How does the hardware work? It seems like there isn't any radio hardware other than the ESP, so that can natively receive the ITS-G5 messages? Why not just use an ESP board with native ethernet then?
Found out about this today, up until now 802.11p hardware is very expensive, and so you cannot easily do anything with V2x messages like CAM or SPAT, but the fact this was done with sub £20 hardware is really interesting.
The site is definitely lacking. It's half in German, half in English.
The concept is that there is this protocol called ITS-G5, which is a European profile of 802.11p. Vehicles and traffic infrastructure can transmit telemetry on 5 GHz. Other vehicles and traffic infrastructure can use it for situational awareness.
This website collects that data using local receivers and aggregates it onto a map, similar to what website like ADSB-Exchange do with ADS-B.
What is concerning is that vehicles appear to broadcast a MAC address. Does this mean that ITS-G5, 802.11p, and C-ITS could be used for persistent tracking?
For a vehicle with a highly visible unique identifier on the front and rear? In my country basically every private carpark has ANPR cameras, the tech is dirt cheap now.
You wouln‘t really have the kind if hardware there. The communication relies on a multi hop mesh that would‘t work anywhere without sufficient coverage.
Yes, they also have transmitters. The traffic lights send out MAPEM and SPATEM messages. They describe the layout of the lanes at the intersection as well as the red/green phase timings of the signal.
In Graz, the city where the authors live, there are 165 of such signals planned.
Happy to see this popping up here, I watched the Linux Tage talk last week. The demo just kept getting better and better, to a point where the audience just interruptively cheers and claps away. I know nothing about the contents, but this warmed my heart. True hacker project!
Yes, I understand that. The translation makes it sound like they have published the software and design, or are somehow making boards available.
>To improve coverage, we need your support! We have built a board with *ESP32-C5* and *PoE* that allows you to capture *C-ITS* packages yourself, and provide us for our face-up card, or process it yourself.
Will be interesting to see how it fares when it does come to the US. It seems like there are some cars that already have the tech installed. But the US is allegedly more interested in the cellular version, which I am guessing is not as easy to pick up with a simple receiver?
My gut feeling is that this seems like one of those things likely to face a lot of backlash when it becomes widely known.
I guess we only find out if some people order those chips and check if there is some data. From my understanding the idea is the same like maps showing air planes or ships (for ships it’s AIS). So without volunteers/pioneers who participate we won’t know. It seems like traffic lights and trams also can send data.
You still wouldn't have nearly as many dollars if you subtracted the times those people were correct in that assumption. Personally I assumed the site would be global. It doesn't have any info though, so I rely on finding out somewhere else I guess.
The only reason you would assume a site would be global is if your definition of "global" is "works in the US" & you never bother to check for support of other countries. I live in the anglosphere outside of the US & I encounter more than enough US-only web projects for that not be to a default assumption I hold.
Most sites are not global - it's very odd to assume they would be.
It seems pretty weird to use all English words in the domain for a service that offers no English translations and operates in no English speaking countries.
The map is based on international standards and technically it does not restrict locations to German speaking countries.
The authors of this project also shared that they intend on publishing more around this project. This seems to be mostly an early demo that was intended for the live event.
The Germans and Danes and Swedes and Norwegians I see on the Internet developing and publishing software often have a better grasp of the English language than many born in the USA Americans.
OpenStreetMaps works in the US and much of the rest of the world.
It's entirely reasonable to expect that a project with an extremely similar name would also work in most of the world, which just happens to include the USA.
The night bus service only runs the nights "before" Saturday and Sunday[1]. It's a small university city with 300k population (600k greater metropolitan area).
I recently learned that with smart traffic lights cyclists can change traffic lights -https://nltimes.nl/2026/04/28/new-app-turns-traffic-lights-g...
Codeberg link https://codeberg.org/opentrafficmap
How does the hardware work? It seems like there isn't any radio hardware other than the ESP, so that can natively receive the ITS-G5 messages? Why not just use an ESP board with native ethernet then?
They are doing it with the standard WIFI receiver. Currently they are sending the Wireshark dumps to a backend for processing.
According to their presentation they are working on a rust firmware to do everything on the board.
Huge performance issues for me trying to use it on Chrome. But I like the idea.
Found out about this today, up until now 802.11p hardware is very expensive, and so you cannot easily do anything with V2x messages like CAM or SPAT, but the fact this was done with sub £20 hardware is really interesting.
Fully agree. That's the most interesting thing about this.
I haven't seen a theme on OSM data look this modern and fresh before. Beautiful color palette and iconography!
It looks like Mapbox Standard [1]. While a free tier is available, most sites are going to need a paid plan.
[1] https://docs.mapbox.com/map-styles/standard/guides/
Agreed - it is very similar to Google Maps.
It's a Mapbox theme
It will be nice if we everybody could just add own receivers, then it will be quickly cover more cities. But still nice project.
Ahh, it send automatically to website! "mqtts://cits1.opentrafficmap.org"
Cool, but it there's no links for more info, and it doesn't seem to work in the USA at all.
The site is definitely lacking. It's half in German, half in English.
The concept is that there is this protocol called ITS-G5, which is a European profile of 802.11p. Vehicles and traffic infrastructure can transmit telemetry on 5 GHz. Other vehicles and traffic infrastructure can use it for situational awareness.
