Kilter Board

The Kilter Board (Aurora Climbing) and compatible LED system boards (Tension, Grasshopper, Decoy, Touchstone, So iLL) display climb routes via LEDs. The board is LED-only: you connect and send LED config via led(). There is no notify(): the device does not stream force data; it only receives commands to light holds.

Basic usage

1. Connect – Create a KilterBoard, call connect(onSuccess?, onError?). Requires a user gesture and secure context.
2. Map holds to LED positions – The board expects an array of { position, role_id } or { position, color }. Each position is the LED index for that hold on the board (0-based). These indices are fixed per board model; you must get them from board data (see Getting correct positions below).
3. Send LED config – In the connect success callback, call await device.led(placement) with an array of { position: number, role_id?: number, color?: string }. Use role_id for standard route colors (start/middle/finish/foot) or color for a custom hex (e.g. "00FF00"). Empty array or device.led() turns LEDs off.

import { KilterBoard } from "@hangtime/grip-connect"
import { KilterBoardPlacementRoles } from "@hangtime/grip-connect/src/models/device/kilterboard.model.js"

const device = new KilterBoard()

await device.connect(
  async () => {
    // Positions must come from your board's LED mapping (see below). These are illustrative only.
    const placement = [
      { position: 161, role_id: 12 }, // start (green) at LED index 161
      { position: 162, role_id: 13 }, // middle (cyan)
      { position: 163, role_id: 14 }, // finish (magenta)
      { position: 164, role_id: 15 }, // foot (orange)
    ]
    await device.led(placement)
    // Or use custom color: { position: 161, color: "FF0000" }
    // Turn off: await device.led([]) or device.led()
  },
  (err) => console.error(err),
)

Getting correct positions for a board

The position in each led() entry is the LED index for that physical hold on the board. It is not arbitrary: each board model has a fixed mapping from physical holes to LED indices. Using wrong positions will light the wrong holds or do nothing.

The Kilter Board app gets this mapping from its backend. The app stores a local SQLite database with tables such as holes (hole coordinates and id), leds (maps hole_id to the LED position used in the Bluetooth protocol), placements (placement_id to hole_id), and placement_roles (role_id to LED color). Route layouts in the app use a string format like p1083r15p1117r15p1164r12... (placement_id p + role_id r). To send a route to the board you need to resolve each placement_id to the corresponding LED position (from the leds table for that hole).

Ways to get correct positions:

1. BoardLib – BoardLib is a Python package that downloads and syncs the board’s SQLite database (holes, leds, placements, placement_roles, climbs, etc.) for Aurora Climbing boards (Kilter, Tension, and compatible boards). Install with pip install boardlib, then run boardlib database <board_name> <database_path> --username <board_username> to download and sync the database; use the leds table (hole_id → position) and placements / holes as needed. The database contains the same shared public data the app uses. See the BoardLib README for database, logbook, and image commands.
2. Board data from the app – Sync or export from the Kilter Board app (e.g. SQLite at /data/data/com.auroraclimbing.kilterboard/ on Android, or via the app’s sync API). Use the leds table (hole_id → position) and placements / holes as needed. See KilterBoard (Philipp Bazun) for the database schema and Bluetooth protocol.

role_id and KilterBoardPlacementRoles

The Kilter Board app uses a placement_roles table to define standard hold roles and their LED colors. The library ships a stripped copy of that table as KilterBoardPlacementRoles (exported from the Kilter Board App's database). Use it to resolve role_id to LED color when building your led() config, or to show role names in the UI.

role_id	name	full_name	led_color	Meaning
12	start	Start	00FF00	Start hold (green)
13	middle	Middle	00FFFF	Middle (cyan)
14	finish	Finish	FF00FF	Finish (magenta)
15	foot	Foot Only	FFB600	Foot only (orange)

When you pass role_id to led(), the board uses the corresponding led_color. You can also pass color (hex string) for custom colors; the board supports 256 colors (3-bit R, 3-bit G, 2-bit B).

Import placement roles from the subpath for tree-shaking or to avoid pulling the full package:

import { KilterBoardPlacementRoles } from "@hangtime/grip-connect/src/models/device/kilterboard.model.js"

See Exports for the Kilter Board subpath.

Methods

Kilter Board supports all shared methods (connect, disconnect, isConnected, notify, active, read, write, download). See Device interface for details.

Device-specific

Method	Returns	Description
led(config)	Promise<number[] | undefined>	Set LEDs from an array of { position: number; role_id?: number; color?: string }. Empty array or no arg to turn off.

Resources

• BoardLib (Python): Utilities for climbing board APIs. Download and sync the Kilter (and other Aurora) board SQLite database with boardlib database <board_name> <path> --username <username>; use the database for holes, leds, placements, and placement_roles. Also supports logbooks and images.
• A web based Kilterboard application (Tim / georift): Blog post on building kilterboard.app, reverse engineering the Bluetooth protocol, and re-implementing with the Web Bluetooth API.
• Kilterboard (bazun.me): Database schema, sync API, and Bluetooth protocol for the Kilter Board app.

See Examples: Kilter Board for a full demo and API for the shared interface.