Rokid HUD Maps

🌐 Live Demo & Landing Page

Turn-by-turn navigation on your Rokid AR glasses, powered by your phone.

Your phone handles all the heavy lifting — GPS, route calculations, address search — and streams everything to your glasses over Bluetooth. You get a live map with your route drawn on it, step-by-step directions, and even your phone notifications, all floating in your field of view. No cloud services, no API keys, no subscriptions. It's all free and open-source under the hood.

How It Works

There are two apps: one runs on your Android phone, the other on your Rokid glasses. They talk to each other over Bluetooth SPP (Serial Port Profile), sending JSON messages back and forth — one per line, nice and simple.

The phone is the brain. It grabs your GPS location once per second, calculates routes using OSRM (a free routing engine), and searches for addresses with Nominatim (OpenStreetMap's geocoder). When you start streaming, the phone opens a Bluetooth server and waits for your glasses to connect. Once they do, everything flows automatically.

The glasses are the display. They render a dark-themed map (CartoDB Dark Matter tiles with a green tint — looks great on AR glass), show your current navigation step, draw your route, and rotate the map to match the direction you're facing. If the glasses don't have Wi-Fi for downloading map tiles, the phone acts as a proxy — the glasses request tiles over Bluetooth, the phone fetches them from the internet, and sends them back.

┌──────────────────────────┐    Bluetooth SPP     ┌──────────────────────────┐
│       Phone App          │ ◄──────────────────►  │      Glasses App         │
│                          │   JSON messages       │                          │
│  GPS tracking @ 1Hz      │   + tile proxy        │  Live rotating map       │
│  OSRM routing            │   + APK updates       │  Turn-by-turn HUD        │
│  Nominatim search        │   + settings sync     │  Route line overlay      │
│  Overpass speed limits   │   + tile caching      │  Phone notifications     │
│  BT server + A2DP audio  │                       │  Speed + speed limit     │
│  TTS voice directions    │                       │  3 layout modes          │
└──────────────────────────┘                       └──────────────────────────┘

What You Can Do

On the Phone

• Search for places — Type an address or place name and pick from the results. Uses OpenStreetMap data, no API key needed.
• Get turn-by-turn directions — Routes are calculated with OSRM. If you go off-route, it automatically recalculates. When you arrive, it tells you.
• See a map while navigating — The phone shows a map and live directions while you're navigating (hides when you're not, keeps the UI clean).
• Save places — Found a spot you like? Save it. Long-press to delete. Simple.
• Voice directions — TTS reads out your turns and routes audio to your glasses via Bluetooth A2DP. Toggle it in settings.
• Forward notifications — Your texts, emails, whatever — they show up on your glasses. Requires notification access permission.
• Push app updates to glasses — Pick an APK file on your phone and send it to the glasses over Bluetooth. No need to plug in a cable or use ADB (though you still can if you want).
• Share internet with glasses — Send your phone's hotspot credentials to the glasses so they can download map tiles directly instead of going through the Bluetooth proxy.
• Imperial or metric — Your choice.
• Mini map mode — Toggle from the phone to switch the glasses to a compact layout: small map at the bottom, just the direction and distance, no notifications.
• Show speed on glasses — Toggle to display your current speed in the glasses status bar. Respects your imperial/metric setting.
• Show speed limit on glasses — Toggle to display the road's speed limit next to your speed. When you exceed the limit, a warning indicator appears.
• Turn alert on glasses — Toggle to show a large turn overlay on the glasses when approaching a turn (within 200m). Auto-dismisses after the turn.
• Map tile cache — Configurable disk cache (50/100/200/500 MB) for map tiles on both phone and glasses. Tiles load from cache on subsequent visits. Clear cache button with real-time usage display.
• Keeps running in the background — Uses a WakeLock so your GPS and Bluetooth keep working when the phone screen turns off. It'll ask about battery optimization so Android doesn't kill it.

