[HN Gopher] Show HN: Satellite imagery object detection using te...
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Show HN: Satellite imagery object detection using text prompts
I built a browser-based tool for detecting objects in satellite
imagery using vision-language models (VLMs). You draw a polygon on
the map and enter a text prompt such as "swimming pools", "oil
tanks", or "buses". The system scans the selected area tile-by-tile
and returns detections projected back onto the map as GeoJSON.
Pipeline: select area and zoom level, split the region into
mercantile tiles, run each tile with the prompt through a VLM,
convert predicted bounding boxes to geographic coordinates (WGS84),
and render the results back on the map. It works reasonably well
for distinct structures in a zero-shot setting. occluded objects
are still better handled by specialized detectors like YOLO models.
There is a public demo and no login required. I am mainly
interested in feedback on detection quality, performance tradeoffs
between VLMs and specialized detectors, and potential real-world
use cases.
Author : eyasu6464
Score : 31 points
Date : 2026-03-09 07:52 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.useful-ai-tools.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.useful-ai-tools.com)
| triplecheese wrote:
| This is cool. I'll give it a go
| JimmyJamesJames wrote:
| Great idea, almost impossible to use on the mobile due to the
| mobile UI.
| eyasu6464 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I've resolved the UI issues on mobile.
| ge96 wrote:
| Tangent question, I know of services like Planet Labs, Maxar...
| is the capability there now assuming you had money, where you
| could tag a ship from space and watch it travel (I know there is
| something like ADSB for ships) but would be interesting.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's still at the "technical challenge to fuse data from AIS
| [ADSB for ships, complete with spoofing and transponders being
| turned off] to [generally] static images from multiple
| different sources" stage, at least unless you've got the budget
| for a video satellite to stick in a geostationary-ish orbit
| ge96 wrote:
| I also wasn't sure how good satellite image quality is where
| you can match a ship from above, maybe the pattern of the
| freight containers could help.
|
| And track I didn't indicate frequency, it's not per minute,
| but say hourly.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Planet labs has a solution specifically for ships.
|
| https://www.planet.com/pulse/illuminate-the-dark-fleet-with-...
| fusslo wrote:
| very cool
|
| Once I figured out how to use the UI I did 2 scans. first one I
| had to zoom in before the identification boxes popped up. At
| first I thought it didnt do anything
|
| Second scan I put over a local aviation museum with a mix of
| helicopters, unusual planes, cars, buildings, and other
| equipment. I was surprised to see everything identified
| correctly, though it missed a single helicopter.
|
| I'd love a little bell or notification when the scan completes,
| as I hit 'scan', switch to a different tab and then forgot I was
| waiting
| eyasu6464 wrote:
| Thanks for trying it out. The detections not all appearing
| before zooming is because I added a LOD (level of detail)
| rendering method, so if hundreds of thousands of objects are
| detected, it won't crash the system. Only the areas you're
| looking at render, and the more you zoom in, the more objects
| are displayed. It was a pain to set up, but it's worth it. The
| notification idea is great, and I'll add a sound to play when a
| scan finishes.
| fusslo wrote:
| Thanks, makes sense to me. I was just confused at first since
| i thought maybe it didnt do anything or my adblocker was
| making it go weird
| whall6 wrote:
| I have been looking for a way to find pickleball courts near my
| house. This sounded like the perfect tool! I tried "pickle ball
| court" using the maximum polygon size (actually just slightly
| under) and... it didn't work. It gave me a red dashed square
| around a driveway to what looked like a farm.
|
| Cool concept though.
| eyasu6464 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. A dashed square marks the area you
| select for detection, and once it's finished, the results will
| appear. You might want to give it another try because I just
| tested it on the pickleball courts at 1108 S Harvey Ave,
| Oklahoma City, OK, 73109, ( https://www.useful-ai-
| tools.com/tools/satellite-analysis-dem... ) on Ultra High and
| it detected all of them.
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(page generated 2026-03-11 23:01 UTC)