Ais on seaclear

[pandos]

I am considering buying the seaclear charts from Visit My Harbour on a dongle. As I understand things I can mess with these at home on my laptop and put them on my Android phone and tablet for use on board, both of which have built in GPS, subject to downloading marine navigator.

But what are my options for Ais. I have a raspberry pi2 that is not being used and I wonder if I used this to produce ais info over wifi could I overlay this on the seaclear chart on the tablet and phone.

Also is it possible to have the pi2 when connected to a screen to repeat the seaclear/Marine Navigator if linked over wifi.

I know very little about this computer stuff but I had a hand held PC 10 years ago that was perfect for use from my pocket, the thought of Ais on a convenient format with charts is very appeaing.

I have two separate stand alone plotters that I will leave untouched.

Tony

 

[Steve_N]

I use the VHM chartset (plus Antares charts) with Seaclear and the Marine Nvaigator app, but I don't have AIS so can't give you the definitive answer, but I think it's like this:

- Seaclear on the PC can show AIS info but it needs to receive it as NMEA over a COM port.
- Marine Navigator on Android doesn't appear (I've looked through all its settings etc.) to encompass AIS at all.

 

[GHA]

I am considering buying the seaclear charts from Visit My Harbour on a dongle. As I understand things I can mess with these at home on my laptop and put them on my Android phone and tablet for use on board, both of which have built in GPS, subject to downloading marine navigator.

But what are my options for Ais. I have a raspberry pi2 that is not being used and I wonder if I used this to produce ais info over wifi could I overlay this on the seaclear chart on the tablet and phone.

Also is it possible to have the pi2 when connected to a screen to repeat the seaclear/Marine Navigator if linked over wifi.

I know very little about this computer stuff but I had a hand held PC 10 years ago that was perfect for use from my pocket, the thought of Ais on a convenient format with charts is very appeaing.

I have two separate stand alone plotters that I will leave untouched.

Tony

Yes and no.....

By the looks of it the marine navigator program which visitmyharbour use on android doesn't support AIS.
But.... there are other options to display AIS on an android tablet (IS your tablet android?) A open source program called opencpn has one of the best displays of AIS around with a very good graphical display of what's going on. Downside is it won't read visitmyharbour charts, but you can get charts for it or even just use the very low res land charts which come with it .
Raspberry Pi is good news, there's another opensource piece of software called Openplotter,, http://www.sailoog.com/en/openplotter
which makes setting up very easy, you don't even need a screen, use your tablet. It will let you take a feed from your AIS & GPS then broadcast it over Wifi. Unfortuanately it won't run your visitmyharbour charts either.

It's all not that difficult , with lots of help online.

 

[MM5AHO]

I use VMH Seaclear charts, and import AIS via bluetooth from a home made interface from the AIS transceiver. AIS info shows nicely on the chart as you'd expect.

 

[pandos]

Thanks for the replies. Seaclear is really the best option for me , that suggestion of importing from Bluetooth would be a runner if wifi does not work. I can put Bluetooth on the pi2 ( I think). I will be back in a few months with results.

Open CL with the open chart looks interesting but does not cover my end of the
World.
Tony