Updates

June 2026 — Drive Mode & Review Mode go live

RouteMapper is now a complete record → review → drive workflow. The two biggest features on the roadmap shipped this month.

• Drive Mode — in-vehicle roadbook reader — live at app.routemapper.net/drive. Load a recorded stage from your saved-stage list or straight from an export ZIP. The roadbook advances row by row from GPS proximity along the recorded track, with spoken turn instructions (with a quick 🔊/🔇 toggle), distance-to-next in the footer, manual Prev/Next override, and a pause toggle. A pre-start screen with a static map and proximity indicator shows you the way to the stage start, and the settings panel lets you tune auto-advance, trigger radius, and voice. Edited DOCX roadbooks can be overlaid on the original stage so hand-polished notes carry into the vehicle.
• Review Mode — the organiser's workbench — live at app.routemapper.net/review. A laptop-first split view: map on one side (OSM, terrain, or satellite), roadbook on the other, with bidirectional selection — tap a row to fly to it on the map, tap a marker to scroll to its row. Map markers are numbered to match the list, the roadbook opens in driver view by default, and notes and icons can be edited in place. Works on the active stage or any saved stage from Stage History.
• Roadbook map toggle — the HTML roadbook now has a Hide/Show map control, and the DOCX export an "Include map" checkbox, so you choose whether the overview map ships with the navigator's copy.
• Stage History fixes — deleting a stage now permanently removes it from the cloud as well as the device, and merged roadbook rows now use the waypoint's true coordinates, keeping Review and Drive perfectly aligned with the recorded route.

May 2026 — Voice, validated exports, UI consolidation

A second tranche of May 2026 work, focused on what real recon and rally crews told us mattered most.

• Push-to-talk voice — wake-word activation ("Mapper") was replaced with a deterministic 🎙 Record button after field testing showed in-vehicle speech recognition wasn't reliable enough for the wake word to fire consistently. The new button locks GPS at the moment of the tap, captures the spoken command, and commits the waypoint to the locked position. The Dictate button was retired at the same time (the voice command parser already handles a full icon + note utterance like "left onto Forbes Road").
• External trigger — Bluetooth headsets, wireless foot pedals, presenter clickers and any Bluetooth keyboard can fire the 🎙 Record button via standard media keys (Play/Pause/Next/Previous) or key events (PageUp, PageDown, F8, Space, Enter). Tested working with off-the- shelf Bluetooth keyboards out of the box; specialised hardware compatibility is now testable against a real app.
• Rally Navigator import validated — the route.gpx (combined waypoints + track) now imports cleanly into Rally Navigator with the full waypoint list — including the previously-missing START point — and the recorded polyline rendered from the GPS track. Confirmed on real recon data with a professional fundraising- rally organiser.
• Export ZIP reorganised by use case — instead of a flat heap of files, the export now ships in clearly- named folders (Universal, RallyNavigator, Printable, Source, Garmin, Hema, Gaia) with a README.txt at the root telling you exactly which file for which tool. Casual users never need to read the folder structure.
• UI consolidation — Start Stage now captures the start GPS automatically on tap; a new 🚩 Update Start auxiliary button lets you reset it mid-stage. The GPS panel was removed entirely, replaced by a compact 🟢/🔴 GPS traffic light and a 🎯 Follow Map toggle in the map controls row. The redundant waypoint-type dropdown was removed since the icon buttons above already do the same job. Result: more room for the icon selector, less visual noise.

May 2026 — Public Launch

RouteMapper is live at app.routemapper.net. Free tier plus four paid tiers, billing wired through Stripe with Australian GST applied automatically. Beta program closed; existing beta testers transitioned smoothly to the Free tier.

Roadbook accuracy — manual waypoint angles now computed from the GPS track at the waypoint position; direction follows the spoken icon (sign-flip for mismatches); shallow-angle waypoints snap to the nearest matching turn within 400 m. Generated roadbooks now correlate cleanly with Rally Navigator imports.

GPS format — fixed a long-standing bug where decimal-minute coordinates rendered with a stray decimal point (35°02.3.129'S). Now matches Rally Navigator's display format (35°02.052'S).

Hands-free voice — fixed a race condition where the snap countdown could fire mid-command and replace a real instruction with a generic note. Speaking now pauses the countdown until the command is complete.

iPad polish — pending sync status auto-clears via visibilitychange + 30 s retry. Map renders the correct visible region from first paint via ResizeObserver — no more Hide/Show workaround.

Account profile — new Account modal in the top-bar lets users edit full name, username, and phone (E.164 with country selector). Used as the billing name on Stripe and the crew line on generated roadbook PDFs.

March 2026

Two-row control layout — glove-friendly portrait and landscape controls restructured into two rows for faster access in the field.

OpenRally GPX export — all GPX waypoint exports now include the OpenRally <type> field for full standard compliance.

iOS GPS fix — resolved continuous GPS watch position on iOS devices; location updates now fire reliably throughout a recording session.

Offline sync improvements — pending stage queue now correctly serialises payloads and retries sync when connectivity returns.

Turn detection tuning — refined jitter filter (6 m baseline) and waypoint merger logic; manually placed waypoints now correctly override track-detected classifications.

v4.0 Released

Added professional icon selector; integrated single-mode voice notes; Rally Navigator export focus; updated timing metrics.

Field Testing

Recon trips across outback SA and competitive stage surveying. Tuning offline behavior and export templates.