Panes

Live cameras as ambient TV.
Beaches, harbours and skylines, full screen, nothing in the way.

Run it · How it works · Add a camera · License

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Panes is an Android TV app and a small Cloudflare Worker. Pick a city and it puts the best live camera near you on screen, then gets out of the way. Leave it on, or let it run as the screensaver.

It is built like a first-party TV app: the picture is the interface, focus is the cursor, and everything works with a D-pad. No typing, no menus you have to think about.

100+ curated cameras	Many at 1080p, some at 4K. Dead feeds drop out on their own
Ranked, not listed	Clean views first, then resolution, then distance from you
Near you	Cameras within 120 km of the city you pick, plus live YouTube search
Light on the TV	One Activity, Media3 for HLS, no UI framework. Smooth on modest TV hardware
A real screensaver	Clock and weather over the picture, like Aerial

Screens

Down opens the shelf, Select on All cameras opens the grid, Back always goes up one level.

How it works

flowchart LR
  TV["Android TV app"] -- "GET /v1/cams?lat&lon" --> W["Cloudflare Worker"]
  W --> C["curated catalog"]
  W --> Y["YouTube live search"]
  W --> K[("KV cache, 12 h")]
  TV -- "HLS" --> S["camera streams"]
  TV -- "IFrame player" --> YT["YouTube"]

Loading

The TV never talks to the YouTube API. The Worker holds the key, caps searches at 90 a day, caches each half-degree cell, and falls back to the last good answer. The app plays HLS with Media3 and YouTube through the official IFrame player. Panes never downloads or re-hosts video: every stream stays with its owner.

Run it yourself

You need Android Studio's SDK, Bun, and a Cloudflare account.

1. Deploy the Worker

cd server
bun install
bunx wrangler kv namespace create CAMS      # paste the id into wrangler.jsonc
bunx wrangler secret put YOUTUBE_API_KEY    # optional: without it, catalog only
bun run deploy

2. Build the app

Create local.properties (gitignored):

sdk.dir=/path/to/Android/sdk
panes.server=https://<your-worker>.workers.dev

./gradlew assembleRelease
adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk

Leave panes.server empty and the app shows road cameras only.

Add a camera

Add an entry to the right server/catalog-<region>.json:

{ "kind": "youtube", "videoId": "...", "title": "Harbour", "lat": 0, "lon": 0, "height": 1080 }

Then bun run deploy. HLS entries are served only with licensed: true, and this repo ships none. Streams whose owners allow personal viewing but not redistribution go in server/catalog-local.json, which is gitignored. Start from the example, and check each owner's terms yourself.

Under the hood

• app/ Kotlin, one Activity, minSdk 28, Android TV, API 28 and up
• server/ Hono-style Worker, Zod mini, Vitest. See server/README.md
• CLAUDE.md the product, design and licensing rules the code follows

Good to know

• FL511 road cameras need a scoped Sectigo R46 trust anchor on Android 11. The app bundles it for one host only. Don't "fix" it by trusting all certificates.
• Behind a VPN your TV's IP geolocates elsewhere. Pick the city by hand.

License

PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0. Personal and other noncommercial use is welcome. Commercial use is not. Source-available, not OSI open source.