The idea
A battery-powered LoRa beacon, about the size of a car key fob, that each member of a backcountry group clips to a pack. Beacons mesh with each other over unlicensed sub-GHz radio, sharing GPS position and short preset status pings ("ok", "stopping", "need help") with no cell or satellite subscription required. A companion phone app, paired to your own beacon over Bluetooth, shows the whole group's last-known positions on an offline map.
Why build this
Trail runners, hunters, and backcountry hiking groups regularly split up beyond cell coverage, and existing options are expensive: satellite messengers like Garmin inReach or Zoleo charge $15-65/month per person, and consumer GPS trackers report to a central service instead of meshing with each other directly. Open LoRa mesh hardware has gotten cheap and reliable enough over the last couple of years that a small team can build a purpose-built device rather than relying on general-purpose chat firmware. Groups mostly want automatic location sharing plus a few preset buttons, not a full text messenger.
Stack sketch
- Hardware: ESP32 + SX1262 LoRa module (Heltec or RAK boards), small e-ink or OLED status screen, u-blox GPS module, 3-4 physical buttons for preset pings
- Firmware: ESP-IDF, built on the open Meshtastic protocol stack rather than reinventing mesh routing from scratch
- Companion app: React Native for iOS/Android, BLE link to the paired beacon, MapLibre with offline vector tiles downloaded per region before a trip
- Backend: none required for core function; optional self-hosted sync server (Postgres plus a small API) for groups who want a web view of past trips
- Provisioning: a browser-based flash tool over WebSerial so buyers can set up firmware without a dev environment
Scope for v1
- One hardware revision with 3 preset buttons (OK / Stopping / Help) and GPS broadcast every 2 minutes
- Mesh relay across up to 6-8 beacons in a group, tested to roughly 1-2 mile line-of-sight hops
- Companion app showing group members on an offline map with last-seen timestamps and status icons
- Manual offline map region download before a trip
- Out of scope for v1: two-way free-text messaging, satellite fallback, cloud trip history, dense-terrain Bluetooth mesh fallback
Where it could go
If v1 lands, the natural next step is a satellite fallback tier for groups that occasionally need out-of-mesh-range reach, sold as a hardware add-on rather than baked into the base unit. A second expansion is selling to outfitters and guide services as a fleet: bulk-provisioned beacons rented per trip, with a web dashboard so a basecamp can see every group's position across bookings. Longer term, integrating with existing search-and-rescue coordination tools would make the product genuinely safety-relevant rather than just a nice-to-have.
Watch out for
Radios need correct tuning to the unlicensed ISM band per country (915 MHz in the US, 868 MHz in the EU), and if you ever sell finished hardware rather than kits, budget for FCC/CE certification, which is a real cost and timeline risk for a solo builder.