Maps & Working Offline

Built for the mountains

Launch sites, landing fields and retrieve roads often have poor or no mobile coverage. CompBuddy is designed so the important things keep working anyway: your pilot ID and QR code, the task, the maps you've already looked at, and the scans staff make in the field.

Map tiles and the offline cache

All maps in CompBuddy — task maps, the driver and retrieve maps, the tracker map — use a topographic map served through the CompBuddy server. Every map tile you look at is saved on your phone, and the saved tiles are kept: next time you look at the same area, the map loads from your phone, with or without signal.

CompBuddy does not download maps in the background. Only what you've actually looked at is stored, so it won't eat your data plan or storage behind your back.

One exception: the map staff use to place a pin (an event location or the competition HQ) loads standard OpenStreetMap tiles live and needs a connection.

Data: last known first, then fresh

Every screen first shows what CompBuddy loaded last time — instantly, even offline — and then fetches fresh data in the background when it can:

• Live data — pilot, driver and tracker positions, level calls, messages and notifications — is refreshed about every 30 seconds while a screen is open.
• Competition data — days, tasks, checkpoints, vehicles, settings — is refreshed when it's more than a minute old.
• Your identity — your pilot number, account and QR code — is kept on the phone, so you can always show your QR code, even with no signal at all.

Pull down on most screens to force a refresh.

The offline indicator

CompBuddy checks every 20 seconds whether it can actually reach the server — not just whether your phone thinks it has a network. When it can't, a red crossed-out Wi-Fi icon appears in the header. What you see is then the last known data; it disappears again as soon as the connection is back.

Actions are queued, not lost

Many things you do in the field are saved on the phone if there's no connection and sent automatically once you're back online — for example:

• Checkpoint check-in and check-out scans by staff.
• Handing out and returning trackers.
• Pilots' daily feedback answers.
• Staff edits to tasks, checkpoints, vehicles and assignments.

Queued actions are sent as soon as the connection returns, and retried every few minutes after that. An action that still fails after 5 attempts is dropped.