There are more cameras pointed at American roads than most people realise. //EYERUS puts the public ones on one map, next to the aircraft, ships and police calls broadcasting where they are, so you can see what’s around you.
What you’ll see. About 36,500 public road and wildfire cameras, many with live video. 145,000 license plate readers mapped by volunteers. Police and fire radio from about 330 scanner systems. Aircraft, ships, Amtrak trains, live dispatch calls in several cities, wildfires, radar, weather alerts and earthquakes.
Where it comes from. State transportation departments in more than 35 states, OpenStreetMap and DeFlock, OpenMHz scanner volunteers, the adsb.fi and adsb.lol receiver networks, aisstream.io, city and county open-data portals, the National Weather Service and USGS. Nothing here is private or bought.
What it won’t do. It doesn’t read plates, recognise faces or follow anyone; the vehicle counter only counts. Your saved places and settings belong to your account, your location is only used in your browser to move the map, and passwords are stored as scrypt hashes. No ads, no trackers. Privacy policy.
How to use it. Make an account, then zoom anywhere. Click a camera to watch it, a plane to see where it’s going, a dot to read the call. Every layer has filters, so you can narrow it to what you care about.
What you can do with it
- Watch
- Forty thousand public cameras, a lot of them live video. The one bolted under Scripps Pier too.
- Listen
- Police, fire and EMS radio from about 330 scanner systems. Switch on new calls and leave it running.
- Follow
- Every plane overhead, with where it left from and where it’s headed. Police and circling helicopters get flagged.
- Spot
- 145,000 license plate readers, plus the speed and red-light cameras, so you know what’s on your commute.
- Ask
- Hold your finger anywhere on the map and see the calls, fires, aircraft, scanners and news around that spot.
- Count
- Draw a line on a live camera and count the cars that cross it. It runs on your phone and never reads a plate.
Live right now
Right now the map is tracking hundreds of aircraft, dozens of emergency calls have come in this hour, hundreds of wildfires are burning and dozens of patches of sky are closed to pilots. Below are eight of the 40,000 cameras, one per city, refreshed every minute.
How far around downtown?
…plate readers
Counted from OpenStreetMap’s map of plate readers within 5 miles of downtown San Diego. Volunteers add them by hand, so the real number is likely higher.