FeaturesTemplatesShowcaseTownie
AI
BlogDocsPricing
Log inSign up
maxm
maxmasciiNycCameras
Public
Like
4
asciiNycCameras
Home
Code
2
README.md
H
main.tsx
Branches
1
Pull requests
Remixes
History
Environment variables
Val Town is a collaborative website to build and scale JavaScript apps.
Deploy APIs, crons, & store data – all from the browser, and deployed in miliseconds.
Sign up now
Code
/
Code
/
Search
Open in new tab
README.md

ASCII NYC Traffic Cameras

All of NYC's traffic cameras available as streaming ASCII images: https://maxm-asciinyccameras.web.val.run/

NYC has a bunch of traffic cameras and makes them available through static images like this one. If you refresh the page you'll see the image update every 2 seconds or so. I thought it might be fun to make these cameras viewable as an ASCII art video feed. I made a small library that takes most of its logic from this repo. You can see a basic example of how to convert any image to ASCII here.

I pull in NYC GeoJSON from here and then hook up a Server-Sent Events endpoint to stream the ASCII updates to the browser. (Polling would work just as well, I've just been on a bit of a SSE kick lately.)

Hilariously (and expectedly) The ASCII representation is about 4x the size of the the source jpeg and harder to see, but it has a retro-nostalgia look to it that is cool to me :)

Migrated from folder: asciiNyc/asciiNycCameras

Code
README.md
H
main.tsx
Go to top
X (Twitter)
Discord community
GitHub discussions
YouTube channel
Bluesky
Product
FeaturesPricing
Developers
DocsStatusAPI ExamplesNPM Package Examples
Explore
ShowcaseTemplatesNewest ValsTrending ValsNewsletter
Company
AboutBlogCareersBrandhi@val.town
Terms of usePrivacy policyAbuse contact
© 2025 Val Town, Inc.