1I have GPS — broadcast my position
Idle. Enter callsign and start broadcast to share your GPS fix every 30 seconds.
2Active peer beacons
Beacons expire 5 minutes after last broadcast. In-memory store, lost on server restart.
Not encrypted, not authenticated. Brigade-internal demonstration only.
3AUTO MODE — locate me from incoming peer observations
Primary path. Teammates who can see you POST /api/nav/peer-observation
with their estimated range to your callsign. The moment 3+ fresh observations
arrive (within ±60 s), the solver fires automatically and renders a confidence
ellipse on the map. While < 3 fresh peers, the panel falls back to
dead-reckoning from your last good peer fix.
Idle. Enter your callsign and start polling.
DEAD-RECKONING FALLBACK PARAMS
Used only when fresh peers < 3 AND a previous peer fix exists. Drift radius grows at
speed × elapsed × 1.5 (worst-case multiplier from the platform's GPS-denied model).
4MANUAL BACKUP — I have ranges to peers, solve once
Backup path for the GPS-denied operator. Pick at least 3 peers from the active beacons above and enter your operator-estimated range to each in meters. Same solver, same ellipse output as auto mode. Distance accuracy dominates the result — realistic eyeball estimates carry 10–30% error.
Fewer than 3 observations? Use /pnt-toolkit map resection or your
dead-reckoned breadcrumb on /field.
5What this is and is not
- IS: A decision-support tool that combines operator-reported distances to peer GPS positions into a least-squares position estimate.
- IS: Useful when you can see or hear teammates and have any way to estimate range to them (eyeball, pace count, map measure, landmark of known distance from a peer).
- IS: Pure browser math — Gauss-Newton on a local tangent plane. The server only stores beacons; the solve runs on your device.
- IS NOT: Hardware ranging. The web platform exposes no API for RSSI, time-of-flight, or angle-of-arrival between phones. We do not pretend otherwise.
- IS NOT: Authoritative GPS. Use it to narrow uncertainty and cross-check dead-reckoning, not as a primary fix.
- IS NOT: Encrypted, authenticated, or trust-verified. The beacon channel is brigade-internal demonstration only. Production deployment must add per-callsign trust and transport security.
- IS NOT: AI-authored. The solver is plain geometry. AI never writes ballistic numbers anywhere in this platform.
- IS NOT: A TAK or ATAK plugin. Real TAK peer-trilateration uses radio-layer primitives a PWA cannot reach. See /api/nav/pnt-backups →
peerTriangulationfor the honest scope.
Decision support only. Not authoritative PNT. Not for navigation-critical or weapon-employment use without independent verification.