How ScooterCam Works
ScooterCam is, at its core, a pipeline: cameras capture images and video on the shoreline, a small computer processes and organizes that footage, and a website displays it alongside live weather data. None of it depends on a big commercial platform — it's custom-built, end to end.
The pipeline, in plain terms
- Cameras capture. Cameras mounted on the shoreline take snapshots continuously and record video through the day, with special attention paid to sunset.
- A Raspberry Pi organizes and prepares the footage. A small computer (a Raspberry Pi) runs on-site, scheduling captures, resizing images, and assembling timelapse videos.
- Footage uploads to the web server. Processed files are sent automatically to ScooterCam's web hosting.
- The website displays it. The site reads the latest images, videos, and weather readings and presents them to visitors — no manual publishing step required.
- A weather station feeds live conditions. A dedicated weather station on-site reports temperature, wind, rain, and pressure, which are blended with marine and forecast data from public sources (NOAA, the National Weather Service) to build out the site's weather and marine pages.
Why it's built this way
The whole system is intentionally simple and self-contained: flat files instead of a database, scheduled background jobs instead of live API calls on every page view, and a single small computer doing the on-site work rather than a rack of specialized hardware. That keeps it affordable to run and — just as importantly — straightforward enough that someone other than its original builder can keep it going.
For the technical version of this page — exact software, servers, and configuration — see the private System Architecture section of this notes system.