Show HN: BeaconDB – An Alternative to Mozilla Location Services (opens in new tab)

> ethically sourced: opt-in only data collection

Good on them but how does this work? If my neighbour scans my WiFi network and uploads it to BeaconDB I didn’t exactly opt-in, did I? The privacy policy mentions you can add ‘_optout’ to the WiFi name, so it’s more opt-out instead of opt-in?

The author doesn't seem to have an open source mobile app or anything that would allow them to source the data from devices themselves. I'm curious where the data was collected from, esp. if it was opt-in (at the collecting device)

Reading the MLS retirement issue[1] it seems that multiple established organizations (e foundation, Graphene) are also interested in providing an alternative service. Does this mean that we're now in a situation where multiple open source location service providers are competing, or is this the only publicly accessible project in this space for now?

This project is cool and all, but seems to just be a one person effort with not a lot of engagement on GitHub[2]. Are you in talks with other people with similar goals to expand and collaborate on the project? Having the backing of an existing developer community could really bring this to the next level.

1) https://github.com/mozilla/ichnaea/issues/2065

2) https://github.com/beacondb/beacondb

Edit: the actual project seems to be on Codeberg[3], where there is a bit more engagement from others than the primary dev.

3) https://codeberg.org/beacondb

Is there a reason the API doesn't return the locations of the access points so the clients can calculate their positions by themselves?

Is this only offered as an API? E.g. you can't dump it and analyze locally?

Apple probably has one of the largest databases. Their API is unauthenticated and not rate limited either. Can be used for both APs and cell towers: https://github.com/acheong08/apple-corelocation-experiments

As nobody has yet mentioned it, there is also WiGLE [1] which has tracked over a billion unique networks.

[1] https://wigle.net/

This is such a cool project. Always glad to see problem solvers filling the void left by MLS. (Unrelated, but the design looks great!)

Curious if the last data dump from MLS can still be downloaded anywhere? I can't seem to find it online. I'm working on a project that locates the connected tower based on mcc, mnc, cid, etc. Currently only sourcing data from opencellid and combain, this would be a great addition!

Last time I looked into something like this for GrapheneOS it wasn't possible to provide a custom location service.

It would be awesome to have this on GrapheneOS - so I'm very happy if someone knows a way to do this without using microG (I use the sandboxed GMS)

Wasn't the main issue with MLS that they got patent trolled/sued by Skyhook? Anyone know the patents involved and how beacon DB is avoiding the issues?

Hope GrapheneOS adds support for this soon, as currently their non-Google GPS Provider is basically hopeless unless you are outside.

Would be nice to see some cooperation with geoclue2, as they now disabled location guessing for wifi as MLS shuts downs.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/geoclue/geoclue

Really nice, hopefully more software switches to this, I'm 100% gonna contribute