Spot Watch

In a busy residential courtyard drivers circle looking for a free spot, guests block residents, and management has no idea how full the yard really is — or when. Per-spot sensors cost money for every space and need wiring and maintenance.

Cameras already cover the yard, but a single camera can't see every spot: cars hide each other, distant spots are tiny, and night, glare or a camera knocked off its angle quietly turn "recognition" into guessing.

Spot Watch turns the existing cameras into a live map of the courtyard. Residents open a page and see every spot as free, occupied or unknown on a plan of the yard; operators click a spot to see what each camera sees and how much it can be trusted right now.

Under the hood a YOLOX detector finds cars only inside the zones of interest, skips cars that are still moving, and scores how well each car sits in each marked spot. Every camera's view is weighted by its current quality — night, overlap by other cars, zone size, freshness — and the views are fused into one decision per spot, with short delays so a passing car never flips the state. The system also watches the cameras themselves: frozen, black or overexposed frames and cameras that have been knocked off their angle are flagged automatically.

Setting up a yard is fast: a browser editor lets an admin draw spots on a camera frame — or a whole row in one go, split with perspective — and after about half a day of observations the system suggests corrections where the marking doesn't match where cars actually stand.