DashStar volunteer alert network
Helps bring people home. Forgets everything else.
DashStar is a dashcam computer that checks passing license plates against official public alerts, such as AMBER and Silver alerts. Plates that match nothing are designed to be thrown away inside the car within seconds.
Research prototype. No live network yet.
What DashStar is, and what it is not yet
DashStar is a research prototype that James Isaac Kay is building for their M.S. thesis. It is designed to read plates in dashcam video on a small computer in the vehicle and to compare them only with official public alerts.
There is no live network yet. No real-world match has happened, and accuracy has not been measured. This site explains how DashStar is meant to work and the promises it will be held to, before anyone else runs it.
How DashStar works and the six commitments say more.
What happens to a plate your camera sees
Almost every plate a dashcam sees belongs to someone who is not in any alert. DashStar is designed so those plates never leave the car.
Checked against active public alerts
- Each plate is compared on the device with the current list of official public alerts.
- Only a plate that matches an alert, along with the vehicle description, becomes a match event.
- As designed, a match event carries a cropped image, with other vehicles' plates and bystanders' faces blurred on the device, and the location and time of the sighting, because a sighting is useless without them. No video leaves the car. Nothing else ever carries a location, and drivers acknowledge this when they opt in.
- A person reviews every match before anyone is contacted. Drivers never follow or engage.
Thrown away in your car within seconds
- Every plate that matches nothing.
- The video around it.
- Where you drove. DashStar keeps no location trail. Only a match carries a location.
Try a sample check
An illustration of the idea, not real data. The plates are blank on purpose.
Most checks end like this: nothing matches, and every plate is thrown away in the car.
Where things stand
These numbers are small on purpose. They will be updated as they change, including when they look bad.
- Live network
- Not yet
- Volunteer cameras running
- 0
- Real-world matches
- 0
- Plate-read accuracy
- Not measured yet
- Volunteer reviewers
- 0. Sign-up is not open yet.
- Hosting cost for this site
- Expected near $0 a month while it stays static
- Revenue
- None. DashStar Network is free.
Last updated October 2026. See costs for detail.
Who runs it
DashStar is run by MOAT Safety, a Texas sole-proprietorship DBA of James Isaac Kay. James is an engineer and an M.S. candidate, and DashStar is their thesis project. During the pilot, James will review every match at the MOAT Safety desk.
Questions or ideas: dashstar@moatsafety.com.