Fred Family · Beacon
Beacon: A Private, Local Family Locator That Keeps Your Family's Location on Your Own Computer
The short answer. Beacon is a family locator that stores every position, place, and location history only on your own computer — the one running Fred at home — instead of on a company's servers. It shows a live street map of your family, announces arrivals and departures ("Emma arrived at school"), and includes a find-a-phone radar with a "ring their phone" button. Unlike subscription cloud trackers, it has no monthly fee and nothing to sell: the only thing it ever fetches from the internet is street imagery from OpenStreetMap — a request that carries no names, no accounts, and none of your family's positions. Beacon is part of Fred Family, a one-time +$99 upgrade unlocked inside Fred (not through a public checkout).
The whole point
Where your family's location lives is the whole point
Most family-locator apps keep your family's live location on their servers, tied to an account, for a monthly fee. That's the business model — and location data has a real resale market, so "the map is free (or cheap) because we're the product" is often literally true. Beacon inverts that. Every position, place, and bit of history is stored and drawn on the computer running Fred in your home. Six Days West runs no location server, and our own binding Privacy Policy collects "Location data of any kind" → not collected. We couldn't pull up your family's map if we tried.
Day to day
What Beacon does, day to day
The family map
Everyone at a glance: live dots on a real street map, with each phone's battery level and how fresh its position is. On the home dashboard, on every family phone, or just ask Fred: "where's Emma?"
Find a lost phone
Press Find and the map becomes a radar: you at the centre, the phone's distance and direction on screen. Walk toward it and watch the distance fall; for the last few feet, "Ring their phone" makes it sound off.
Places & arrivals
Mark the places that matter (home, school, work) and Fred announces the crossings: "Emma arrived at school," "Alex left home." No feed to refresh — the news comes to you.
A room of their own
Every person gets a private, PIN-locked line to Fred. Nothing said in a room appears in household chat, on the dashboard, or in anyone else's room. Parents create and remove rooms from the dashboard, which never shows what was said inside.
The finder radar
A room's keypad
Inside a room
The difference
How Beacon differs from cloud family locators
| Subscription cloud locators | Beacon | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your family's location lives | The company's servers, tied to an account | Your own computer, only |
| Business model | Monthly fee; location data has a resale market | One-time; nothing to sell, no data broker |
| What leaves your house | Continuous positions → their cloud | One request for OpenStreetMap street tiles — no names, no accounts, no positions |
| What the maker can see | Your family's live map | Nothing — no location server; policy collects zero location data |
| The feel | An anxiety feed to refresh | A quiet "Emma arrived at school" |
By design
It can't quietly become surveillance — by design, not just by promise
- Sharing is opt-in per phone, protected by that phone's own fingerprint or PIN — in both directions.
- A persistent notification shows the entire time sharing is on.
- Switching it off is announced to the family map — no silent going dark, and no silent turning on.
- It's battery-kind: phones report when they genuinely move, not a constant GPS stream.
The honest limits
The honest limits — up front, not in a footnote
- Android only. The phone app is "Fred for Android." There's no iPhone/iPad app, so an all-iPhone household can't put family members on Beacon today. We don't promise iOS is coming.
- Your home computer has to be on. Beacon's hub is the machine running Fred at home (Windows 10/11 x64 or Ubuntu-class Linux x64 — no macOS). Positions and history live there; the phones mirror it over an encrypted tunnel. Keeping your family off a company's servers means there's no cloud to fall back on if that machine is off.
- Internet is required — for the OpenStreetMap tiles and the phone-to-machine tunnel. Beacon is local-first, not offline.
- It's a +$99 in-app upgrade, not a standalone app. Base Fred is $99; Fred Family (private rooms + Beacon) is +$99, unlocked inside Fred at Config → Licence — $198 total, once.
Pricing
Pricing — and why there's no "buy Beacon" button here
Beacon comes with Fred Family, the one optional upgrade Fred will ever have. You start by getting Fred for $99, then unlock Family for a one-time +$99 from inside the app (Config → Licence) — $198 total, no subscription, ever.
There is no "buy Family" checkout on this page, and that's deliberate. Anything that touches your family's whereabouts is bought and unlocked inside your own Fred — nothing about your family ever passes through a public web checkout. So the button below gets you base Fred; Family is a click inside the app afterwards.
Get base Fred first. Fred Family (private rooms + Beacon) is a one-time +$99 unlock inside the app — $198 total, once, no subscription.
One-time purchase · licence key by email in minutes · 14-day refund window · Fred Family (rooms + Beacon) is a +$99 unlock inside Fred
FAQ
Questions people ask
Where is my family's location stored?
Only on your own computer — the one running Fred at home. Six Days West runs no location server and collects zero location data.
Does Beacon work on iPhone?
No. The phone app is Android only. There's no iOS app, so family members need Android phones to appear on Beacon.
Is Beacon like other family-locator apps?
It's the opposite. Cloud locators keep your family's location on their servers for a monthly fee, and location data has a resale market. Beacon keeps every position on your own machine, costs nothing again after purchase, and has nothing to sell.
Does Beacon need the internet?
Yes. It fetches street map tiles from OpenStreetMap and connects the phones to your home machine over an encrypted tunnel. It's local-first, not fully offline. The map tile request carries no names, no accounts, and none of your family's positions.
Does my home computer need to stay on?
Yes. Beacon's map and history live on the machine running Fred, and the phones mirror it. That machine needs to be powered on and online for the family map to stay current.
How much does it cost?
$99 for Fred, plus a one-time +$99 for the Fred Family upgrade (private rooms + Beacon), unlocked inside the app — $198 total, once. No subscription.
Can Six Days West see where my family is?
No. There's no location server, and our Privacy Policy collects no location data of any kind. The only internet call Beacon makes for the map is to OpenStreetMap for street imagery, which carries none of your family's information.