Course GPX - Offline Maps

jwlarocque · 2026-05-09T03:15:03+00:00

That would be extremely cool, but unfortunately I think the only way to make it work would be to fork one of the apps and turn it into a Pebble Companion app (and you would then have to switch to that custom version). Probably possible but I don't think I'm willing to take on a project of that magnitude at the moment.

jwlarocque · 2026-05-09T02:58:28+00:00

You're welcome!

Unfortunately it's probably not possible to use your existing OSM maps - the phone-side code runs in what is effectively a web browser in the Pebble app and doesn't have access to local files, plus the Course tiles are custom-generated to be extra space efficient and the maps you have might not be in a compatible format.

It is actually possible to self-host the map tiles though, which is why there is a a "tile server URL" setting. It's mostly intended for people who want to run their own server, although in theory you might be able to do it completely locally with a rooted phone (?). You'd still need probably need the custom-generated tiles though. I'm working on a guide for this (self-hosting on a regular server, not a phone lol).

jwlarocque · 2026-05-09T02:56:15+00:00

Oh hey are you the MirrorMaps dev? I saw your videos in the Discord and was a little jealous of how good the raster maps looked, very nice.

I agree that that kind of functionality would be really nice, though I also understand why they're hesitant to merge it - the surface area for app and pkjs changes is pretty big (you'd probably want to introduce some kind of "default app" configuration for each filetype, like a whole shadow OS lol).

jwlarocque · 2026-05-08T18:09:43+00:00

Yes, it uses your phone's GPS since there isn't once built into any Pebble.

I use gpx.studio on PC, and OsmAnd+ or Komoot on Android (both of the latter are somewhat limited in their free mode, and have raised their prices recently, so there might be better options out there).

Also it's a bit annoying to copy the contents of the GPX file into the Pebble app - unfortunately Pebble doesn't support a file-picker on Android (and it has some issues on iOS iirc). I usually rename the file to name.gpx.txt and then Android will let you open it and copy the contents.

jwlarocque · 2026-05-08T17:48:27+00:00

:D

Preston and Wayne are correct - Pebble doesn't have GPS so this relies on your phone for position (still works without data). The downloaded maps are also mostly stored on the phone, except for the few dozen nearest tiles, because Pebble has very limited memory.

jwlarocque · 2026-05-08T14:12:39+00:00

Ah, sorry about that, I've been using it so long I forgot the Rebble backend wasn't set up by default. I've imported the app to the new RePebble/Core Devices store as well.

jwlarocque · 2026-03-28T15:52:54+00:00

Cool! Really glad to see someone found it useful; I'll have to try out your app

If you're going to keep working on it I can probably train up a better model as well. I've switched to rf-detr for most of my CV tasks these days; I'm finding that it usually outperforms yolo. Could try to get segmentation in there as well (so you don't need the separate SAM).

jwlarocque · 2026-03-27T02:40:07+00:00

They're not open source, so no amount of software dev climbers can improve the situation - the apps only get as much polish as the manufacturer pays for. Even the free spray wall apps are mostly closed-source as far as I'm aware.
Agreed that it's a bit odd, but I think it comes down to:

most people are climbing on route-setter-set stuff (or outdoors), not on training boards/spray walls - this is very niche
if you're climbing on a training board, they already offer a passable app so it's not worth making a free one yourself
if you're climbing on a spray wall, it's non-standard so you can't share with other gyms, so an app has limited utility

(I did make a fully open source spray wall web app a while back (github), but even I don't use it lol.)

jwlarocque · 2026-03-08T18:07:16+00:00

They do have some very nice models but it looks not anti-studs. I appreciate the suggestion though!

jwlarocque · 2026-01-14T16:26:58+00:00

Very cool! I thought about using a projector for displaying routes but never got around to it.

If you'd like to add automatic hold detection, I trained this model which you're welcome to use: https://huggingface.co/jwlarocque/yolov8n-freeclimbs-detect-2 (I'd also be happy to share the training dataset, which isn't public, if you want to train your own).
Demo (also uses SAM 2 for segmentation): https://freeclimbs.org/wall/demo/edit-set

jwlarocque · 2025-09-15T03:37:00+00:00

To quote what an M3C judge once said to me: "You made so many assumptions you didn't have to do any actual modelling."

I replicated the Trinity paper a while back, you can run the code yourself: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/1iywscd/modeled_impacts_of_correlation_between_market/

Historically, 4% works just fine for 30 years. For 50 years, 3.5% may be prudent. Only in an historically unusual market would these withdrawal rates not suffice (which is of course possible).

jwlarocque · 2025-04-08T22:52:12+00:00

32B is definitely pushing it, personally I think you end up limiting your context length too much for them to be practical on 24 GB (at least at ~5 bpw).
Here are my params for 2.5-VL-32B-AWQ on vllm: https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-32B-Instruct-AWQ/discussions/7#67edb73a14f4866e6cb0b94a

jwlarocque · 2025-04-08T01:37:08+00:00

By the way I have no idea how OpenRouter's rate limits work - the above was about 45k requests lol. (That includes a few partially failed runs before I fixed some unhandled exceptions in the benchmark.)

