John. I was actually thinking of getting the SR-161 which seems to have
LED lights already.
I notice they are now producing a CLASS B
AIS transponders for recreational boats.
Price isn't too bad, $1500:
http://www.sealinks.net/SL162BPage.htm
As for the programming, I have a program that will decipher all of the VDM messages, including the ones that are multi sentences but I am just using the sample files from
Fugawi and NASA as input. I'm waiting for a
NMEA multiplexer/combiner that I ordered before trying to send the AIS to ARPA translated messages to my
Furuno radar.
Now trying to figure out how to do the programming to figure out the CPA (Closest Point of Approach). Ie: if you know the lat/long, SOG and COG for two boats, how do you predict how close they will come to one another?
Paul