AIS, WiFi and quite a bit more for £80

[Bigplumbs]

Although I only have a small one I quite like the idea of AIS on my boat as it is quite interesting to see what vessels are doing etc.

I was looking at this which you can buy for about £80 and interface it via NMEA.

http://www.quark-elec.com/products/marine/146-qk-a024

There are other models that do somewhat more but this one would do me. Anyone any experience of them

Dennis

 

[Hurricane]

I bought one of these to play with.
http://www.quark-elec.com/products/marine/139-qk-a021
I couldn't get it working but I didn't spend very long on it.
I thought it might give a cheap AIS feed into an Android tablet.

 

[Bigplumbs]

I bought one of these to play with.
http://www.quark-elec.com/products/marine/139-qk-a021
I couldn't get it working but I didn't spend very long on it.
I thought it might give a cheap AIS feed into an Android tablet.

I think you would need the WiFi one to connect to the Tablet. That one is for a computer.

Now I am semi retired I like having a mess around with these sort of things, If I had more cash to waste on them I would be terrible

Dennis

 

[Oscar24]

That looks like one of them USB dongles with an RTL chip set in for digi tv reception.
See here for more info
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/
I used one for aircraft adsb reception, was amazed it actually worked quite well. Interesting to play with and very cheap.

Replying to Hurricanes post

 

[Hurricane]

I think you would need the WiFi one to connect to the Tablet. That one is for a computer.

Now I am semi retired I like having a mess around with these sort of things, If I had more cash to waste on them I would be terrible

Dennis

Join the club
Yes - it is important to keep the old grey matter working.
Doing silly projects does that for me.
Sometimes I even think they are useful projects.
Raspberry Pis, Arduino and more recently a very serious look at Linux software
I am beginning to really hate Windows - a move to Linux is a possibility - that the kind of thing that keeps the brain exercised.

 

[Hurricane]

That looks like one of them USB dongles with an RTL chip set in for digi tv reception.
See here for more info
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/
I used one for aircraft adsb reception, was amazed it actually worked quite well. Interesting to play with and very cheap.

Replying to Hurricanes post

Yep - I had a go with the RTL chip - I think I tried two of them.
I remember getting one of them to receive AIS onto OpenCPN on my Windows PC a couple of years ago.
It didn't work very well for me but I didn't give it a very good antenna.
I expected the Quark one to work better - BTW - the plan was to connect it to the USB port on the Tablet.
The plan was to get AIS on the Tablet using OpenCPN - OpenCPN itself works - it was the AIS receiver bit that didn't.
Again, it could have been an antenna problem - as I said above, I didn't give it the time it deserved.

 

[Oscar24]

Yep - I had a go with the RTL chip - I think I tried two of them.
I remember getting one of them to receive AIS onto OpenCPN on my Windows PC a couple of years ago.
It didn't work very well for me but I didn't give it a very good antenna.
I expected the Quark one to work better - BTW - the plan was to connect it to the USB port on the Tablet.
The plan was to get AIS on the Tablet using OpenCPN - OpenCPN itself works - it was the AIS receiver bit that didn't.
Again, it could have been an antenna problem - as I said above, I didn't give it the time it deserved.

Interesting, that should have worked???
Maybe worth having the dongle away from the laptop / tablet using an extender cable?
Could be local RF interference generated from the laptop / tablet blocking the dongles front end?

 

[Hurricane]

Interesting, that should have worked???
Maybe worth having the dongle away from the laptop / tablet using an extender cable?
Could be local RF interference generated from the laptop / tablet blocking the dongles front end?

Maybe
Perhaps I should have another go sometime.

 

[Bigplumbs]

Now I was going to mess with all this then I looked at the app store and downloaded this 'Marine Trafic' to my Iphone for £4.99 looks very good

Dennis

 

[prv]

Now I was going to mess with all this then I looked at the app store and downloaded this 'Marine Trafic' to my Iphone for £4.99 looks very good

Do be aware that there can be some lag on that - fine if you just want to see what’s going on for curiosity’s sake, but be cautious about trying to use it for collision avoidance.

Pete

 

[Bigplumbs]

Do be aware that there can be some lag on that - fine if you just want to see what’s going on for curiosity’s sake, but be cautious about trying to use it for collision avoidance.

Pete

No not for collision avoidance al all. Anyway I boat around Felixstowe so not many big uns around there

Dennis

 

[elton]

Unless I'm missing something, they don't appear to broadcast an AIS signal from the host vessel.

 

[Bigplumbs]

Unless I'm missing something, they don't appear to broadcast an AIS signal from the host vessel.

Correct those are just Receivers. My boats are no more than 20 ft long so would not want to transmit. There are already too many small craft transmitting AIS in my opinion

Dennis