How Safety Net Works

Safety Net means an alert can travel by more than one path at the same time. If one path fails, others may still get through.

One app, multiple paths

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Beacon (PWA) - same link, same UI everywhere           │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Path 1: Cloud     → followers, push, rich alerts       │
│  Path 2: WebRTC    → nearby phones, same Wi‑Fi or net   │
│  Path 3: LoRa mesh → long-range when radios are linked  │
│  Path 4: Lighthouse → local web + radio when uplink dies│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

You don't pick a mode. The app uses what's available.

Places: the organizing unit

Beacon is built around Places - a lake, a neighborhood, a venue, an organization. Places have geofences, members, and (when enabled) Lighthouse infrastructure operated by that community.

This maps naturally to how people already think: "I'm part of the lake association" - not "I'm on channel 7 of a mesh protocol."

Lighthouses

A Lighthouse is a Beaconized place: a fixed node (often solar-powered) that can:

  • Serve a local copy of the Beacon app when the wider internet is unreachable
  • Store alerts locally until sync is possible
  • Relay compressed alerts over LoRa mesh to the next Lighthouse across the water or valley

Your phone stays the same PWA. The Lighthouse is community infrastructure - like a fire hall radio, but for the age of the smartphone.

What we are not building

  • A replacement for 911 or official emergency services
  • A closed mesh chat app that only works if everyone opts in to exotic tooling
  • A system that requires open source participation to be trustworthy

We're building practical redundancy for grassroots communities who need to reach each other when the usual channels fail.