This project is an independent, community-driven effort to explore, understand, and improve the hardware and software of Garmin Cortex devices for personal use. We do not represent Garmin Ltd. or any of its affiliates, and this project is in no way affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Garmin. Our goal is to ethically advance our understanding of these devices, improve their functionality for our own use, and openly share our findings, tools, and documentation with anyone who wishes to benefit from them. All work produced by this project is released as open source. We believe in transparency, community collaboration, and responsible disclosure. We do not seek to enable unauthorized access to third-party systems, harm other users, or facilitate any activity that violates applicable laws. Any modification of device firmware or software is performed solely on hardware owned by community members, for personal use.

Use of any tools, firmware modifications, or information provided here is entirely at your own risk.

Garmin (Fmr. Vesper) Cortex Marine VHF and AIS system. In 2022 Garmin purchaced Vesper Marine and with that, development slowed. Cortex system owners are far and few, but the majority seem to find the integration of VHF 2-way radio, AIS, WiFi, and NMEA interfaces compelling. However, the hardware and software is a bit lacking. We seek to unlock functionality original to the Vesper roadmap and beyond. Unlike the typical marine hardware from Garmin, closed source with proprietary interfaces, the Cortex was built with a relatively open stack of extensible software. The speaker mics handsets (the main user interface for this radio) runs a vanilla Android SBC and the interface to the Hub is standard WiFi Ethernet. With APK binaries are available, aka, Cortex Onboard, it's worth investigating what features can be harnessed, reimagined or simply integrated to other systems.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a H1P handset in your pocket. A handset that is actually waterproof and not full of terrible buttons that fail after a year out at sea? How about being able to stream the VHF radio audio to any device via WiFi Ethernet? Or do you simply want to read some sensor data that the M1 hub is capturing already and integrate it to your boat's SignalK network? The flaws of the OEM software and hardware should not stop us from utilizing the good parts of the system that we already own.

Right To Repair

Wikipedia: Enshittification

Other Examples of Garmin Hacking, most positive.

Found FCC Hardware Images

Source

Cortini A python proof of concept handset and hub emulator

Eärendil seeks to be a full functioning Vesper Cortex handset you can run on your own Android device. VHF 2 way comms from your phone to your Cortex system.

Patched Onboard a patched Cortex Onboard Android app to allow the VHF radio capability.

tba

TBA

UDP Audio Stream 53435

ADB 3794 UDP Audio Stream 53435

⏺ Bash(~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools/adb -s 192.168.123.27:3794 shell “netstat -tlnp 2>/dev/null || cat /proc/net/tcp” 2>&1)

⎿  Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address          Foreign Address        State
    tcp       0      0 0.0.0.0:3794           0.0.0.0:*              LISTEN
    tcp       0     95 192.168.123.27:3794    192.168.1.62:55552     ESTABLISHED
    udp       0      0 0.0.0.0:53435          0.0.0.0:*              CLOSE
    udp       0      0 0.0.0.0:5353           0.0.0.0:*              CLOSE
   udp6       0      0 :::48031               :::*                   CLOSE
   udp6       0      0 :::15056               :::*                   CLOSE
   udp6       0      0 :::5353                :::*                   CLOSE
   udp6       0      0 :::55049               :::*                   CLOSE