It was an honor to be visited by Fred Pot last week. Fred is a Dutch marine engineer and consultant who’s been involved in AIS from the beginning. He currently lives on the West Coast, represents the U.S. on a couple of international working groups, and maintains www.uais.org. He’s also started a company, SeaCAS, that’s about to introduce the SafePassage AIS receiver he’s holding at right (with an appropriate background of Maine fog, bigger here). The whole deal is inside the fiberglass tube: a dual frequency receiver with an AIS tuned VHF antenna, and a 16 channel WAAS/EGNOS GPS with its antenna. The four wire cable can either attach via USB for data to a PC, and power from it, or it can go to a small interface box with a power feed and 38.4kb NMEA 0183 output to a plotter/radar or a mix of displays. It’s going to cost $1,250 when it ships in August, but obviously is easy to install and needs no accessories. Other features: a receiver sensitivity rated at -107dBm, the ability to pass along all AIS messages, and the incorporation of dGPS corrections when within AIS range of differential ground stations. I’ll try to post a note when there’s more information and live ordering at SeaCAS.com, and I’ll have more entries soon based what I learned from Fred about the state of Class B and some surprising ways AIS may get used.
PS Yacht AIS, mentioned earlier, has released a final version of its Professional level software and is also now offering it bundled with a dual frequency TrueHeading AIS receiver/GPS for 729 Euros (you’ll also need VHF and GPS antennas).
Update, 6/7: Fred reports that while he was travelling, his engineers were able to “vastly improve SafePassage’s sensitivity by changing its appearance”. The new design will still be all-in-one but with an exposed whip antenna on top of a shorter pipe. He promises a picture as soon as available.
There’s an interesting thread about the Chinese-built SmartRadio AIS receiver (click ENG upper left when you get there) over at rec.boats.electronics, but I would caution readers that the $200 price cited seems to be introductory wholesale. (The dual channel SR 161 needs a distributor). A well informed poster named Holger notes that it “receives and processes all AIS messages, not just some like the NASA/Si-Tex Engine”. Holger is a principal in a German company called Yacht AIS which has developed two AIS plotting programs. The professional version can display some of the more arcane AIS messages like the weather station shown above. I’m making it a habit to ask folks at major marine electronics brands if they’re working on AIS (quite a category at Panbo these days). Every one says something like “oh yeah!”, and some are quite interested in how the Class B AIS standard will turn out.
PS: Yacht AIS is associated with a Swedish company, True Heading, which has good .pdf manuals for the SR 161 and its own AIS RX Yacht listener here (but no pricing).
One of the most interesting back stories in the marine electronics world is how the planet’s largest boatbuilder, Brunswick Corporation, bought up a series of companies like Navman and Northstar and formed a division called Brunswick New Technologies (BNT). The move sent shock waves through the big brands used to selling lots of product to Brunswick units like Sea Ray and Boston Whaler, or to their dealers. The presumption was that Brunswick boats would soon all come with electronics built, branded, and supported by the mother corporation. Navman, in fact, has the first color plotters and fishfinders to support SmartCraft, Mercury Marine’s (i.e., Brunswick’s) own version of NMEA 2000 CANbus. But I’ve been told that each Brunswick boatbuilder, sometimes each big dealer, is free to make their own decision about electronics packages, and there seem to be a variety of brands on new Brunswick boats. What do you all see out there? And why did BNT just acquire MX Marine, a small company solidly focussed on commercial AIS and dGPS, often under the Leica label? What’s the plan?
A reader from Sydney, Australia, wrote to say that he’s happily using a NASA AIS Receiver with a program I hadn’t heard of called Software on Board (SOB) from DigiBoat. I gave it a brief looksee, above and bigger here, and was impressed that SOB comes with a 15 MB C-Map world map that’s detailed enough for large area voyage planning. For actual navigation you need full detail C-Maps on a CD or memory card (which you can buy from DigiBoat, ergo the business model). On the other hand, it doesn’t support other chart types, and I found the interface a little difficult—no standard drop-down menus and oddities like those scroll bars in the data windows (probably related to my particular screen resolution/font setup). It’s totally irrelevant, but I also wonder if SOB is as common a swear in Australia as it was in the house I grew up in?
PS: SOB does require registration and a key to access all features, but it really is free at the moment (it may eventually become shareware).
Dan Fales has an interesting article on AIS use during last year’s Nordhavn Rally, and Maptech just posted a chart symbol test (actually a lead in to a new, and likely well done, reference guide).
The horrid run of foul weather has finally broken here, and I’m happily on Cape Cod for a few days of “researching” a cruising story…so posting may be irregular this week. I did have a couple of very illuminating conversations about AIS listeners last Friday that I want to start sharing. It seems that the technology is moving even faster than we realized; two reliable sources predict that most every brand of plotter will read AIS target messages by next February’s Miami Boat Show! I also heard an interesting report on receiver quality. One of my sources says he tested a SeaLinks RadarPlus dual channel listener against a low cost Chinese-built model, and—given the same antenna and circumstances—the RadarPlus “saw” twice as many targets at almost twice the range. I look forward to my own testing, and yours, but right now I have to go boating.
