Veteran engineer Terry Mechan, who began as a British Telecom apprentice in 1960 and later built patent‑winning security systems for De La Rue, tackled a modern privacy gap at age 84. He created a privacy‑first Android utility that returns a device’s location only when triggered by SMS or email, avoiding the constant tracking of mainstream family‑safety apps.

To make the idea work, Mechan designed a four‑component stack. The phone side runs Kotlin code that receives high‑priority messages via Firebase Cloud Messaging and uses WorkManager to bypass Android’s Doze mode. A PHP API validates expiring tokens stored in MySQL, then signals the device to fetch its GPS coordinates.

After a year of iteration, the resulting app—named MyBuddy—appears on Google Play and a web demo lets recipients request locations without installing anything. Mechan says the project proves AI assistants like Google Gemini can amplify decades of engineering expertise, potentially lowering the barrier for solo developers to launch privacy‑sensitive services.