux image built for the Radxa board. The knobs make no decisions of their own: they report each click and show what the head unit sends them.
Open All the Way Down
The interface, the knob firmware, the operating system build, the 40-pin wiring diagram and the FreeCAD enclosure are all in the repository. Every part of it is yours to read, change and build.
Questions
The ones people ask first.
Can I install Godwit in my vehicle?
No. Godwit is demonstration and test software. It is not finished and has not been proven safe for use while driving, so do not install it in a vehicle you drive. It is shared so developers can follow along and test it on the bench. Anyone who installs it in a vehicle takes on all of the risk and responsibility.
Is Godwit running on real hardware?
Yes, on the bench. It runs on the Radxa Dragon Q6A and on the Raspberry Pi CM5. GPS, maps, search and routing, Bluetooth music, phone calls, text messages, Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and the separate volumes for music, directions and calls are all working on the hardware. It is still marked under development because reading the vehicle's own data and the finished enclosure are still ahead.
Can I try it without building one?
Yes, right on this page. The head unit above runs in your browser: the same screens, the same knob behavior and the same offline map data. Nothing to install.
Does navigation need the internet?
No. The map, address search and turn-by-turn routing all run on the head unit from the same offline map bundle Headwaters uses. Spoken directions are generated on the head unit too.
Does it do Apple CarPlay or Android Auto?
No. Your phone pairs over Bluetooth for calls, contacts, texts and music. Navigation is built in and works without your phone.
Which vehicles will it work with?
Godwit is aimed at vans, Class C and Class A motorhomes, and other chassis-based rigs. It has two CAN ports: one for the vehicle chassis and one for TrailCurrent. Reading each chassis is the work still ahead, so climate, tanks, energy and leveling show sample readings for now.
Are my texts and voice sent anywhere?
No. Message text is only ever spoken, never shown on screen, and your spoken replies are turned into text on the head unit itself. Nothing goes to a cloud service.
Is Godwit free and open source?
Yes. The interface, the knob firmware, the operating system build and the enclosure are MIT licensed, like every TrailCurrent project. No subscription, no paid tier.
Follow Along as It Comes Together
The interface, knob firmware, operating system build and enclosure are all in the repository, shared for development and testing on the bench, not for use in a vehicle. Questions and ideas are welcome on Discord.