YEY Boats Display Manager

A SignalK server plugin (and embedded webapp) for managing YEY Boats marine display devices — ESP32-S3 multi-function displays running the yey-boats/instruments firmware. It is the single console for discovering, registering, configuring, flashing, and OTA-updating every display on the boat.

• Webapp: /yey-boats-display-manager/ (appears in SignalK Admin → Webapps as YEY Boats Display Manager)
• Plugin UI: /plugins/yey-boats-display-manager/ui
• Plugin id: yey-boats-display-manager

Renamed from “ESP Display Manager”. A full espdisp → yeyboats/yey-display rebrand: the plugin id/webapp/API routes (yey-boats-display-manager), the wire protocol (yeyboats.*.v2, control proto major v2), mDNS services (_yeyboats._tcp), the well-known path (/.well-known/yeyboats-management), the auth header (X-YeyBoats-Authorization), the device-id prefix (yey-d-), and firmware identity (yey-display). See Upgrading — devices must be reflashed and re-provisioned.

---

Capabilities

Devices console

One merged landing page: stat tiles (Devices / Online / Config drift / Pending commands / Firmware jobs), the pending-discovery list (devices seen on the network but not yet claimed), and the registered devices table with working Clear offline / Clear all bulk actions. Every action detects an expired SignalK session and prompts re-login instead of silently failing.

System settings

Server-held provisioning defaults that are pushed to devices from the server (so a laptop cabled to a device for flashing never has to supply them):

• Network / WiFi — SSID, password, mDNS domain relayed to a new device to bootstrap it onto the boat network.
• OTA — the OTA password. Held server-side, masked, never embedded in a firmware image and never sent over the USB cable; delivered only over the device’s authenticated config-fetch.
• Device numbering — prefix + zero-pad + next-number, so each newly provisioned device is auto-named (e.g. yey-d-001).

Flash a new device over USB

Embedded ESP Web Tools flashes a USB-cabled ESP32-S3 straight from the browser, then bootstraps it onto the server’s WiFi over a WebSerial console using the firmware’s own text commands. Gated to secure contexts (open via http://localhost or HTTPS on the computer the device is plugged into).

Per-device control, live view & firmware updates

Each device page shows a faithful live HUD mirror, live status/logs, the generated config, the command queue, and an Update Firmware panel: pick an artifact, pick a method (OTA server-side job or Serial / USB in-browser), and a connection-validation checklist (online · address known · artifact in catalogue) blocks the flash until it can succeed.

Provisioning orchestration

On first registration after a USB flash the manager auto-assigns the next device number and pushes the OTA password + settings via config-push; the firmware applies them to NVS and the device becomes controllable and OTA-ready. Re-registration is idempotent — an already-numbered device is never renumbered.

Also included

Firmware catalog with GitHub-release import + OTA-job runner; dashboard presets; the visual layout editor (per-device screen/widget CRUD, manifest-gated); SignalK + UDP/mDNS/BLE device discovery.

---

Install

This plugin is distributed from the yey-boats/Instruments-manager repository (not the public npm registry). For local/dev or remote SignalK servers, build a tarball and npm install it into the SignalK home, or mount it as a plugin directory. Full instructions — including the Docker-based lab deployment — are in deploy/README.md.

After install, restart SignalK, then enable YEY Boats Display Manager under SignalK Admin → Server → Plugin Config. Open it at:

/plugins/yey-boats-display-manager/ui        (plugin console)
/yey-boats-display-manager/                   (webapp / app-dock tile)

Upgrading from “ESP Display Manager”

The rename changes the plugin id, so SignalK treats it as a new plugin and stores its config + device registry under a new data directory. To carry your registered devices across, on the SignalK host:

1. Copy the plugin data dir plugin-config-data/espdisp-manager/ → plugin-config-data/yey-boats-display-manager/, and the enable-state file espdisp-manager.json → yey-boats-display-manager.json (do the copy as the SignalK user so the files stay writable by the server).
2. Point the plugin dependency / node_modules entry at the new package name and restart SignalK.
3. Reflash each device (yey-boats/instruments ≥ the rebrand commit). The firmware self-heals on boot: an auto-generated espdisp-<mac> id migrates to yey-d-<mac>, and a stored manager endpoint carrying the old /plugins/espdisp-manager base is rewritten to /plugins/yey-boats-display-manager in place — so the device re-registers under its new id at the new path with no manual manager-endpoint command. (Operator-set custom device names are kept.) The manager then auto-assigns the next yey-d-NNN number on first re-register.
4. Update the SignalK app-dock tile URL/icon to /yey-boats-display-manager/.

Documentation

• deploy/README.md — install, Docker/lab deployment, API route reference.
• docs/operator-flash-provision.md — end-to-end operator runbook for flashing + provisioning a fresh device.

License

© 2026 Yey Boats Project. All rights reserved except as expressly licensed (see NOTICE).

Source-available under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0 — free for noncommercial use. Commercial use requires a separate license (see COMMERCIAL.md). Contributions under the DCO.