signalk-course-autoadvance

Server-side, client-independent auto-advance of the active route waypoint.

@signalk/course-provider already computes arrival-circle entry and perpendicular-passage crossing and emits them as notifications.navigation.course.arrivalCircleEntered / ...perpendicularPassed. Nothing acts on those notifications unless a specific UI client (e.g. Freeboard-SK) happens to be open, connected, and configured to react to them - which makes route progression for any SignalK-course-API-driven autopilot setup depend on optional UI state.

This plugin watches the same notifications and advances the active route itself, independent of any browser client, network uplink, or which (if any) chart-plotter app is open. Requires @signalk/course-provider to be installed and running - it relies on course-provider's notifications, it does not duplicate the underlying geometry.

Configuration

Enable and configure under Server > Plugin Config > Course Auto-Advance.

| Setting | Description | Default | | ----------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- | | Enable auto-advance | Master on/off switch. Disabled by default. | false | | Advance on | arrivalCircleEntered or perpendicularPassed | arrivalCircleEntered | | Delay before advancing (ms) | Grace period after the trigger fires, in case the vessel exits the trigger condition again before advancing (e.g. GPS jitter at the circle boundary). | 5000 | | Clear destination on reaching the last waypoint | On the final point of the active route, clear the destination instead of advancing (advancing would just re-target the same last point). | true |

Known limitation

Advancing is done via the plugin-facing app.activateRoute(), which is the same method used to start a route from scratch - there is no narrower plugin-facing method for "advance the route already active by one point" (that logic exists only inline inside signalk-server's PUT .../activeRoute/nextPoint Express route, with no method backing it for plugins to call without an authenticated HTTP request). Consequence: every auto-advance resets navigation.course.startTime ("time navigation commenced") to the current time. Harmless today - nothing in course-provider or Freeboard-SK reads that field - but worth knowing if you build something that does.

Development

npm install
npm run typecheck   # tsc --noEmit over src + test, every strict flag
npm run build       # compile src/ -> dist/ (the published artifact)
npm test            # behavior + plugin/package shape checks, run via tsx against src/
npm run lint
npm run format:check

See Justfile for the full check/publish workflow (just check, just publish).