Buoy

An emergency message format.

buoy.one

Example

Here is an example Buoy message:

The image is 500 x 500 pixels, and is very small, at 307KB.

• The file above displays:

  • Delivery instructions (as visible text)
  • A QR code (containing sender info, date/time, GPS coordinates, and more)

• The file above also contains:

  • A redundant copy of the QR code contents: 0-qr.txt (241 bytes)
  • User-defined text: 1-text.txt (35 bytes)
  • 2 minutes of user-defined audio: 2-audio.m4a (196 KB)
  • A user-defined photo: 3-image.png (42 KB)

Those additional contents are encoded in the 8 least-significant bits of each pixel in the Buoy image. (See: steganography)

Goals

• human-"friendly"
  • meaning a human can see the file and understand what it is, and what to do
  • does not mean totally human friendly
• multimedia support
  • text, gps
  • audio, image
  • video
• robust; qr code for essential data
  • if message is printed/screenshotted
  • less essential data xor'd within image (a la steganography)
• flexible delivery
  • image format
  • can be Airdropped, or otherwise sent over Bluetooth
  • should be friendly between devices/manufacturers/carriers
• dynamic
  • public and/or private info
  • optional delivery instructions (server, email, IP, etc.)
  • optional sender info
  • ?