Beacon Safety Net public roadmap

Beacon was built on a simple premise: emergency communication should not depend on a single fragile layer. Alerts need to move over the internet when it works, over nearby peer-to-peer mesh when it does not, and — for the hardest cases — over local LoRa radio when infrastructure collapses entirely.

That third layer is the Safety Net. And this week we published a public roadmap for how it is being built.

Why publish it openly

Most alert products hide their architecture behind marketing pages. We think public-interest infrastructure should work differently.

Publishing the Safety Net roadmap makes a few things explicit:

• What exists today — internet alerts, P2P mesh, personal LoRa linking, and the first Lighthouse installations
• What we are building next — place-level beacons, admin tooling, and fixed infrastructure pairing
• What we are optimizing for — resilience, local control, and hardware that communities can actually deploy

If you are piloting Beacon in a neighbourhood, campus, cottage association, or municipal network, you should be able to see where the system is headed — and shape it with us.

The three layers

The roadmap is organized around redundant paths, not a single “mode”:

1. Internet (cloud) — alerts to followers, contacts, and community members via push and in-app notifications
2. Peer-to-peer mesh — nearby devices relay alerts without central servers when the web is slow or unavailable
3. Safety Net (LoRa) — pocket radios and fixed Lighthouse nodes carry high-priority warnings locally when cell service fails

When a place is Beaconized, it becomes a Lighthouse on the Safety Net — able to relay alerts through gateways and optional fixed hardware so neighbours stay informed without relying on mobile networks alone.

What you can use now

• Read the public overview at guides
• Register your device on Beacon
• Link a personal Meshtastic device from Places → My connection
• Beaconize a location from Settings → Safety Net (place admins)
• See Lighthouse status on place cards across the network

The first fixed Lighthouse installs are rudimentary but real — proof that the mesh can extend beyond a single phone.

What comes next

The published roadmap covers upcoming work on place beacon pairing, Lighthouse discovery on local networks, clearer visitor-facing status, and hardened admin flows for WiFi and hardware provisioning.

We will keep updating the roadmap as pilots teach us what matters in the field — not what looks good in a slide deck.

Get involved

If you want to pilot Safety Net hardware, host a Lighthouse, or stress-test Beacon in your community:

• Join the Commonet coalition
• Follow updates for weekly signals
• Visit onbeacon.ca and tell us what you are building

Public infrastructure should be built in public. This roadmap is one step in that direction.