The product
One stack. A box, a protocol, and the apps that ride it.
FrogNet is not a cloud you rent — it is software you install and own. A node turns any spare computer into a piece of a self-forming network; UnREST is the protocol that moves memory instead of messages; and a suite of real applications already runs on top. Free to build on, licensed when you ship.
Five parts, one network.
Everything below is the same system seen from a different seat — the box you install, the protocol you build on, the rendezvous that joins sites, the flagship app, and the everyday suite. You can adopt one part without the others.
The Node
Any spare box becomes a self-forming, self-healing piece of the mesh. Discovers its neighbours, elects roles, projects Wi-Fi, routes over any bearer.
UnREST
The protocol and handler framework. Exchange memory, not messages — SAME / DIFF / FULL on the wire, and your own protocols on the same interface.
The Broker
A stateless introducer that joins nodes across the internet with WireGuard tunnels. Holds no truth; never sits in the data path.
The Communicator
Presence, chat, calls, and games over one shared memory — with SotF, the adaptive media ladder that holds a call from HD down to a heartbeat.
The Apps
FrogChat, the Family app, the Network Monitor, file sync, sensor bridges, board games — the software that has run a household for years.
The network is the database
Underneath all five: a shared operational memory the whole mesh reads and writes. Address by what a thing is, not who has it — three indices, query any combination, and the value is JSON. The books explain why →
The Node.
Install the frozen FrogNet world on any Linux box — a Raspberry Pi, a mini-PC, an old laptop — and it becomes a lillypad: a sovereign node that configures its own networking, stands up its own Wi-Fi when there is no wire, discovers every neighbour it can reach, and takes on whatever role it is most capable of. No controller, no account, no cloud. Its identity is a GUID minted once at install; its address is its own. Pull the uplink and it keeps working — a lost link is normal weather, not an outage.
One node is a complete network. Add a second and they find each other; add a tenth and nothing changes but the reach.
- Runs on
- Pi-class · mini-PC · x86 Linux
- Identity
- /etc/fnid GUID
- Networking
- self-configuring at boot
- Bearers
- Ethernet · Wi-Fi · HaLow · LoRa
- Discovery
- bounded HTTP walk
- Partition
- split & merge, automatic
- Install
- one script, offline
UnREST — the protocol you build on.
The web asks; UnREST remembers. Not a new protocol and not a faster transport — the same primitives you already use, arranged so both ends hold the same structure and only the difference crosses the wire — SAME when nothing changed, DIFF for what did, FULL only to teach a template once. That is UnREST Core, and every exchange gets it for free: sixteen-fold compression on real traffic, and a transport that keeps the wire full instead of idle between round trips.
UnREST Unleashed is the extension layer — write a handler, fill its slots, and you have an entirely new protocol on the same interface. SotF and the game protocol are built exactly this way. And you don't have to rewrite to start: drop the codec onto the wire you already run and the bandwidth win arrives before the rewrite does. See the three-stage on-ramp →
- Model
- exchange memory, not messages
- Codec
- BLDC-1 · SAME/DIFF/FULL
- Wire
- FNWP-1, fanned & interleaved
- What it saves
- only what changed crosses
- Extend
- one handler interface
- On-ramp
- drop-in codec → rewrite
- License
- free for dev & personal
The Broker & the pond.
Nodes on the same LAN find each other unaided. To join sites across the internet, a broker introduces them and hands out WireGuard tunnels — and then gets out of the way. It holds no authoritative state: its whole picture is rebuilt from what nodes tell it, its working set is a single SQLite file, and it never sits in the data path. Lose the broker and every existing link keeps carrying traffic.
Membership is a redeemed passcode, not an account. A pond is simply the set of nodes that belong together — coast to coast, one flat 10.0.0.0/8, addressed the same whether they share a switch or a continent.
And where the pond has to accept something from a stranger — a license request, a contact form — the public side is a drop box, not a door: it writes files into a watched folder the inside pulls from and inspects. It has no route into the network, so compromising it yields a folder of files, not a foothold. That's what lets a FrogNet host a public form without putting a single node within reach.
