Public live cameras (beaches, piers, streets, buoys, satellites) to check conditions yourself; each shows whether it is live, stale or offline.
Ocean
A curated list of public cameras: beach, pier and street streams on Koh Samui, the ferry route (Koh Phangan, Koh Tao), wider Thailand, the El Nino "front line" (Peru / Ecuador coast, Australia, Indonesia), NOAA buoy cameras in the open Pacific, and satellite "space cams". Every camera is published by its owner for public viewing (a venue's own YouTube channel, a webcam portal, a government agency).
Limits.
A camera sees a few hundred metres to a few km. It is a spot check, not a forecast.
Streams lag 5-60 s; still images lag 10-60 min (satellites) up to hours (buoys).
At night most cams show little or nothing (beach cams go dark, true-colour satellite images are black, buoy cams stop). Use the infrared satellite image at night.
Rain on the lens, sun glare and zoom make waves look smaller or bigger than they are.
Venues move, rename or stop streams without notice; a `reachable` stream can still be an off-air placeholder. Official warnings (TMD, Marine Department) always win.
No airport, Nathon pier or Donsak pier camera published by its owner was found; Windy webcams (needs a free key) may add some near Samui.
How to read it
Status badge (checked every 30-60 min):
`live` -- a still image with a timestamp younger than the cam's limit (buoys 3 h, satellites 1 h). The age is shown next to it.
`online` -- the provider's own page says the stream is up (SkylineWebcams).
`reachable` -- the stream is still published and embeddable, but we cannot tell from outside whether it is broadcasting right now: the player will show it.
`stale` -- the newest image is older than the limit. Treat it as a photo of the past, not of now.
`offline` / `error` -- removed, marked offline by the provider, or the check failed. "Last OK" says when it last worked.
Mode: `proxy` = still image we may show directly (NOAA, JMA); `embed` = the owner's own player (YouTube, Windy); `link` = open the official page (the provider does not allow reuse, e.g. SkylineWebcams).
Why tells you what the camera is good for (e.g. "sea state toward Koh Phangan").
Why it matters for Koh Samui
Forecasts and warnings tell you what is expected; a camera shows what is happening. Before a ferry, a look at the north-coast and Big Buddha cams shows whether the strait is white with breaking waves. In a flood or heavy-rain event the Chaweng and Lamai street cams show standing water. Haze (from fires in El Nino dry seasons) shows as a milky horizon.