This website collects that data using local receivers and aggregates it onto a map, similar to what website like ADSB-Exchange do with ADS-B.
What is concerning is that vehicles appear to broadcast a MAC address. Does this mean that ITS-G5, 802.11p, and C-ITS could be used for persistent tracking?
Reading the translation of the talk, public transport vehicles have a persistent MAC but for private cars the MAC address changes every 15 minutes.
As discussed in the video they are not resetting the packet sequence number though, making it easy to match them with the other data transmitted.
That still doesn't seem very private.
For a vehicle with a highly visible unique identifier on the front and rear? In my country basically every private carpark has ANPR cameras, the tech is dirt cheap now.
Even our tires blast out IDs.
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/exploring-the-privacy-risks-of-tire-...
Particularly anywhere rural or off the beaten path
You wouln‘t really have the kind if hardware there. The communication relies on a multi hop mesh that would‘t work anywhere without sufficient coverage.
You do know you have a unique ID displayed on a big tab on the vehicle, right?
What about the traffic lights on the map do they also have transmitters?
Yes, they also have transmitters. The traffic lights send out MAPEM and SPATEM messages. They describe the layout of the lanes at the intersection as well as the red/green phase timings of the signal.
In Graz, the city where the authors live, there are 165 of such signals planned.
This should be a top level comment as it has a ton of useful info and can be voted to the top.
Did they re invent APRS?
The project was shared as part of a talk at Graz Linux Tage. You can find it here, unfortunately it is only available in German
https://media.ccc.de/v/glt26-688-c-its-mit-einem-esp32-ampel...
Happy to see this popping up here, I watched the Linux Tage talk last week. The demo just kept getting better and better, to a point where the audience just interruptively cheers and claps away. I know nothing about the contents, but this warmed my heart. True hacker project!
Is there a link to the hardware they mention in the description?
They built their own circuit board but the core module that does the 802.11p is just a ESP32-C5
Yes, I understand that. The translation makes it sound like they have published the software and design, or are somehow making boards available.
>To improve coverage, we need your support! We have built a board with *ESP32-C5* and *PoE* that allows you to capture *C-ITS* packages yourself, and provide us for our face-up card, or process it yourself.
Edit: found it, https://codeberg.org/opentrafficmap
Pastebin here containing AI-generated English translation, LGTM: https://pastebin.com/fK5Atwzg
It's based on Car2X/Vehicle2X data that's sent unencrypted and can be received with chips you can order from China.
Will be interesting to see how it fares when it does come to the US. It seems like there are some cars that already have the tech installed. But the US is allegedly more interested in the cellular version, which I am guessing is not as easy to pick up with a simple receiver?
My gut feeling is that this seems like one of those things likely to face a lot of backlash when it becomes widely known.
I guess we only find out if some people order those chips and check if there is some data. From my understanding the idea is the same like maps showing air planes or ships (for ships it’s AIS). So without volunteers/pioneers who participate we won’t know. It seems like traffic lights and trams also can send data.
If I had a dollar for every time I've seen an American on the Internet assume that anything published in the English language must be US-centric...
You still wouldn't have nearly as many dollars if you subtracted the times those people were correct in that assumption. Personally I assumed the site would be global. It doesn't have any info though, so I rely on finding out somewhere else I guess.
> Personally I assumed the site would be global
The only reason you would assume a site would be global is if your definition of "global" is "works in the US" & you never bother to check for support of other countries. I live in the anglosphere outside of the US & I encounter more than enough US-only web projects for that not be to a default assumption I hold.
Most sites are not global - it's very odd to assume they would be.
Another reason could be that calling this OpenTrafficMap gives an impression that it is similar to OpenStreetMap, which is global.
It seems pretty weird to use all English words in the domain for a service that offers no English translations and operates in no English speaking countries.
The map is based on international standards and technically it does not restrict locations to German speaking countries.
The authors of this project also shared that they intend on publishing more around this project. This seems to be mostly an early demo that was intended for the live event.
The Germans and Danes and Swedes and Norwegians I see on the Internet developing and publishing software often have a better grasp of the English language than many born in the USA Americans.
That's true for Scandinavians, Germans are not as gut.
Ja ja, maybe not as gut as the Scandinavians, but still better than many US Americans.
Is expecting something to work in the US the same as expecting it to be US-centric?
Conversely, if I had a penny for every time someone complained about Americans... ;-)
That's one way to get rid of our (US) pennies now that they're useless!
I did scroll across to the UK and was disappointed that there's none for here.
But I'll probably add my own receiver soon!
This is an American site to be fair. Mapbox is also an American company.
It does have an English name, so why the surprise?
OpenStreetMaps works in the US and much of the rest of the world.
It's entirely reasonable to expect that a project with an extremely similar name would also work in most of the world, which just happens to include the USA.
I mean I don’t anyone thought this was in the US since the UI is not in English. Maybe it’s more of, this neat, wish we had it here?
I wonder if this could be used to track location of the vehicle
Isn't that the point of the project? I'm seeing a bunch of tracked vehicles, although they all seem parked at the moment.
Does Graz not have night bus service?
The night bus service only runs the nights "before" Saturday and Sunday[1]. It's a small university city with 300k population (600k greater metropolitan area).
[1] https://www.verbundlinie.at/en/customer-service/arriving-in-...
>WebSocket getrennt
Hug of death? Nothing loads.