SPDRBT
Specialized Public Data Relay - Broadcast Terminal
Started as an Instagram filter, grew into a network of 3D-printed spider magnets around NYC, became an open-source intelligence terminal for the city. Scan a magnet's QR for a WebAR mask; tap its NFC for live NYC data. 2,200+ scans by 550+ people across 230+ cities in 19+ countries.
spdrbt.comI 3D print spider magnets and leave them on poles around New York. Scan the QR and an AR mask opens in your browser. Tap the NFC chip and you get a live city data terminal you can talk to.
Where It Started
Which Spidey Are You?
The AR filter that started it all. A Spider-Man mask randomizer built in SparkAR for Instagram - tap to cycle through different spider suits on your face. Simple, fun, and massively shareable. This single filter sparked the entire SPDRBT project - from 3D-printed magnets to NFC chips to a full open-source broadcast terminal.
The User Journey
We Ask a Lot
Most people will never find a SPDR-BT. That's by design. These aren't advertisements on a billboard - they're small 3D-printed spiders stuck to random surfaces across the city. No signs pointing to them. No instructions. No context. The experience rewards those who are attentive enough to notice something out of place in a city of 8 million distractions.
And then we ask them to do a lot. Unprompted. With zero guidance. Think about what the user journey actually looks like - and how many steps it takes before anything happens.
2,200+ Organic Scans
Despite all of that friction, 550+ people have completed this entire journey organically: 2,200+ scans between them. No prompting. No marketing. No one telling them what to do. They saw a spider, picked it up, flipped it over, scanned a mysterious QR code, and chose to activate their camera. And then most of them came back: the average finder scans 4.5 times, returning, re-scanning, showing friends.
Note: the raw log records more. I subtract the ~250 SPDRBTs I handed to someone directly rather than placed in the wild, and I filter out datacenter traffic: cities where the analytics show one visit per "user" and nobody ever returns, the signature of crawlers, not people.
Notice
In a city moving at full speed, the user spots something - a small, unusual 3D object stuck to a subway pole, a lamp post, a bodega fridge. Most people walk past. This person stops.
Reach
It's not a flat sticker. It's a 3D-printed object with depth and texture. Curiosity wins - they reach out and touch it. They feel the magnet holding it to the surface.
Remove
They pull it off. It's small, magnetic, and has weight to it. On the front: a spider logo. They flip it over.
Read
On the back: a QR code and a line of text -"Scan to uncover your Spider Identity." A mysterious prompt from a mysterious object. No branding, no explanation.
Scan
They open their camera and scan an unknown QR code found on a random object in the street. That alone is a massive trust leap - and they take it.
Choose
The experience doesn't launch straight into the camera. Privacy matters. A start screen appears: "SPDR-BT FOUND" - with a clear choice to activate the mask or decline. The user is always in control.
Allow
They choose to activate. The browser requests camera access. They grant it. Face tracking initializes. A 3D spider mask renders on their face in real-time.
Become
The roulette spins. Masks cycle. It lands - they've discovered their Spider Identity. They can capture a photo, record a video, try the web-shooting gesture, and broadcast their shot to the public gallery. The experience is theirs.
8 Unprompted Steps. 550+ Strangers. 2,200+ Scans.
No instructions. No tutorial. No incentive. Just a small object in the wild and the curiosity of a stranger. Every finder completed an 8-step journey they were never asked to take, then scanned again, an average of 4.5 times each. That's not a conversion funnel - that's human nature. People are curious. People want to play. People want to be Spider-Man.
The Broadcast Terminal
Open-Source OSINT for New York City
↑ Live embed - this is real data, right now. Scroll, click, explore.
Not a Dashboard - an Intelligence System
SPDRBT.com is a full open-source intelligence terminal pulling live, real data from across New York City. MTA subway and bus positions updating in real-time. 965 DOT traffic cameras streaming live video. Aircraft transponder data for every plane in NYC airspace. Maritime vessel tracking across all waterways. Live weather with severe alerts. Air quality indices. Borough-by-borough breakdowns. Community intel. All aggregated into one CRT-styled terminal interface, all open source, all free.
