Legal

Disclaimer

Beacon is free software provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. You use Beacon, its firmware, its documentation and this website at your own risk.

Not a safety device

Beacon shows and reports what LightBurn says your laser is doing. It can be wrong, late or silent: screen reading can misread LightBurn, LightBurn's API can stop answering, and notifications, sensors, relays, the buzzer and the stack light can fail or be delayed. The fire, temperature, lid and flow inputs are an extra warning only, not a certified safety or fire-detection system. You remain responsible for supervising your machine at all times.

Hardware and wiring

The parts lists, wiring diagrams, pin maps and prices on this website and in Beacon's documentation are examples, not engineered or certified designs, and prices are approximate. You are responsible for choosing suitable parts and for building, wiring and using any hardware safely and in line with the electrical codes where you live. Work on mains voltage (110–240 V) must be done by a qualified electrician, using relays or solid-state relays rated for the load.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Beacon project and its contributors are not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special or consequential damage, loss or injury — including damage to machines, materials or property, loss of data, lost income or business interruption — arising from the use of, or inability to use, Beacon, its firmware, its documentation or this website, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.

Some provinces, states and countries do not allow certain warranties to be excluded or liability to be limited. Where that is the case, those exclusions and limits apply only as far as the law allows, and nothing on this page limits rights you have under consumer protection law that cannot be waived.

Third-party software and services

Beacon works alongside software and services it does not control, including LightBurn, Telegram, Discord, Pushover, Twilio, email providers, Home Assistant and smart plugs. Their availability, accuracy and terms are their own. Changes to LightBurn or to those services can stop features of Beacon from working.

Screenshots

Screenshots on this website show Beacon itself. The job name, timer and statistics in them are sample data for illustration.

Privacy

This website

This website has no accounts, forms, cookies, advertising or cross-site trackers, and its fonts and images are served from this site. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes visitors' IP addresses and basic request information to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, as described in Cloudflare's privacy policy.

To see how many people visit, the site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics. It counts page views, the pages read, the site that referred the visit, and the country and device type, as anonymous totals. It sets no cookies, doesn't fingerprint visitors and doesn't track you across other websites.

Download links lead to GitHub, which counts how many times each file is downloaded; GitHub's privacy statement applies there.

The Beacon app

Beacon does not collect telemetry or send any information to the Beacon project. Its settings, job history, statistics and logs are stored only on your computer.

Beacon connects to other services only when you set them up, and sends them only what those features need:

• LightBurn's API — on your own computer.
• Notifications — the messages you switch on (job status, alerts, reports, and webcam snapshots if enabled) go to the Telegram bot, Discord webhook, Pushover account, email server or Twilio (SMS) number you enter.
• Relays and smart plugs — your Arduino or ESP32, and the Shelly, Tasmota, TP-Link Kasa or Home Assistant devices you add, on your own network.
• Phone dashboard — served only on your local network, optionally protected by a PIN.

Those services handle what Beacon sends them under their own privacy policies. You can turn any of these features off, and uninstalling Beacon can delete its settings, statistics and logs.

Questions

For questions about privacy or this page, open an issue on Beacon's GitHub page. Please don't include personal information there, since issues are public.

Trademarks and license

LightBurn is a trademark of LightBurn Software, LLC. Beacon is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by LightBurn Software, LLC. Other product names belong to their owners and are used only to describe compatibility.

Beacon is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0: you may use, study, change and share it for any noncommercial purpose. Selling Beacon or using it commercially is not permitted. If anything on this page conflicts with the license, the license applies to the software.

This website uses the Geist and Geist Mono typefaces under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Changes

This page may be updated as Beacon changes. The date at the top shows the latest version.