May 5, 2025

As we were preparing for the AppCon hackathon, we were challenged to come up with ideas. It was 10AM right after my GE class at UP, "bro ano't maupay nga project para AppCon" (bro what's a good project for AppCon?)
We came up with different ideas, hmm, what if we make a RAG-integrated AI chatbot for healthcare? "It's too generic."

How about something with hardware? Hmm, that would work I guess.

Ideas kept on coming as time passed. A few minutes later as we were buying a snack from the carenderia just outside campus, we saw a group of iskos playing "Pass the message." It was so random and it made us laugh—like, who would play pass the message on a random morning? lol.

Then it sank in, what if we build a blockchain-inspired approach to communication? Everyone agreed, "actually bro, that's kinda niche."

And so, we built the system and prayed to win (even as an agnostic individual haha).

Read the paper. Check the repo.

Overview

Project BEACON provides a decentralized, multi‑layered bridge between LoRa radio networks and standard web clients. It enables browsers or HTTP‑capable devices to send and receive LoRa messages via a locally hosted REST API.

Device Initialization

• Power-up: Connect the beacon hardware to USB power via Micro‑USB.
• Wi‑Fi AP: On boot, the device creates its own Wi‑Fi access point—clients simply join that network.

Communication Flow

• HTTP ↔ Beacon: The web app issues REST calls to the beacon’s local IP.
• Beacon ↔ LoRa: Beacon translates incoming HTTP requests into outbound LoRa packets (and vice versa).
• Bi‑directional Bridge: Enables seamless end‑to‑end messaging between web clients and remote LoRa nodes.

Key Benefits

• Decentralized: No cloud dependency—everything runs locally.
• Multi‑layered: Combines long‑range, low‑power LoRa with familiar HTTP/Web interfaces.
• Extensible: Testbed for custom routing logic, resilience strategies, and mixed‑media IoT scenarios.

Typical Use Cases

• Field deployments where cellular/internet is unreliable
• Rapid prototyping of LoRa‑enabled sensor networks
• Educational/demo setups illustrating cross‑stack IoT communication