ScooterBlog

Welcome to ScooterCam ScooterCam is a real-time weather monitoring and sunset photography system watching over the Lake Michigan shoreline between South Haven and Saugatuck, Michigan. The cameras run all day, every day, capturing the sky, the water, and — when the conditions cooperate — some of the most spectacular sunsets in the Midwest. This guide … Read more

How the live condition banners work, and what they’re telling you The colored banners you may occasionally see at the top of ScooterCam pages are live weather alerts generated directly from our on-site Tempest weather station here on the Lake Michigan shoreline. When something significant happens — lightning, hail, high winds, or freezing temperatures — … Read more

We’ve seen a lot to rework here at Scootercam Worldwide. Almost every bit of Scootercam has been replaced – from the code that runs the cameras to the cameras themselves. Here’s a rundown. Originally Scootercam was a symphony, with dozens and dozens of scripts and scriptlets that played together in harmony. But our orchestra had … Read more

Scootercam is free to watch. Running it is not. Beyond the equipment on the beach – all of which was replaced this winter – Scootrcam’s administrative and operational costs are a fact of life. Most of these costs are uninteresting and unavoidable. They arrive monthly, seasonally, or precisely when something important stops working. Nothing here … Read more

Scootercam creates 2 videos for the home page: Live Clips and Timelapse videos. Live Clips – At the top of each hour, the camera records a ten-second clip of live video and audio. It appends the clip to clips from the previous 2 hours. This creates a :30 second clip. Timelapse videos – The camera … Read more

How It Works Scootercam automatically tracks the day along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, capturing everything from aurora to sunsets to distant power plants across 40 miles of water. The Camera We use a Reolink TrackMix – a dual-lens camera that combines: The camera doesn’t just sit in one spot. Throughout the day, it … Read more

Scootercam’s Current Preset Configuration Why This Setup is Perfect At this latitude (42.56°N on Lake Michigan), the sunset position shifts dramatically: This is a ~60° swing across the horizon throughout the year! How the System Uses The Presets Sunset Timelapse (Automatic Seasonal Selection) The system automatically picks the right preset based on the date: Season … Read more

We replaced the beach deck camera with a Reolink Track Mix, a pan-tilt camera with 2 lenses (wide-angle and telephoto). Our original beach deck camera became invisible on the new home network.The wide-angle PanoramaScootercam gives us 5 views, so we used it to fill the gap. To fully deploy the new camera and temporarily disable … Read more

Equipment Scootercam starts 2026 with brand-new equipment and fiber internet. As of today, we’re down to one camera, but we’ve ordered a new PTZ camera. Here’s the hardware lineup: Website Work 2026 sees renewed focus on core site operations. We’re spending more time on optimization and speed, so the site loads quickly and without any … Read more