No accounts. No paywalls. No tracking. The philosophy is simple: information wants to be free. Tap an NFC spider on the subway and you're immediately plugged into the city's nervous system.
Real Use Cases, Real People
Pull up the Times Square live cams to see what the crowd looks like and figure out what to wear before heading out. Check MTA train arrival times when the station tracker is broken (again). Track your bus in real-time so you know whether to walk or wait. Look up and wonder what plane that is - SPDRBT tells you the airline, altitude, and destination. Check if the East River ferry is running. See air quality before going for a run.
The use cases are different for every person - a commuter checking the L train, a photographer scouting camera angles, a plane spotter identifying aircraft, a jogger checking AQI, someone just curious about what's happening in their city right now. One system, infinite applications.
The Modules
Tap any panel to read moreSeven built from raw feeds, three framing somebody else's embed. The embedded three are the reason OTTO exists: an iframe cannot be queried, styled, or spoken to.
O.T.T.O. - Ask the City a Question
Every module above becomes a voice command. Say a wake word, ask what is overhead, and the terminal answers out loud while the screen carries the detail.
The dashboard assumes you are sitting down. OTTO assumes you are standing on a corner with one hand free. Speech goes through an intent parser that turns “what's overhead in Jackson Heights” into a place, a data source, and a view, then the answer is spoken back as a confirmation rather than read out in full.
That parser is a pure function with no interface attached to it. It is the layer built to outlive the phone: the same commands are meant to run on smart glasses, where there is no screen to fall back on and the spoken half has to carry the whole answer.
Spoken Commands
- → “What's overhead” - live aircraft radar with route lines
- → “Where's the nearest train” - arrivals grouped by direction
- → “How busy is Times Square” - crowd read off a live DOT frame
- → “How's traffic in LIC” - per corridor, never a blended average
- → “Ferries near Wall Street” - hulls pointed along their course
- → “City pulse” - live chatter mapped as mention heat
spdrbt.com/otto
AR Mode - Data Over the Street
Say “track it” and the camera opens. Aircraft the radar already knows about are drawn as reticles fixed to their real bearing, so a plane you can see gets a label holding its airline and route while you point the phone at it.
Underneath that, four recognition models run on the phone itself and take turns frame by frame: objects, hands, faces, bodies. Round-robin rather than all at once, because giving every model every frame buys a slideshow. Nothing is uploaded and no image leaves the device.
Newest addition: a blackout toggle. Tap “feed” and the camera view goes dark while capture keeps running, leaving only the detection overlays drawn on black. A phone showing live video of strangers reads as filming them. A dark screen tracing wireframes does not, and the overlays get easier to read at night.
On Device
- → Geo reticles locked to compass bearing
- → Object detection on people, cars, buses
- → Hand, face and pose recognition
- → 720p capture, tuned so the loop keeps up
- → Blackout toggle: detections on black, feed hidden
- → No cloud inference, no uploaded frames
Camera opens only on a tap
The same voice commands and perception stack now run as a native Snap Spectacles Lens, with the radars drawn in glass. That build lives with the rest of the assistant work on the O.T.T.O. page.
Terminal Design Language
CRT Aesthetic
Full scanline overlay across every module. The entire interface is designed to feel like a retro-futuristic surveillance terminal - glowing text, scan lines, data-stream animations.
Typography
Orbitron for headings, Share Tech Mono for data. Every element feels like it belongs in a command center. Typewriter animations on load, flicker effects on state changes.
Color System
Primary red (#db231e) against deep black backgrounds. Status colors for subway lines, AQI levels, and community sentiment (positive/negative/neutral vibe tracking).
An Entire City's Data in Your Pocket
What started as a fun side project - magnets with QR codes - evolved into one of the most comprehensive open-source NYC data terminals available. Live transit across every subway line and bus route. 965 live cameras. Real-time flight and maritime tracking. Weather and air quality. Borough-by-borough breakdowns. Community intel. All from a single URL.
