EarthCam Scraper - Live Stream URLs, GPS & Weather

Turns an EarthCam camera page into a verified HLS stream URL, the camera's own GPS position, its town, and the current weather there.

What this Actor returns

Every field below was checked against live EarthCam pages on 2026-08-24, and the output example lower down is a record from a real platform run.

• Live HLS stream URL, fetched and confirmed to return a real playlist before it ships
• GPS coordinates published by EarthCam for that camera — the camera's own position, not a town centroid
• Current weather at those coordinates: temperature, feels-like, conditions, wind, humidity, UV index
• Timezone, elevation, sunrise and sunset
• Town and country
• Auto-tagging (city, landmark, beach, mountain, wildlife, traffic)
• Location search — type a city name, no URLs needed

What it does not return, and why

No snapshot. EarthCam publishes still images at static.earthcam.com/camshots/… and they still answer 200. They are also the same frame they were in early 2024:

$ curl -sI https://static.earthcam.com/camshots/512x288/fdc38ee24d3a0232e6d6a0d1beb3b886.jpg
HTTP/2 200
last-modified: Thu, 29 Feb 2024 21:37:27 GMT

A 200 serving a two-year-old JPEG is the most expensive kind of non-result, because everything about it looks like a result. So the field is absent, and snapshot.state reads "none" rather than carrying a URL nobody checked.

A camera with no verified stream is dropped rather than shipped, so for this provider every returned record is one whose playlist fetched back a real #EXTM3U.

How to use

1. Create a free Apify account at apify.com if you don't have one.
2. Open this Actor and type a location (e.g. "New York") — or paste specific camera URLs.
3. Click Run.
4. Download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Output tab.

Search by location (no URLs needed)

{
    "location": "New York"
}

Search by URL

A camera URL is a location page plus the cam= parameter naming one camera — a page such as Times Square lists eleven, and the parameter is what picks one.

{
    "startUrls": [
        { "url": "https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/?cam=tsstreet" },
        { "url": "https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/statueofliberty/?cam=liberty_crown" }
    ]
}

Output example

From an actual run, not an illustration:

{
    "visionSyncId": "VS-EC-tsstreet",
    "url": "https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/?cam=tsstreet",
    "title": "EarthCam: Times Square Street Cam",
    "description": "Watch Times Square live with EarthCam's webcams. See NYC's iconic bright lights, music, and arts scene that attracts millions of tourists 24/7.",
    "stream": {
        "url": "https://videos-3.earthcam.com/fecnetwork/9974.flv/playlist.m3u8",
        "type": "hls",
        "isLive": true,
        "lastVerified": "2026-08-24T15:46:17.827Z",
        "state": "verified"
    },
    "snapshot": { "state": "none" },
    "tags": ["city"],
    "enrichment": {
        "location": {
            "city": "New York City",
            "country": "United States",
            "countryCode": "US",
            "lat": 40.75941552728725,
            "lon": -73.98521661758423,
            "coordsSource": "provider"
        },
        "weather": {
            "temp": "25.3°C",
            "feelsLike": "24.3°C",
            "condition": "Overcast",
            "wind": "14.5 km/h",
            "humidity": "45%",
            "uvIndex": 6.35
        },
        "timezone": "America/New_York",
        "elevation": 64,
        "sunrise": "2026-08-24T06:15",
        "sunset": "2026-08-24T19:40"
    },
    "provider": "earthcam",
    "timestamp": "2026-08-24T15:46:17.827Z"
}

Why scrape EarthCam?

EarthCam runs one of the largest public webcam networks, heavy on US landmarks and city views. Verified stream URLs plus real coordinates make it usable for live webcam directories, tourism dashboards, and city-view feeds.

Notes

Part of the VisionSync suite. All providers share one record shape, so results from several VisionSync Actors concatenate without reshaping. Sibling Actors: WhatsUpCams, Webcamtaxi, Explore.org, SkylineWebcams, Worldcam, YouTube Live.

coordsSource travels with every coordinate. provider means the site published the camera's own position — which is what EarthCam does — as opposed to geocoded, which would be a town centroid.

No credentials are required and no personal data is collected.