SURVIVAL APPS
Transmission archive
Real portfolio, no promises. Each post documents a real project, or a topic worth digging into — from technical choices to mistakes, unfiltered. Three zones, one map of the territory.
// MAP OF THE TERRITORY
Web Apps
Projects built from scratch: dashboards, tools, utilities that solve real problems — often mine first. Python · Flask · SQLite.
ZONE 2Mobile / Android
Native apps, from concept to deploy. Android · Capacitor · PWA.
ZONE 3Cyberpunk / Survival
The identity space: aesthetics, themed hardware, projects like the Zoltar machine. Hardware · Arduino · Aesthetics.
// CATALOG
BioRadar
Flora & Fauna Scanner
7.99 €EcoSurvivor
Survivor's Personal Finance
7.99 €HotSummer
The app that turns heat into action
// ALL TRANSMISSIONS
Your phone already knows how to call for help: turn these features on
Emergency SOS and emergency contacts are already built into Android and iPhone. Here's how to switch them on.
A channel that asks for nothing in return
Survival Apps has no newsletter. It has an RSS feed: no account, no tracking, no email list. Here's how it works and why.
The music that stays on when I'm not there
42-minute ambient loops to leave running while you work — the latest three, just uploaded to the Survival Apps YouTube channel.
I Power It All Up and See If It Holds
My own web interface for the LoRa tracker, tested live: what it shows, what it's for, and why it sometimes beats a phone app.
The neighborhood is the first survival network
Before a bunker or a mesh radio, your real survival network is your neighborhood: the people you know in person, on your own block.
A radio that asks nobody's permission
The Wio Tracker L1 Pro arrived with Meshtastic firmware: unboxing, first tests on the Lombardy mesh, and a local web app to run it from my desk.
Commodore 77: The Past Comes Back Dressed as Night City
The Commodore 64 Ultimate meets Cyberpunk 2077 in a special edition announced at Gamescom 2026. A field note on why this retro rebirth matters to me.
What keeps a workshop standing.
Code only carries a project so far. Written by someone who recently sat down at the Officina bench.
The Law Always Comes Later
From seat belts to speed limits to today's AI Act: why the law meant to protect you from a technology always arrives years too late.
Solar eclipse: why a darkening sky isn't the end of the world
The August 12, 2026 solar eclipse without the panic filter: an omen of doom for millennia, yet an event that destroys nothing.
Neuromancer: the book that wrote the aesthetic of Survival Apps
Why William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) is the book that shaped this blog's technical and visual imagination more than any other, read through a personal lens.
Three apps, three pillars of survival
BioRadar, EcoSurvivor and HotSummer share a common thread I only found afterwards: know nature, don't waste resources, face the extremes.
Ownership vs. Subscription
Why "publisher, not seller" doesn't mean "I don't sell": a reflection on one-time purchases, subscriptions, and what's still yours after you buy an app.
How to verify an APK before installing it
SHA-256 hashes, VirusTotal reports and the signs to check before installing an APK from outside the Play Store — the procedure I use for every release.
HotSummer, from concept to code
The extreme-heat app concept (Transmission 017) became HotSummer, on sale for 7.99 €: risk index, Pip-Boy alert, zero backend.
War Zones — the world's conflicts, read by someone who builds
A reasoned map of today's conflicts, the weight of the USA, Russia and China, and why it makes more sense to build than to destroy.
Meshtastic: the network that doesn't need the internet to exist
What Meshtastic is, how a LoRa mesh network works with no towers or SIM cards, and three flagship hardware nodes for building your own off-grid comms network.
An App to Survive Extreme Heat
An app idea for extreme heat waves: not yet another weather app, but a tool that turns the alert into concrete, personalized actions.
Waste and redundancy: what to throw out and what to keep in duplicate
In survival, redundancy is life; in computing it's often dead weight. Learn to tell the waste you should cut from the redundancy that saves your day.
BioRadar: a flora and fauna scanner built on the iNaturalist API (Expo + Capacitor)
How BioRadar is built: the Android app that turns the wildlife and plants around you into targets on a cyberpunk radar, with live data from iNaturalist.
€co-Survivor: Managing Your Finances Like a Survivor (React Native + Expo)
How €co-Survivor is built: an offline React Native + Expo budget app with a post-apocalyptic theme — reserves, rations, a survival index.
TRAUTOK STATION: my personal dashboard running on Python stdlib and SQLite
How my "command deck" is built: one HTML file with inline CSS/JS and a stdlib Python server (http.server + SQLite), seven panels and a node map.
What Is Cyberpunk Aesthetics (and Why It's Not Just Neon and Rain)
What "cyberpunk" means and which elements make an image recognizable: high tech, low life, neon and urban decay. A plain-language guide.
What the Digital Markets Act Means for Solo App Developers
The Digital Markets Act forced Apple and Google to allow alternative stores, sideloading and their own payments. What it means if you publish apps solo.
Compulsive Scrolling: Inside the Infinite Feed
What compulsive scrolling (doomscrolling) is, why the infinite feed hooks us, and how to get out, seen from the side of the people who build the apps.
"Zoltar: Design and Schematics Before I Get My Hands Dirty"
Part two of Zoltar: from concept to block diagram. Why the brain moves from Arduino to Raspberry Pi, and the thermal printer that delivers the verdict.
Why I Started Using Claude Code (and What It Means for an Indie Dev)
An AI agent in an indie developer's terminal: what really changes, what doesn't, and how it fits a philosophy built on autonomy.
PWA, Capacitor or Native? A Concept Map Before You Choose (No Code)
Three ways to get an app onto a phone — PWA, Capacitor, native — a decision map of what each choice really costs you, without a single line of code.
Field cyberdeck: concept and parts list for a grid-down scenario
Build log part one: what a cyberdeck is, the constraints of a world with no power grid or internet, and the parts I picked to build a field-ready one.
2026 and the Return to Self-Hosting: What It Means for a Solo Developer
Free tiers vanishing, prices multiplying tenfold, services shutting down: why more and more developers are going back to hosting their own apps.
Why publishing on Google Play has become so complicated for solo developers
Mandatory testers, identity checks, API requirements that keep changing: what to expect today when publishing your first app on Google Play on your own.
Zoltar: the Idea of a Cyberpunk Oracle Born from a Recycled Aquarium
Zone 3's founding project: turning the remains of a decommissioned aquarium into a mechanical oracle inspired by carnival fortune-teller machines.
Why I Build Independent Software: From the Commodore 64 to Today
The Survival Apps manifesto: forty years of self-taught code, a PhD in Pharmacognosy, and why "independent" is a precise technical choice.
First Connection
The opening transmission of Survival Apps: why this blog exists, who writes it, and the first project in the works — a dashboard in a single HTML file.