findaredbox.kbots.tech: Mapping the Ghosts of Redbox Kiosks

🧠 Why I Built This

Redbox may be going the way of the DVD itself—but the machines are still out there. Some are still operational, others have been shut off, removed, or never even deployed. And after the company's bankruptcy and shifting digital priorities, their official locator isn’t exactly built to remember them all.

So I built findaredbox.kbots.tech:
A searchable, filterable, user-editable map of Redbox kiosks—past and present.

This is less a locator and more a preservation tool. A mix of modern web mapping, a Node.js backend, and a little community collaboration to keep track of where the red kiosks once stood.

🔍 What It Does

Visit the site and you can:

• 🔎 Search by state, city, county, or market name
• ✅ Filter by status: Operational, Turned Off, Removed, Never Existed
• 🗺️ View kiosks on an interactive Leaflet map with clustering
• ✏️ Submit updates to kiosk status or notes (like error codes or closures)
• 🎥 Browse a database of movie and game titles once in the default catalog

It's part locator, part historical archive.

⚙️ The Stack

Backend:

• Node.js + Express
• MySQL with pooled connections
• Full-text search + field filters
• RESTful endpoints for /search, /movies, /update
• cron + mysqldump for daily automatic backups (rotated to retain the last 10)

Frontend:

• Pure HTML + JS + Tailwind CSS
• Interactive mapping via Leaflet + MarkerCluster
• Modals for editing kiosk entries
• URL query persistence for shared searches
• Responsive and mobile-friendly layout

Infrastructure:

• Self-hosted on kbots.tech
• Reverse-proxied, secured with HTTPS
• Database schema is private but available on request

📦 Community Contributions

This tool wouldn’t exist without help.
The kiosk dataset originated from @codeHusky on the Redbox Tinkering Discord, and geo-coordinates were refined by @briannw. I just turned it into something browsable.

If you’ve found a kiosk still operating (or vanished entirely), use the edit button to update its status and leave a note. No login required—just shared effort.

🧠 Challenges & Design Choices

• Editable fields without accounts: I allow kiosk updates via modal + POST endpoint, but sanitize all input and restrict status values to a whitelist.
• Database backups: A rotating system keeps the most recent 10 dumps for easy restore without bloating storage.
• Scalability: The entire app is light enough to run on a low-spec VM. No external services, no JS bloat, just data and maps.

🎬 Final Thoughts

findaredbox.kbots.tech is part tech demo, part digital archaeology. It’s a tool to track what’s left of a once-ubiquitous movie machine—and maybe even help others find one before they’re gone for good.

If you’re curious where the last Redboxes live—or just enjoy well-structured data that remembers what companies forget—you’ll probably get some use out of it.

🔗 Try it here
🛠️ Built with Node, Leaflet, MySQL, and caffeine