AIS receiver on android for a tenner?

[GHA]

This looks very interesting..

http://blog.videgro.net/2017/01/ships/

VIDEGRO’s Ships is a free Android application which allows you to receive AIS information directly from ships in your neighbourhood using a cheap DVB-T-DAB-FM / RTL-SDR receiver.

The dongles can be had for less that a tenner on ebay, I had one anyway so it's calibrating itself now. On the go cable needed as well .

Nice feature of being able to send the data over wifi so you should be able to see it on a laptop with the likes of opencpn.

But will it work..........

 

[RobbieW]

In similar vein, having been reading your other thread thats drifted into OpenPlotter; do you know if the RTL-SDR handling software included with the OpenPlotter image is single or dual frequency ?

 

[GHA]

In similar vein, having been reading your other thread thats drifted into OpenPlotter; do you know if the RTL-SDR handling software included with the OpenPlotter image is single or dual frequency ?

Looks like it's single channel..
http://sailoog.dozuki.com/Guide/Connecting+and+calibrating+SDR-AIS+dongles/3

 

[rogerthebodger]

This looks very interesting..

http://blog.videgro.net/2017/01/ships/



The dongles can be had for less that a tenner on ebay, I had one anyway so it's calibrating itself now. On the go cable needed as well .

Nice feature of being able to send the data over wifi so you should be able to see it on a laptop with the likes of opencpn.

But will it work..........

Just received a DVB-T-DAB-FM / RTL-SDR receiver that I am planning to use to receive weather satellite pictures using a home built QFH antenna.

 

[GHA]

Just received a DVB-T-DAB-FM / RTL-SDR receiver that I am planning to use to receive weather satellite pictures using a home built QFH antenna.

That sounds very cool - what computer will you use onboard? I've thought about giving it a go with a raspberry pi one day maybe.

If you have an android tablet this app is a good one - http://sdrtouch.com/

Fun to play around with but also very handy for tracking down RF noise on the boat.

 

[Norman_E]

Those cheap dongles seem to be made to use on a PC. I run open CPN on my on board computer, so can I use a dongle like that to get AIS data for Open CPN?

 

[GHA]

Those cheap dongles seem to be made to use on a PC. I run open CPN on my on board computer, so can I use a dongle like that to get AIS data for Open CPN?

Looks like it, there's a plugin for just that. Haven't tried it but should work

https://opencpn.org/OpenCPN/plugins/rtlsdr.html

 

[pagoda]

Now that is fascinating stuff. Strange the maritime hardware business is not only miles astern but costs megabucks by comparison. My old plotter (10" screen) doesn't know about NMEA AIS and no firmware updates exist!! This might serve

 

[agurney]

That sounds very cool - what computer will you use onboard? I've thought about giving it a go with a raspberry pi one day maybe.

If you have an android tablet this app is a good one - http://sdrtouch.com/

Fun to play around with but also very handy for tracking down RF noise on the boat.

The Raspberry Pi doesn't have a real time clock, so downloaded charts and images via SDR (wefax & satellite) tend to wander a bit and are a bit hit and miss. On the plus side, SDR lets you control the bandwidth so you can monitor both AIS channels at the same time .. though I've never had any success as I live inland, and (nearly) nobody uses AIS within range of the boat. However, If you want to know who's messing up the lovely blue sky with contrails ADS-B works a treat.

 

[prv]

The Raspberry Pi doesn't have a real time clock

You can buy a little module to add it, though, barely larger than the button cell that keeps the clock ticking. It does occupy a couple of pins (without checking, I assume it's the I2C ones) but a lot of marine stuff wouldn't be using those anyway.

Pete

 

[agurney]

You can buy a little module to add it, though, barely larger than the button cell that keeps the clock ticking. It does occupy a couple of pins (without checking, I assume it's the I2C ones) but a lot of marine stuff wouldn't be using those anyway.

Pete

You can have several devices on the I2C bus (up to 128 I believe).
I already use I2C for GPS, temperature and pressure, and am looking at adding voltage, so there are marine uses out there

 

[ottow]

A GPS (if connected) can supply pretty accurate time to the PI.
https://www.lammertbies.nl/comm/info/GPS-time.html

Openplotter in the latest version has this built-in.

 

[RobbieW]

A GPS (if connected) can supply pretty accurate time to the PI.
https://www.lammertbies.nl/comm/info/GPS-time.html

Openplotter in the latest version has this built-in.

Thanks for that info & wow! you deserve a prize for the longest gap between joining and first post - welcome

 

[pagoda]

You can have several devices on the I2C bus (up to 128 I believe).
I already use I2C for GPS, temperature and pressure, and am looking at adding voltage, so there are marine uses out there

I2C is a remarkably versatile but short range data bus. However, things like hardware address clashes do detract from it's friendliness. The 128 devices is very optimistic- you couldn't get that many devices close enough to work properly !

 

[agurney]

A GPS (if connected) can supply pretty accurate time to the PI.
https://www.lammertbies.nl/comm/info/GPS-time.html

Openplotter in the latest version has this built-in.

Thanks, looks interesting, however the clock that I was referring to was for the timing for decoding APT and Wefax signals; I'm not convinced that GPS will help with that .. but I'll give it a bash.