The brief
Make a world of live public data usable by anyone, on any device, without an account and without a server bill that grows with every visitor.
What it does
- Shows orbiting satellites and their paths, with orbital positions calculated in the browser.
- Layers recent earthquakes, upcoming launches, radar, clouds, wind, cyclone tracks, lightning and warnings.
- Aggregates thousands of public traffic cameras from transportation agencies and municipalities.
- Adds trails, topographic maps, peaks, water sources, campsites and current conditions for the outdoors.
- Records GPS tracks on the device and exports them as GPX. Track data never leaves the phone.
- Caches chosen map areas for offline use.
Engineering decisions
Static first. The app is served as a static site from GitHub Pages, and the browser fetches most data directly from public services. No database, no app server.
Pre-built catalogs. Agencies block browsers from downloading full camera catalogs, so a scheduled GitHub Actions job collects and processes camera metadata and publishes it with the app.
A thin edge layer. Cloudflare Workers fill only the gaps browser restrictions create, instead of standing up a traditional backend.
Keys stay home. Optional third-party API keys live in an encrypted vault on the user's device and unlock temporarily, never on a central server.
What it means for clients
The same approach keeps business systems fast and cheap to run: push work to the edge, cache aggressively, keep sensitive data on the device or in your own infrastructure, and automate the chores with scheduled jobs.