Below is the firmware a skyBlip Go runs, compiled to WebAssembly: the same radar, the same pages, the same debounced contacts, with simulated sensors underneath. Tap the pad on the top edge to walk the pages, hold it a second to come back to the radar, press the key on the side to open the settings, or hold that key for two seconds and watch the device switch itself off and keep the wordmark on the glass. The white key above it is RST, and it reboots.
Nothing is flying out there until you ask for one. Each aircraft the button under the case adds is put at a bearing, a range and a height of its own and then flies on, broadcasting real ADS-L frames that the firmware receives, decodes and plots like any other traffic.
The two lamps beside the glass are the device’s own. Only the left one is the firmware’s, lit while a contact is worth calling an alarm. The right one is wired to the charger and no line of ours reaches it, so in this page, where no cable is ever plugged in, it stays dark.
skyBlip Go has two contacts worth learning: a capacitive pad on the top edge and a button on the side. The pad moves you around: a tap is the next page, a touch of a second brings the radar back. The button is the one that changes something: a press opens the settings and steps the row you are on, two quick presses authorise what the device is asking about, and a hold of two seconds switches it off.
That split is the whole vocabulary, and it holds on every page: nothing a sleeve brushes against can change a setting, and nothing you do to walk the pages can be spent answering a question. The case carries one more input, a small RST button, which is the processor’s reset and the way into the USB bootloader. It is covered at the foot of this page.
| Gesture | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tap the pad | next page; in the settings, moves the focus down a row |
| Touch the pad, 1 s | back to the radar, from any page |
| One press of the button | opens the settings; inside, acts on the focused row — or, at a question on the glass, refuses it |
| Two presses, under 0.6 s apart | allows the question on the glass |
| Hold the button, 2 s | switches the device off |
| The same hold, finger on the pad | switches it off and leaves the screen blank, for storage |
Switching on is one press. Switching off is a hold of two seconds: the radio is parked, the panel is given three seconds to finish drawing the wordmark, and the rails drop only once your thumb is off the button. E-paper keeps its last image with no power at all, so the wordmark is what the device wears while it is off — that image on the glass means off, not asleep.
Putting it away for the season is the same hold with a finger on the touch pad from the start: the same road out, and the glass is left blank instead of wearing the wordmark. An e-paper keeps whatever it was last given for as long as it is off, and one image left there for months leaves a shadow the panel never fully loses. A device going into a cupboard until the spring should be carrying nothing.
Two cases are deliberately not what a phone does. A charger plugged into a device that is off leaves it off and charging, because a cable found in a flight bag is not a request to start transmitting; hold the button while you plug in if you want the device as well. And a device that switched itself off on a flat cell will not come back on a press: it waits for a charger, so a button pressed by the weight of a bag cannot finish the battery off.
| From off | What happens |
|---|---|
| Press the button | boots, unless the cell is under 3.4 V with no charger |
| Plug the charger in | charges, stays off |
| Hold the button, plug the charger in | boots and charges |
| Press after a flat-battery shutdown | nothing, by design — plug the charger in |
| Press RST | boots |
In flight the pad is the page selector: radar, six-pack, status, signal, radio log, then round again. A touch of a second is the way home, so the radar is one gesture away wherever you are. The PAGES row in the settings hides the ones you do not fly with — all of them, radar and status only, or radar alone — and a hidden page is skipped by the tap rather than walked through.
The settings are not on that walk at all: they are a mode the button opens, which is also why the PAGES row cannot hide them. The way back in is never something you can hide from yourself.
Everything that matters can be set on the device, with no phone. A press of the button opens the settings on the self-test card the device drew at boot, and the next gesture moves into the list. From there it is the vocabulary you already have: a tap of the pad walks down the rows, a press of the button acts on the one highlighted, and every further press steps the same field again, which is how you wind the subscale to where you want it. Nothing is a draft: each act is one finished change, so there is no way to leave the device half edited.
The rows only ever advance, the tap past the last one hands the glass back to the traffic picture, a touch of a second goes straight to the radar, and a settings page nobody has touched for a minute returns there on its own. You cannot get stuck in here.
| Row | What a press does |
|---|---|
| ID | nothing — your ADS-L address, shown, never changed by a thumb |
| AIRCRAFT | next type: glider, microlight, helicopter, paraglider, balloon, and the rest of the ADS-L list |
| ALARM | on or off |
| VOLUME | 0 to 5 |
| UNITS | metric, or feet and knots |
| QNH UP / QNH DOWN | one hectopascal per press, 940 to 1050 |
| PAGES | all, radar and status, radar only |
| BACK TO TRAFFIC | leaves the settings |
When the companion app asks for something that could change the aircraft you are flying — new firmware, a settings blob, erasing your flights, switching the device off — the device does not act on the phone’s word. It puts the question on its own glass, names it, and waits thirty seconds: PRESS TWICE TO ALLOW, ONE PRESS REFUSES. No answer inside the window is a refusal too.
Presses only count once the question has actually reached the glass and your thumb has stopped, so a run of presses that was stepping a value in the settings cannot be spent on an authorisation. The pad is inert while a question stands: there are no pages to walk until it is answered. Physical presence is the whole of the security here: the device asks nobody to pair, and it asks you to be holding it.
RST is a hardware reset: press it and the device reboots, whatever the firmware was doing. Two presses inside half a second put it into the USB bootloader instead, where it appears as a drive you can drop a firmware file onto. That route belongs to the bootloader rather than to our firmware, which is what makes it the way back from a device that will not start.
The pad is deliberately the harmless contact of the three. A capacitive pad is unusable through winter gloves, and it fires on a cheek and on rain, so nothing that matters is behind it: it cannot switch the device on or off, it cannot change a setting, and it cannot answer a question on the glass. The worst a pad wet with rain can do is turn a page you were not reading, or send a device already on its way off with a blank screen instead of a wordmark.