What equipment and software do I need to cover my Area from the shore?
Obtain an AIS receiver, hook up an external VHF antenna and connect to the internet. Here are the three steps:
1. Hardware
AIS receiver
Buy one from a local marine electronics shop or order one online. The following devices (with serial and/or USB output) are popular in our network of AIS stations and can be easily found in many online stores:
- Digital Yacht AIS receivers Digital Yacht Europe and Digital Yacht US
- COMAR SLR200 www.comarsystems.com,
- EasyAIS www.easyais.com
- USR-TCP232-401
- USR-TCP232
- ‘Digi One SP’ Serial to Ethernet Converter
- Netcom Serial Device Servers
- Moxa NPort Device Servers
- …and many other similar devices available in the market
Aerial
2. Software – only needed if you are using a PC
If you are using an AIS Receiver connected to a PC you will also need software for processing and uploading the data to us.
Alternatively, you can use the following program: – Shipplotter. There are instructions on how to setup ShipPlotter to share to us here http://pocketmariner.com/?p=1675
3.Connect to the internet
Configure your device or software to send the data to the following destination and port :-
Please contact us if you need help on setting the connection up. I am already using ShipPlotter software. How can I contribute? If you already have an AIS receiving station and you are using the ShipPlotter software to process and publish your data, then you can easily send us your data as well without interrupting your current setup. Just configure ShipPlotter to send the data to our server too. Go to ‘I/O settings’ and locate the ‘UDP peer-to-peer output section’. Enable the output to Remote IP ‘54.225.113.225‘, Remote port 5322. That’s it. The same settings may apply to other chart-plotter programs capable of processing AIS messages.