- Role
- stateless rendezvous
- Cross-site
- WireGuard, AllowedIPs 10/8
- State
- a cache, rebuilt from polls
- Data path
- never in it
- Public input
- drop box, files only
- Membership
- one-time passcode
- Backup
- copy one SQLite file
The Communicator.
Presence, chat, calls, setup, and a game table — one application over one shared memory. Being present is not a service call; it is a tuple you write. The flagship piece is SotF, the Song of the Frogs Adaptive Communications Protocol: a live media ladder that trades fidelity for continuity as the link tightens. It has held an HD call across the country over a 900 MHz radio, stepped it down toward 300 Kbps and, when the link starved, all the way to a one-byte heartbeat — and climbed back without a re-dial.
Live media cannot be diffed, so this is where the rewrite earns its keep: not by shrinking frames, but by degrading a call instead of dropping it.
- Protocol
- SotF-ACP
- Ladder
- HD → ~300 Kbps → heartbeat
- Recovery
- in-session, no re-dial
- Proven
- 1 Mbit HD over 900 MHz
- Also carries
- presence · chat · games
- Media host
- an elected role
The apps that already run on it.
FrogNet was dogfooded in a house for the better part of a decade before it said a word in public. These are the applications that proved the stack — sovereign, self-hosted, no company in the middle.
FrogChat
Group and direct messaging across the mesh — town or country — with no server holding the only copy.
The Family app
Presence map, shared calendar, photos, and a family wiki. Your people, your data, no cloud account.
Network Monitor
The terminal info center — every node the mesh can see, live per-peer telemetry, bytes saved, and drill-down to a node's sensors.
File sync
Transport-agnostic peer-to-peer file sync. The network is the rendezvous; no central server required.
Sensor bridges
MeshTastic / LoRa bridges write RF-delivered readings straight into shared memory as sensor rows.
Board games
Multiplayer state as governed memory — each player writes only their own intent, an elected engine rules the board.
Carry the network.
The Communicator doesn't have to live behind a screen. These put a FrogNet node in your hand and on your chest — voice and sensing over SotF, no cell tower in the loop. An affectionate nod to the ships that imagined it first; real hardware on a real mesh. Shown as early concepts.
The flip communicator
Flip it open and talk. A pocket voice transmitter that rides SotF through the Communicator — the flip-open handset the classic crews made famous, running on a mesh you own instead of a script.
The tap badge
Press it and you're on. A wearable badge that opens a SotF voice channel with a tap — the next-generation take, no handset at all. Tap to talk, tap to end.
The tricorder
One handheld that reads the world: voice, haptic alerts, weather, personal health, and air quality folded into a single node you carry. A FrogNet sensor suite in your palm, everything it senses written straight into shared memory.
Three ways onto the network.
Flash your own, buy one built and meshing out of the box, or spin a node up in the cloud. The software is free either way — this is just the fastest hardware path.
FrogNet on an SD card
A flash-ready image on a card. Drop it into a Raspberry Pi or mini-PC, power on, and you're a node. Bring your own hardware.
Order a card →FrogNet Pi 4 host
Built, flashed, and configured on a Raspberry Pi 4 — powered on and meshing out of the box. Add external antennas, long-range radios, or a router to taste.
Order a host →A cloud droplet
Run a node or broker in the cloud on a DigitalOcean droplet, spun up through our referral link — handy as an always-on broker or member.
Get a droplet →Prices in USD. External antennas, long-range radios, and routers are quoted with your Pi 4 order — tell me your range and bearers. Hardware ships from Fawcett Innovations; the FrogNet software is always free to download and flash yourself.
Free to build on. Licensed when you ship.
The whole stack is free to evaluate, learn, and build on. A license only enters the picture when FrogNet is running in a commercial product — and even then it is a conversation, not a funnel.
- The full stack and build manual
- UnREST Core and Unleashed
- Personal, family, and research use
- No seat count, no expiry
- Everything in Developer
- Deployment in a commercial product
- Terms scoped to your build
- Direct line to the author
- A commercial license, plus
- The engineer who wrote the stack
- Custom handlers and hard problems
- Review, build, or fractional
Own your network
Install it. Build on it. Keep it.
The developer license is free and the answer is usually yes. Tell me what you want to build and I'll send access and the manual.