All because someone found a spider on a subway pole and tapped it with their phone.
The Mask Experience
Anyone Can Wear The Mask
Anyone Can Be Spider-Man.
That's the whole point. Not some people. Not the right people. Anyone. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, or what language you speak. The mask doesn't check credentials. It doesn't ask for a login. It doesn't care. You found the spider, you scanned the code, you wore the mask. You're Spider-Man. End of story.
That's why it's a randomizer - you don't pick your identity, it picks you. Miles Morales. Gwen Stacy. Pavitr Prabhakar. Spider-Punk. Spider-Man 2099. The Spider-Verse is infinite because anyone can be great. Anyone can be a hero. The entire project is built on that idea.
“Anyone can wear the mask. You could wear the mask. If you didn't know that before, I hope you do now.”
Browser-Based AR
Scan the QR code on any SPDR-BT magnet and the AR experience launches directly in your browser - no app download, no account, no friction. The camera activates, face tracking initializes via MindAR, and a 3D spider mask renders on your face in real-time using Three.js. Tap the screen and a roulette spins through all 9 masks before landing on your Spider Identity.
The experience includes a beauty filter overlay, haptic feedback on interactions, a photo capture button (tap) and video recorder (long press, up to 10 seconds), and a share button that uses the Web Share API. Files save as spdrbt_[id].png or .mp4. Available in English and Spanish with automatic language detection.
Hand Tracking Easter Egg
MediaPipe hand detection runs in parallel with the face tracking. Extend your index and pinky fingers while folding your middle and ring fingers - the classic Spider-Man web-shooting gesture - and particle effects fire from your hand. A hidden feature that rewards anyone who instinctively tries it.
AR Tech Stack
- → Three.js - 3D rendering engine for mask models
- → MindAR Face - Real-time face detection & tracking
- → MediaPipe Hands - Gesture recognition
- → MediaRecorder API - Video capture at 30fps
- → Web Share API - Native sharing on mobile
The Public Gallery
Broadcast Your Spider-Identity
The newest addition closes the loop. After you mask up, a single tap broadcasts your photo straight to the public gallery on the Broadcast Terminal - no account, no upload form. Every transmission is stamped with the city it came from and how long ago it landed, building a living, worldwide feed of strangers who found a spider and chose to wear the mask.
It turns a private, one-off AR moment into shared proof of the whole premise - anyone can wear the mask - with Spider-People already broadcasting from across the U.S. and as far as Costa Rica.
spdrbt.com/galleryHow It Works
- → Capture your masked photo in the AR experience
- → Tap Share to broadcast it to the public gallery
- → Auto-tagged with approximate location and timestamp
- → Appears instantly in a global, scrollable feed
- → Opt-in only - sharing is always the user's choice
Building the Masks - Tried Everything
Gen 1: Screenshots to 3D (2020)
I knew I wanted Spider-Man masks but had no idea how to make them. The PS4 Spider-Man game had just dropped, and it had a Photo Mode. So I used it - took screenshots of every mask variant from the game, loaded them into Blender, created a simple half-face mesh, and projection-mapped the screenshot textures onto the model. That was the first set of masks.
Rough? Absolutely. But they worked. The SparkAR filter could track a face and render these screenshot-textured masks in real-time on Instagram. For a v1 built from game screenshots and basic Blender work, it hit harder than it should have.
Gen 2: The Search for Better (2024+)
When it was time to upgrade, I tried literally everything to get higher-quality 3D masks. Photo Mode screenshots at higher resolution from PS5. Captured video of masks rotating in-game, then processed the recordings through photogrammetry pipelines to generate meshes. Tested AI 3D generation tools to create masks from reference images. And finally, traditional modeling in Blender - manual geometry with proper topology, UV mapping, and PBR materials.
Settled on traditional modeling for the final production masks - nothing beat the control and quality of hand-built geometry. But every method taught something. The photogrammetry attempts informed the mesh topology. The AI experiments showed what was possible for rapid prototyping. The screenshot method proved the concept from day one. Literally tried anything and everything.
