Everstra Overlay Free
On-camera text and graphic overlay management for Axis cameras. Rendered directly on the video stream by the camera hardware — no PC, no cloud, no external software required. Nothing phones home during operation — no telemetry, no analytics, no account.
Captions in your language, third parties in plain sight NEW IN 0.6.0
The captions the AIS, Water Levels, Weather and Text overlays show in the image can be pre-filled from a list of 12 languages — one field at a time or a whole panel at once — and stay freely editable; the camera stores the finished text, and the settings pages themselves remain in English. The privacy page now says at the top how many third-party services Overlay talks to, highlighted, with each one listed below.
Deleting media and restoring a backup no longer need a licence, as in Everstra Capture — but nothing the app shows is unlocked without one. This release also closes security gaps found in our own review. Release notes 0.6.0
Premium modules: AIS Ship Tracker and Water Levels
Two optional modules, each with its own free licence, activated online like the app itself: the AIS Ship Tracker (since 0.3.4) — real-time vessel tracking with an interactive map, ship symbols, true-to-scale silhouettes and automatic view switching — and Water Levels (since 0.4.0) — tide times, the current level with its trend, a tide curve, a map with nearby stations and the water temperature, from BSH and PEGELONLINE or an uploaded BSH tide file. Online activation and optional update notifications came with 0.5.0.
Now Axis-signed
Everstra Overlay is now a digitally signed ACAP application, countersigned by Axis Communications. The camera verifies the signature against Axis’s own trust chain — from the device’s firmware up to the application — before the app runs, and it installs even on cameras configured to reject unsigned apps. That makes it ready for use in professional and corporate camera networks.
What it does
- Text overlays with crawl animation — scrolling text rendered at 25 fps via the Skia rendering engine and the Graphics2 DMA-BUF pipeline. Left-to-right or right-to-left, with 10 speed levels
- Graphic overlays — place PNG images anywhere on the video stream, with configurable position, size and corner radius
- Weather overlay — live conditions from Open-Meteo in five layouts (compact, current + clock, sunrise/sunset, wind, and a detailed multi-value card). No API key or account required. Per-overlay units, language, colour scheme, time format and font, with automatic day/night icons. Off by default: switching it on takes an explicit confirmation, because the camera then sends the coordinates you configured to Open-Meteo — a third-party service
- AIS Ship Tracker (premium module) — real-time vessel tracking from an AIS receiver on your network: harbour monitoring with arrivals and departures, a departed log that lists each vessel once, berth assignment by berth lines, and an interactive map with ship symbols and silhouettes
- Water Levels (premium module) — tide times, current level with trend, tide curve and a map with nearby stations, from BSH and PEGELONLINE or an uploaded BSH tide file; includes water temperature
- Up to 5 text, 5 graphic and 2 weather overlays, each with its own settings — the camera limits how many overlays can be active at the same time
- Time variables in text overlays — embed the current date and time using placeholders like #YYYY, #MM, #DD, #hh, #mm, #ss
- Media Manager — upload, rename and delete images and fonts, on internal storage or SD card
- Scheduler — weekly plan per overlay, 24-hour matrix with per-hour control, sunrise/sunset automation, and date exceptions
- Backup & Restore — export and import all overlay, scheduler and media settings as JSON; download all media files as a ZIP archive
- Stream-based live preview — see exactly what the overlay looks like on the video stream, directly in the browser
- Web UI accessible directly from the camera's settings page — no separate app or login required
- Auto-save — all settings are persisted immediately
- Dark mode
- Privacy manager: every connection Overlay opens, at a glance — exportable, always visible
Requirements
- Axis camera with ACAP support. AXIS OS 11.11 (LTS 2024) or later
- Architecture: aarch64 (most current models) or armv7hf — see the list of supported models
- A license key — free, activated online in one click (or by e-mail without internet), bound to camera hardware
Screenshots
Dashboard / Modules
Graphic Overlay
Scheduler
Media Manager