Safecast was established by Sean Bonner, Pieter Franken, and Joi Ito shortly after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, following the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011 and manages a global open data network for ionizing radiation and air quality monitoring.

The Safecast team, with help of International Medcom, Tokyo hackerspace, and other volunteers, has designed various devices for radiation mapping.

Safecast later expanded to offer air quality sensors (PM1, PM2.5, PM10 μg/m3 particulate matter) which also report to open crowdsourced maps.

It features the LND 7317 pancake Geiger-Mueller tube type detector, a GPS receiver and is expandable with a Bluetooth module.

The mode switch offers choice between geotagged radiation logging (data saved to microSD card) and measuring without GPS - showing also Bq/m2 (137Cs) values.

Safecast devices are also used by the following institutions: Slovenian NGO IRNAS - Institute for development of advanced applied systems Rače / Inštitut za razvoj naprednih aplikativnih sistemov Rače performs monitoring in Slovenia [7] with their one bGeigie Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and especially the Capture of Chernobyl and the activities of the Russian forces in the contaminated areas of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone including digging trenches or using the highly contaminated Red Forest as a route for their convoys initiated a request for a new radiation mapping of the region after the withdrawal of Russian troops.

The device uses same LND 7317 (USA) Geiger tube as bGeigie Nano, same Pelican 1010 plastic case and same output data format (LOG files).