Tag: AIS Share

RTL SDR AIS RECEIVER

WHAT IS IT ?

It is an Android app that decodes AIS messages transmitted by vessels , ships, over radio using a cheap USB DVB-T / RTL-SDR stick.

AIS messages are transmitted over VHF.
Channel A: 161.975 MHz
Channel B: 162.025 MHz.
The app decodes both channels simultaneously.
This app needs no internet connection, it decodes the real time received messages.
This is a truly standalone full featured AIS receiver.

The received messages will be translated into NMEA0183 strings which can be forwarded then via UDP or TCP streaming to third-party apps, PC programs or other devices.
Such Apps can display the received AIS data for example on a map along with information about the received objects.

Please note: The app needs additional (very cheap) hardware to receive the radio signals.

Continue reading RTL SDR AIS RECEIVER

AIS Receiver Shopping Guide

What’s needed

What is necessary to build an cheap 2 channel AIS receiver with your Android phone, tablet, TV-Box.

In this post I will show you buying links to components like USB Cable, RTL-SDR Dongle, Antenna.

Estimate total costs from 15€ to 40€ with good hardware components from Aliexpress. Could be the half if you already have some components.

Continue reading AIS Receiver Shopping Guide

Practical Boat Owner Test AIS Share

David Berry from Practical Boat Owner shows how to make an AIS receiver with an Android Phone or Tablet and a RTL-SDR.com dongle. He use AIS Share to stream data to Boat Beacon a very popular chart navigation app. In his article he provides information about the technical background of AIS( automatic information system) and he is describing how he build a cheap AIS Receiver with a RTL-SDR Dongle and my App. The full article was issued in the February 2019 edition. https://www.pbo.co.uk/publication/pbo/february-2019

A similar tutorial on setting up AIS Share and Boat Beacon can be found here, or here https://ebctech.eu/is-app-xy-compatible-with-ais-share/

Or just watch my YouTube video about AIS SHARE and BoatBeacon

Using AIS Share and OpenCPN on sailboat

How all started

I live by the river. Especially in summer time sitting at the terrace and seeing all this nice river cruise ships travelling by, it comes to my mind, that it could be interesting to know a little bit more about these ships. At this time I knew about the possibility of tracking live airplane positions, but for ships? Soon I also found some similar pages in the internet, where you can watch vessel positions – but my region wasn’t covered. So i investigated a little bit more time and I found the amazing blog http://www.rtl-sdr.com/. The blog is absolute fantastic; showing several different applications what can be done with a so called RTL-SDR dongle. So in august 2015 I created a first Android app for decoding AIS ship positions.

Continue reading Using AIS Share and OpenCPN on sailboat