Using a hudl for budget AIS

[misterjenkins]

I recently came across an android app that allows the hudl to receive ais through a £15 USB TV decoder, is not something I've heard much about, so thought it might be worth sharing.

The app is called AIS Share, I've got the hudl connected via a USB 'on the go' lead to a RTL-SDR USB stick ( you can find them on eBay, starting from a couple of quid) this then has a coax adaptor that plugs into a splitter and then onto the vhf antenna.

The app decodes the AIS signals and shares them over WiFi. As I run OpenCPN on the hudl, this displays the AIS targets on the chart.

So far, I've only had it running in the boat yard, but picked up about 15 AIS transmitters, the furthest of these were about 5 miles away, but these were the other side of Falmouth, so I'm expecting much better range at sea.

Is anyone else using this sort of setup? I'm really happy with it so far, and AIS for about £25 (the app, the USB stick and the leads to join it up) seems like a good deal

 

[prv]

I have "proper" AIS on the boat, but at one point I did fancy the idea of having a receiver connected to my computer (mostly for geek value ) and bought one of those eminently hackable TV sticks for the purpose.

In practice I got bored before getting that far, so it's good to hear that more streamlined software is becoming available to replace all the fiddling that I was doing :encouragement:

I have a vague notion of repurposing my receiver as a software-controlled VHF scanner; I did once manage to receive Southampton VTS on it with the aid of some rather messy ham-radio tools, so the hardware is capable. Just needs a nice Mac front-end for nosy boaty types rather than hard-core radio geeks . But the odds of me ever getting off my arse and doing that are slim, if I'm honest

Pete

 

[Alpha22]

I got a TV stick working on a Windows laptop and it passed the AIS to openCPN... with a bit of jiggery pokery.

It worked OK... Then I bought a proper transponder...

 

[alteredoutlook]

I recently came across an android app that allows the hudl to receive ais through a £15 USB TV decoder, is not something I've heard much about, so thought it might be worth sharing.

The app is called AIS Share, I've got the hudl connected via a USB 'on the go' lead to a RTL-SDR USB stick ( you can find them on eBay, starting from a couple of quid) this then has a coax adaptor that plugs into a splitter and then onto the vhf antenna.

The app decodes the AIS signals and shares them over WiFi. As I run OpenCPN on the hudl, this displays the AIS targets on the chart.

So far, I've only had it running in the boat yard, but picked up about 15 AIS transmitters, the furthest of these were about 5 miles away, but these were the other side of Falmouth, so I'm expecting much better range at sea.

Is anyone else using this sort of setup? I'm really happy with it so far, and AIS for about £25 (the app, the USB stick and the leads to join it up) seems like a good deal

An interesting idea for those that don't already have ais coming through their vhfs. However, for those that do its not that difficult to output the AIS NMEA data from the vhf (or existing boat network) via a simple serial to usb cable and then OTG cable into your android device. There are several android apps which can then display the data, one of which is OpenCPN, can be used as a chart plotter.

 

[boggybrn]

I bought a USB TV decoder and have connected it to a Raspberry Pi running OpenCPN. It seems to work - I tracked a couple of ships in the Solent from home.
I also found that Raymarine transmit several AIS signals from their offices 3 miles away!

My aim is to get a set of instrumentation running on the Pi, then to use one or more cheap tablets as displays.

 

[GHA]

An interesting idea for those that don't already have ais coming through their vhfs. However, for those that do its not that difficult to output the AIS NMEA data from the vhf (or existing boat network) via a simple serial to usb cable and then OTG cable into your android device. There are several android apps which can then display the data, one of which is OpenCPN, can be used as a chart plotter.

A cheap raspberry pi can do that over wifi as well.