Buy Lantern
Blackout Library Lantern, black case with the wordmark on the lid
Everything on the card: the twenty collections, 189 GB, plus a map of the whole United States
Three steps: plug it in, join the Wi-Fi, type 10.10.10.1
The home screen and a Right now guide as they appear on a phone
Blackout Library Lantern from above
Runs on about three watts: wall outlet, power bank, car, solar panel, hand-crank radio
Works where nothing else does: no cell signal, satellite, internet, account, subscription or app
Blackout Library Lantern, USB and Ethernet ports
What's in the box (cable, cards, sticker), and the specifications
Licensed, credited, dated: every source and its license
Blackout Library Lantern, front with power and HDMI
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Renderings of the production case. Photographs to follow.

Offline library device

Blackout Library Lantern

$279 $225

Launch price through October 12. $279 after that.

A library that works when nothing else does. Lantern is the household unit: a complete reference library on a device the size of a deck of cards, with its own Wi-Fi, that runs off any USB-C charger or power bank...

Radio

The Mesh radio joins the Meshtastic mesh: short messages by long-range radio, no towers, no internet, with GPS built in. Fitted to order; ships within about seven business days. How the mesh works

  • 60-day returns, no questions.
  • In-stock orders ship within two business days from Minnesota; with the Mesh radio, within about seven business days, because the radio is fitted to order.
  • No subscription. No account. Nothing depends on us.

A library that works when nothing else does. Lantern is the household unit: a complete reference library on a device the size of a deck of cards, with its own Wi-Fi, that runs off any USB-C charger or power bank and serves about twenty phones at once.

How it works

Plug it into a phone charger, a power bank or a car socket. It makes its own Wi-Fi network. Join it from any phone, tablet or laptop the way you join home Wi-Fi, and the library opens with one search box across everything on the card. No internet connection, no app, no account, no subscription, ever.

The home screen's Right now panel puts bleeding, CPR, water, shelter, hypothermia and poisoning one tap away, one page each. This house is a page for your own shutoffs, breaker panel, generator and meeting place; the household board is a note every phone in the house can see; Quick numbers does the water, bleach and generator math. Your documents holds the manuals and papers you add from a phone or a USB stick (the generator, the well pump, the furnace, the medication list) and puts them in the same search, ahead of the encyclopedia. The library itself is read-only, so pulling the plug mid-use does no harm.

Mesh radio (the Wi-Fi + Mesh radio option, +$99). A Lantern Mesh has a small LoRa radio and its own GPS inside. It joins the Meshtastic mesh, an open radio network that people, towns and clubs already run all over the country: short text messages hop from radio to radio, a few miles at a time, with no towers, no internet and no account. The Lantern's Mesh page has three conversations: Household, a private channel with this unit's own key that only your radios can read; Nearby, every radio in range; and Private, one radio, end-to-end encrypted, with a delivered tick. Every phone on its Wi-Fi can send, and the map shows where the other radios are. Pair it with a Mesh Card in a pocket and the person who is out can reach the house; bought together, the card arrives already on your household channel. The radio adds nothing to the case but an antenna.

The map shows where we are and the unit keeps the right time with no internet: on a Lantern Mesh from its own GPS, on a Wi-Fi only Lantern from a USB GPS receiver you plug in (about $15). The owner's status page shows phones connected, temperature, whether the power supply is holding up, storage, use over the last day, and, if you tell it the size of the power bank you are on, how long it should last. One tap opens the network to the neighbours for 24 hours when you want to share it; it locks itself again.

What's on it

  • Wikipedia, every article in English, with pictures (127 GB)
  • Maps of the whole United States: roads, trails, towns, rivers and hospitals, searchable by place name, no signal needed (OpenStreetMap)
  • Medical: WikEM emergency medicine, the Kiwix medical library, U.S. military medicine handbooks, and Medical Sciences Q&A
  • Survival and skills: the After a disaster, Water, Knots and Food packs, plus Home improvement, Electronics, Outdoors, Gardening and Amateur radio Q&A from Stack Exchange
  • Wikibooks and Wiktionary: open textbooks and the dictionary
  • Project Gutenberg: science, technology, agriculture and medicine, thousands of books
  • Six Right now guides, written for this device, and the household pages above

Twenty collections, 189 GB, every one licensed for distribution or in the public domain, credited on the device with its version. Every unit ships with a dated library. To add to it, plug the Ethernet port into your router for an evening: the settings page lists everything the Kiwix project publishes (Wikipedia in other languages, more Q&A communities, more books) and newer builds of what you have, and downloads them onto the card. Updates also come on a USB stick.

In the box

  • The Lantern, loaded, tested and sealed, in its printed case (no fan, no moving parts, no battery)
  • USB-C cable. It runs on the phone charger or power bank you already own; about 3 watts
  • Wi-Fi card with the network, password and a code to scan, and a quick-start card
  • A sticker

Specifications

  • Computer: Raspberry Pi 4, 2 GB
  • Storage: 256 GB microSD card, pre-loaded (512 GB with the Mesh radio)
  • Wi-Fi: its own network, about 20 devices at once
  • Mesh option: LoRa radio, 915 MHz (US), Meshtastic; GPS built in; external antenna
  • Power: 5 V USB-C, about 3 W in use; a 10,000 mAh power bank runs it through the night
  • Size: 3.6 by 2.5 by 1.1 inches, under 4 ounces
  • Assembled and tested in Minnesota

Guarantee

60-day returns, no questions. One-year hardware warranty.

The medical and survival material on this device is reference material from published sources. It is not a substitute for professional care or emergency services. Call for help whenever you can.