On the Glasses

• Live map — Rotates with your heading, renders dark-themed tiles with a green HUD overlay. If there's no Wi-Fi, tiles come through the phone via Bluetooth.
• Navigation display — Shows the current instruction, maneuver arrow, and distance to the next turn. Shows a checkmark and "You have arrived!" when you get there.
• Route line — Your full route drawn on the map with a glowing green line.
• Compass — Shows which way is north and your current bearing in degrees.
• Three layouts — Tap the screen to cycle between Full and Corner. Mini mode is toggled from the phone with two styles (strip or split):
  • Full — Map takes up ~72% of the screen, directions and notifications below
  • Corner — Small map in the bottom-right corner, text on the left
  • Mini — Compact strip at the bottom (toggled from phone settings, choose between strip or split style)
• Phone notifications — Scrolling list below the directions, shows title and preview text.
• Speed display — Current speed shown in the status bar (mph or km/h depending on your units setting). Toggleable from the phone. If a speed limit is known and you exceed it, a ! warning prefix appears next to your speed.
• Speed limits — Automatically fetched from the Overpass API (free, no API key). Queried every 15 seconds or 200m, non-blocking. Toggleable from the phone.
• Monochrome green display — The entire HUD renders in shades of green only, matching the monochrome display of Rokid AR glasses. Map tiles are converted to green luminance.
• Turn alert overlay — When enabled, a large semi-transparent overlay appears in the center of the glasses screen when you're within 200m of a turn, showing the maneuver arrow, distance, and instruction.
• Live distance countdown — The distance to the next turn updates in real-time as you move, not just when the step changes.
• Earlier turn notifications — Step advances happen at ~150m from the next turn instead of 45m, giving you more time to prepare.
• Disk tile cache — Map tiles are cached to disk for faster loading on subsequent visits. Cache size is configurable from the phone.
• Status indicators — BT, Wi-Fi, battery, and speed in the top-left corner.
• Auto-connect Wi-Fi — When the phone sends hotspot credentials, the glasses automatically enable Wi-Fi and connect.
• Close the app — Tap the temple (on many devices a single tap is enough). The app shows "Rokid Maps is closing" on screen, then exits and stops running. No background process left behind.

Screenshots

Phone app

The phone app handles search, routing, and streaming to the glasses. When navigating, it shows a map and turn-by-turn directions; you can toggle the full list of route steps and control what gets sent to the glasses (mini map, notifications).

Glasses HUD

On the glasses you get a live map, route line, compass, and directions. Tap the screen to cycle layout; tap the temple to close the app (you’ll see "Rokid Maps is closing" first).

Full-screen map	Corner layout	Mini bottom (phone toggle)

More examples: 4, 5, 6.

Project Structure

rokid-maps/
├── shared/    Bluetooth protocol — message types, JSON encoding/decoding, disk tile cache
├── phone/     Phone app — search, routing, streaming service, BT server, speed limit client
└── glasses/   Glasses app — HUD rendering, BT client, tile manager, turn alert overlay

Building

What You Need

• JDK 17+
• Android SDK (API 34)

Rokid SDK (Optional)

The app can optionally use the Rokid CXR SDK for device features. If you have Rokid developer credentials, put them in local.properties. If you don't, everything still works — Bluetooth pairing uses standard Android APIs.

Setup

1. Clone the repo
2. Copy local.properties.template to local.properties
3. Set your Android SDK path. Optionally add your own Rokid credentials:

sdk.dir=C\:\\Users\\YOU\\AppData\\Local\\Android\\Sdk
rokid.client.id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID
rokid.client.secret=YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET
rokid.access.key=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY

Don't commit local.properties — it's already in .gitignore.

Build

./gradlew assembleDebug

APKs end up in:

• phone/build/outputs/apk/debug/phone-debug.apk
• glasses/build/outputs/apk/debug/glasses-debug.apk

Glasses Wi-Fi Permission (Some Devices)

If Wi-Fi toggling doesn't work on your glasses, grant this via ADB:

adb shell pm grant com.rokid.hud.glasses android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS

Installing

• Phone — Install the phone APK like any other Android app.
• Glasses — Either use adb install -r glasses-debug.apk, or use the phone app's "Update app" button to send it over Bluetooth.

The Protocol

Everything goes over Bluetooth SPP as one JSON object per line. Here's what gets sent:

Message	What It Does
state	GPS position, bearing, speed, accuracy, speed limit, distance to next step — sent once per second
route	Full list of waypoints, total distance and duration
step	Current instruction, maneuver type, distance to next turn
settings	TTS on/off, imperial/metric, mini map toggle, turn alert, show speed, show speed limit, tile cache size
steps_list	Full list of upcoming navigation steps with current step index
wifi_creds	Hotspot SSID and password for the glasses to connect
tile_req / tile_resp	Glasses ask for a map tile, phone fetches and returns it
apk_start / apk_chunk / apk_end	Glasses app update sent in chunks from the phone
notification	Forwarded phone notification with title, text, and source app

What It Uses

All free, all open-source:

• OSRM — Routing engine (no API key)
• Nominatim — Address search (no API key)
• Overpass API — Speed limit data from OpenStreetMap (no API key)
• OpenStreetMap — Map data (ODbL license)
• CartoDB — Dark Matter tiles (CC BY-SA)
• osmdroid — Android map library

Support

If you find this project useful, consider supporting development:

License

Use it, modify it, build on it. Map data from OpenStreetMap (ODbL). Tiles from CartoDB (CC BY-SA).