Open source navigation project for GPS and Internet denied regions
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Hey everyone,I wanted to share what I have been working on recently. I had this itch for a long time to figure out if terrain contour matching could help with ground navigation, by only only relying on iphone's sensors and public data. So far I have had decent results. This is a working prototype, but there is a lot that is in the pipeline. If you notice anything weird, let me know or open a PR. Any feedback, comments are welcome :)
HN · launched Jun 19, 2026 · 6 upvotes (top 69%) · 0 views
Niche: specialized navigation and tracking apps · 203 launches, 35 in the last 7 days ▲ +84% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 203 launches in specialized navigation and tracking apps →
Could you build this?
No Terrain contour matching (TERCOM) and dead-reckoning navigation on edge mobile sensors in GPS-denied environments involves advanced sensor fusion, Kalman filtering, and geospatial signal processing.
What it would actually take: The system requires an iOS app (Swift/C++) integrating data from the barometer, IMU (accelerometer/gyroscope), and magnetometer with high-resolution digital elevation models (DEM) stored offline. The core technical hurdle is real-time terrain contour matching (TERCOM/SITAN algorithms) and extended Kalman filtering to bound inertial sensor drift without GPS ground-truth references. Building this requires specialized aerospace, geomatics, and robotics estimation expertise.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 320 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #231 of 321 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 227 days after the earliest competitor.
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- google-maps-gps-navigator · github · 2026-11-10 · 102 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Compass · github · 2026-11-10 · 41 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- NavGPT-3 · github · 2026-10-07 · 36 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- FOSS De-googled Compass and Nav app with live location tracking · hn · 2025-11-21 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- I built a real-time OSINT dashboard pulling 15 live global feeds · hn · 2026-03-08 · 312 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- google-earth-pro · github · 2026-11-10 · 102 upvotes · similarity 0.45
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