Technology has come a long way in recent years, allowing us to access information that was once only available to the privileged few. Now, with the help of Irides, a company founded by Brian Schell, anyone can access live outdoor web cameras for a mere $10 a year.
Irides has taken the task of collecting and organizing all of the freely available live outdoor web cameras, from traffic cameras to resort cameras, and put them into one single database in one format. This makes it easier and more efficient for people to access the information they need. Furthermore, the data can be used for a variety of machine learning applications.
For example, Irides has developed an algorithm that can detect whether snow is sticking to a road or not. This can be used to create a route planning feature that takes into account traffic sensors as well as snow and ice on the roads. The company is also exploring the possibility of using the data to track wildfire smoke.
Irides has compiled a database of 42,000 state cameras, with more to come. For only $10 a year, anyone can access this information and use it for a variety of purposes. This is a great opportunity for people to gain access to data that was once only available to a select few. With Irides, anyone can now access live cameras at an affordable price.
Case Western Reserve University has been an important partner for Irides. One of the company's founders is an alumnus, which gave them the ability to showcase at CES as part of the university's exhibit. Over the years, the university has brought some interesting and innovative products to the show, including Irides.
One of the really interesting uses for the Irides database is for training artificial intelligence systems. One of the hardest parts of building an AI system is acquiring training data. That is even more difficult when you're trying to train on audio or video data. Being able to access such a large collection of varied audio and video feeds gives a large variety of system builders the ability to train on this data.
For example, imagine you're trying to build a system that is able to identify if there are particular vehicles in the area based on the sound of their engines. Maybe you want to find road construction trucks. Being able to acquire audio of the vehicle operating is not going to be a particularly easy project. You'd likely have to scour YouTube in search of engine sounds and then sort by positive and negative results.
Being able to grab live road cameras gives you the ability to identify positive and negative results easily while feeding thousands of hours of audio into the system for training. The more audio you have to train against, the more accurate your identification software will be.
The Irides database is available now for only $10 per year. The price helps the company cover the costs of the system. To sign up and try the system for yourself, head over to their website.
Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central.
Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.
Todd is the CEO of RawVoice / Blubrry - a podcast media company that represents 105,000 Audio and Video podcasters in which his company provides advertising opportunities, media distribution/hosting, podcast media statistics and other services. He is a podcast advertising specialist. Executing podcast advertising deals with a variety of national vendors for the past 13 years. Todd was responsible for bringing GoDaddy into the Podcast Advertising Space as one of the first podcast advertisers in 2005.