Photogrammetry from Screen Recording
Captured video of orbiting the camera around masks in Spider-Man 2's Photo Mode, then ran the recordings through photogrammetry pipelines. The results were detailed, but the baked-in game lighting and textures meant the models couldn't be relit for AR. Opted for traditional 3D modeling for the final masks.
Methods Attempted
9 Spider-Verse Masks
Each mask is a unique 3D .glb model rendered in real-time on the user's face. The roulette randomizer cycles through all variants before landing on one - your Spider Identity. Additional models handle depth occlusion so the mask sits naturally behind hair and glasses.
Three Platforms, Zero Dependencies
SparkAR
Shut DownInstagram filter - the original mask randomizer. Simple face tracking, limited to the IG camera. Millions of impressions before Meta killed the platform.
8th Wall
Shut DownWebAR rebuild - upgraded 3D models, added half-mask views, photo/video capture. Better tracking, browser-native experience. Then Niantic announced shutdown.
Self-Hosted
ActiveFully self-hosted from scratch. Three.js + MindAR + MediaPipe. Same features, better performance, zero dependency on any platform. No one can shut this down.
The Physical Network
3D Printed • Magnetic • NFC • Tracked
The Object
Each SPDR-BT is a small, custom 3D-printed spider logo with an embedded neodymium magnet - strong enough to stick to any metal surface. Subway poles, lamp posts, fire escapes, bodega fridges. On the back: a dynamic QR sticker and, on the latest generation, an NFC chip.
The prints have evolved through multiple generations - from rough PLA prototypes to refined multi-color prints with stronger magnets and better weather resistance. Each version is a small iteration on the last. The latest versions are designed to survive NYC weather and still scan cleanly after months outdoors.
Dynamic QR + NFC
Each magnet carries a unique dynamic QR code - when scanned, it captures the GPS location, timestamp, and device info. Every SPDR-BT that gets found sends a ping back, building the global scan map one discovery at a time. 2,200+ data points across 230+ cities so far.
The NFC integration was the latest upgrade - tap-to-open is faster than scanning a QR, and it links directly to the Broadcast Terminal. The dual-interface design means one object serves two purposes: QR leads to the mask experience, NFC leads to the data terminal. One spider, two worlds.
Where They've Been Found
Most SPDRBTs go out on daily commutes around NYC, on subway poles, storefronts, park benches. Others were carried further and left on purpose: Boston, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Costa Rica, Japan. So the map is mostly a record of where they were put down, plus the link travelling further than the object ever did. Nothing here can prove a single spider moved, because every one of them points at the same URL. What is interesting is the shape of that record across 19+ countries.
Evolution - 6 Years
The Filter
Started with a Spider-Man mask randomizer built in SparkAR - an Instagram filter that cycled through different spider suits on the user's face. Simple, fun, and the seed of something bigger.
The Print
Got a 3D printer. Started printing small spider logos with embedded magnets and QR stickers on the back reading "Scan to uncover your Spider Identity." The project became physical - something you could find in the wild.
The Migration
SparkAR shut down. Ported the mask experience to 8th Wall - upgraded the 3D models, added half-mask views and photo/video capture. The WebAR experience got significantly better with each rebuild.
Self-Hosted
8th Wall announced shutdown. Built a fully self-hosted WebAR solution from scratch - same features, better performance, zero dependency on any platform. Upgraded the prints with NFC chips and dynamic QR codes.
The Network
Built SPDRBT.com as an open source NYC data hub - live transit, traffic, weather, and community intel. The NFC chips now link directly to this open source Broadcast Terminal, turning the physical magnets into nodes in a public information network. A new public gallery now lets anyone broadcast their masked photo to a worldwide feed.
“Anyone can wear the mask.”
SPDRBTs are placed randomly during daily commutes. No announcement, no campaign - just small pieces left in the wild for whoever comes across them next. A free experience that asks nothing from the person who finds it. Scan the QR and discover your Spider Identity. Tap the NFC and access live city intelligence. The data says they keep traveling: from a subway pole in Queens to someone's desk in Shibuya. That part was never planned.