Comar has a new SLR100 single frequency AIS listener for £299 suggested UK retail (the SLR200 is £575). Since they now make both single and dual frequency, I asked them about the differences. It turns out that their receiver, unlike Nasa’s, automatically switches channels every minute. “The main reason behind this was that just occasionally we have seen ships with faulty transponders that are only transmitting on one channel, so we wanted to ensure we at least caught those some of the time.” The downside of this approach is that infrequent data—like an anchored ship’s name, sent on one frequency every 6 minutes—might slip by the auto switching for a long time.
I’m also learning that the AIS system allows “competent authorities” to manage frequency use in busy coastal areas (apparently the transponders can be remotely controlled by such authorities). Comar confirmed that “Authorized authorities can command individual or all vessels to shift to another frequency. Both the SLR100 and 200 use synthesized frequency controlled radios so that they can also shift frequency. Although the high seas frequencies for AIS will always be the default, it may be that as more congestion occurs in busy areas channel switching will become more prevalent, Tokyo Bay for instance use 2 local frequencies.” Thank you, Comar, for the information. Seems like the frequency issues are a little more complicated than they first appeared, and I intend to keep on digging.
Panbo—all AIS, all the time! I’m surprised to be writing so much on this subject, but there’s a lot going on, and you all seem so interested. Yesterday’s discovery was that ACR is giving away a PC simulation of its GlobalWatch Class A AIS set, an interesting all-in-one design that includes a qwerty keyboard. The software emulates all the machine’s functions, and thus is quite informative about the operational nuts and bolts of AIS, particularly its little discussed messaging and polling capabilities. There’s even a control panel that lets you manage the signals other vessels are sending. In this screen shot (bigger here), Dora has sent out a “Sinking!” alert and M/V Panbo responds (hey, it’s raining and ugly here). The software is in a zip file here, and seems quite safe and unobtrusive—I don’t think it writes even one line to your registry file.
I used to refer people to AISlive as a great way to learn what the technology is doing for marine safety, but unfortunately the revised public service has turned out to be rather limited. Yesterday I tried out a Xanatos Holding’s viewer and it accesses nearly as much data as AISlive used to (though it only covers the Vancouver, Canada, area). A bonus was spotting Le Grand Bleu, a remarkable 354’ megayacht that carries a 74'’ sloop as a tender! Xanatos is the developer of Titan AIS software, seems to be working on a Class B transponder, and has a good guide to AIS on its site. By the way, LGB’s AIS “static information” indicates that it’s a “Cargo” ship with a “77m” beam, which I imagine is a case of GIGO, the old database term for operator error, “garbage in, garbage out”.
Yesterday I was tickled to learn that Nasa’s AIS Radar and Engine will be marketed in U.S. under the well known Si-Tex brand (thanks, Pascal). That means U.S. sales and support. It also turns out that the Engine will put up AIS targets on a variety of Si-Tex plotters, like the Color Max below (just a mocked up screen). This AIS listener business is moving fast!
It was an honor to be visited by Fred Pot last week. Fred is a Dutch marine engineer and consultant who’s been involved in AIS from the beginning. He currently lives on the West Coast, represents the U.S. on a couple of international working groups, and maintains www.uais.org. He’s also started a company, SeaCAS, that’s about to introduce the SafePassage AIS receiver he’s holding at right (with an appropriate background of Maine fog, bigger here). The whole deal is inside the fiberglass tube: a dual frequency receiver with an AIS tuned VHF antenna, and a 16 channel WAAS/EGNOS GPS with its antenna. The four wire cable can either attach via USB for data to a PC, and power from it, or it can go to a small interface box with a power feed and 38.4kb NMEA 0183 output to a plotter/radar or a mix of displays. It’s going to cost $1,250 when it ships in August, but obviously is easy to install and needs no accessories. Other features: a receiver sensitivity rated at -107dBm, the ability to pass along all AIS messages, and the incorporation of dGPS corrections when within AIS range of differential ground stations. I’ll try to post a note when there’s more information and live ordering at SeaCAS.com, and I’ll have more entries soon based what I learned from Fred about the state of Class B and some surprising ways AIS may get used.
One of the most interesting back stories in the marine electronics world is how the planet’s largest boatbuilder, Brunswick Corporation, bought up a series of companies like Navman and Northstar and formed a division called Brunswick New Technologies (
The horrid run of foul weather has finally broken here, and I’m happily on Cape Cod for a few days of “researching” a cruising story…so posting may be irregular this week. I did have a couple of very illuminating conversations about AIS listeners last Friday that I want to start sharing. It seems that the technology is moving even faster than we realized; two reliable sources predict that most every brand of plotter will read AIS target messages by next February’s Miami Boat Show! I also heard an interesting report on receiver quality. One of my sources says he tested a SeaLinks 
Comar
Panbo—all AIS, all the time! I’m surprised to be writing so much on this subject, but there’s a lot going on, and you all seem so interested. Yesterday’s discovery was that 