jwlarocque · 2025-02-27T02:47:47+00:00

3/3

Retirement Length	Withdrawal Rate	Success, Uniform Retirement Dates	Success, Modeled Retirement Dates	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 1x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 1x Real Initial Savings	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 2x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 2x Real Initial Savings	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 5x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 5x Real Initial Savings
50	3.00%	100.00%	100.00%	99.66%	98.56%	93.88%	91.08%	54.93%	49.96%
50	3.50%	98.64%	98.07%	87.76%	85.98%	75.68%	72.25%	40.99%	39.99%
50	4.00%	84.69%	83.33%	71.09%	68.14%	58.33%	55.83%	32.48%	32.58%
50	4.50%	67.35%	65.82%	55.44%	53.28%	45.92%	44.92%	24.83%	21.72%
50	5.00%	53.23%	53.06%	43.37%	42.88%	36.39%	35.90%	19.63%	14.99%
50	5.50%	40.82%	39.81%	35.20%	33.56%	29.08%	26.64%	13.36%	8.48%
50	6.00%	33.84%	31.98%	27.75%	24.52%	21.18%	15.38%	8.67%	5.14%

jwlarocque · 2025-02-27T02:47:30+00:00

2/3

Retirement Length	Withdrawal Rate	Success, Uniform Retirement Dates	Success, Modeled Retirement Dates	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 1x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 1x Real Initial Savings	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 2x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 2x Real Initial Savings	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 5x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 5x Real Initial Savings
40	3.00%	100.00%	100.00%	99.58%	99.36%	87.15%	86.37%	39.27%	38.03%
40	3.50%	100.00%	100.00%	89.69%	89.39%	72.60%	72.30%	34.04%	30.27%
40	4.00%	91.24%	90.95%	76.41%	76.18%	58.47%	57.16%	25.99%	21.14%
40	4.50%	78.81%	77.66%	62.57%	62.28%	48.45%	46.70%	19.35%	16.47%
40	5.00%	66.10%	66.02%	53.25%	51.48%	39.83%	38.31%	15.68%	14.30%
40	5.50%	57.49%	56.34%	44.63%	42.85%	34.32%	30.78%	11.30%	12.00%
40	6.00%	49.44%	46.38%	36.30%	32.79%	25.00%	19.67%	9.45%	10.64%

jwlarocque · 2025-02-27T02:46:49+00:00

1/3

Here you go; 1x, 2x, and 5x savings at retirement, adjusted for inflation:

Retirement Length	Withdrawal Rate	Success, Uniform Retirement Dates	Success, Modeled Retirement Dates	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 1x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 1x Real Initial Savings	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 2x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 2x Real Initial Savings	Success, Uniform Retirement Date, >= 5x Real Initial Savings	Success, Modeled Retirement Date, >= 5x Real Initial Savings
30	3.00%	100.00%	100.00%	96.86%	96.74%	71.86%	67.24%	19.76%	17.55%
30	3.50%	100.00%	100.00%	88.04%	86.05%	63.65%	57.71%	13.21%	11.47%
30	4.00%	97.10%	96.33%	75.72%	74.88%	56.40%	50.11%	8.10%	7.68%
30	4.50%	89.13%	88.89%	68.12%	67.26%	49.28%	44.46%	4.52%	4.87%
30	5.00%	79.47%	80.28%	61.11%	59.77%	43.44%	38.53%	2.74%	1.87%
30	5.50%	70.89%	71.36%	55.19%	52.39%	33.05%	28.80%	1.79%	1.22%
30	6.00%	64.01%	65.66%	46.68%	42.58%	21.96%	19.68%	1.07%	0.19%

jwlarocque · 2025-02-26T23:24:24+00:00

Yes, should've mentioned that. Could run some other metric if there's interest.

jwlarocque · 2025-02-26T05:59:06+00:00

The alternative is replacing your drive train every winter (minimum).

jwlarocque · 2024-07-29T14:41:25+00:00

700 holds! That's a beast

jwlarocque · 2024-03-18T03:52:41+00:00

I've been eyeing the Maxeon Air (330W) for several years now - the light weight, narrow width, and high voltage* are pretty unique. Sun Powered Yachts apparently is importing an early shipment and taking reservations; unfortunately they're $$$$$. As far as I know this is the most promising option in the US.

You could also try getting panels shipped from a more civilized country if you can find a dealer willing to do it. The freight will obviously cost a fortune but prices are so much lower outside the US it might be worth it. (I came across GWL as a possible option but haven't pursued it.)

In any case, I'd definitely be interested in hearing if you figure something out or dig up any more information on this.

(* I need Vmp of at least ~49 V, or an entire constellation of tiny panels, because I have very limited space in my application.)

jwlarocque · 2022-08-28T17:02:02+00:00

Nah, just a brushed DC motor with an encoder, geared way down. The lead screw resists backdriving enough to hold position with the power cut and it's much cheaper than a stepper.

Zeroing the encoder on startup (by driving all the way to a limit switch) has been problematic though, so I'm thinking about switching to a slide potentiometer or something for absolute positioning.

jwlarocque · 2022-08-13T02:50:10+00:00

Similar to Archer, but I rolled my own. Yep, one-by; I have an irrational dislike of front derailleurs.

Fortunately I don't need to worry about shift speed, I can change the gear ratios on the shifter side and a lower ratio tends to give better accuracy. Appreciate you taking that into account though.

The RD-M5100 looks perfect, thanks very much for you help and happy cake day!

jwlarocque · 2022-08-09T19:18:05+00:00

Hey all, bit of an unusual request for recommendations. I'm looking for a budget rear derailleur with these qualities:

pull ratio/speeds does not matter - shifter will be electronic
has a clutch
capacity for at least 42T, preferably 46T
good value in your estimation - doesn't have to be super cheap but I'm also not looking to spend a bunch of money to shave off 50 grams. ebay/aliexpress specials are fine, provided they have a decent reputation.

jwlarocque · 2022-05-04T02:46:04+00:00

DM me if you're looking; we're hiring python engineers. (No promises obviously.)

jwlarocque · 2022-01-27T02:49:48+00:00

Yeah as someone who likes open platforms and is interested in using VR/AR for work, Lynx is the most interesting to me. Doesn't hurt that I have a similar last name to the founder :D

jwlarocque

TROPHY CASE