Marine Traffic AIS plugin for OpenCPN?

[sinbad8]

I am in talks with Marine Traffic,one of the largest developers/providers of AIS targets around the world,with a hope to be able to offer a world-wide AIS plugin for the popular OpenCPN nav. prog.

The AIS coverage,by internet and now also by satellite across the oceans,is considerable,as you can see by the attached screen-dumps.

The idea would be to offer AIS services at different stages,depending upon requirements of the users.

1. The BASIC plugin would display ALL the present Internet based targets,sometimes with time delays for free,as presently offered generally bu Marine Traffic and others.

2. At a monthly payment of US 13.- you will have world-wide AIS Satellite access for one specific ship/yacht in order to be able to follow her across the world´s oceans.

3. A monthly fee,depending upon how many yachts are involved in for example an offshore regatta,will give the organizers and others full access to the movement and progress of the fleet.

4. Yachting clubs may wish to take out a monthly membership for all their members in the name of the club,for special events or for specific periods.

Such a feature in OpenCPN would be of great interest to family and friends,yachting clubs and boat delivery companies and new owners who can follow the progress of the deliveries.

Although the OpenCPN rules of plugins states that no fees/cost must be a condition of any plugin,a small,initial fee could be charged for the construction of the plugin,perhaps also paid monthly?

The reason for this entry is to get an idea of how many are interested in such a plugin,to make the effort worthwhile.

Tore

[TheOffice]

How would the data get to the laptop/tablet? I have a daisy AIS or I would be interested. I just need to know about the boats around me. Don't care about what is going on in Singapore.

[sinbad8]

Here is a suggested layout for the display of:

1. All ship targets via internet,possible delays. FREE

2. 1 ship only,target via satellite AIS. Subscription US$ 13.-p.m.

3. Several ships can be included in `my fleet` Fee upon application
Targets by AIS satellite.

Map background will of course be in OpenCPN.

2. and 3. above requires that the vessel has an AIS transponder.

AIS TRANSPONDERS
Be safer, See and Be Seen! Receive and transmit AIS information.
With Class B AIS, you'll not only "see" AIS-equipped traffic, but be seen by them as well. With a transponder you have all the benefits of a dual-channel parallel AIS receiver plus a GPS receiver (and you have control over when and if you transmit vessel information).

Class B AIS allows recreational sail and power vessels, offshore racers, smaller commercial vessels, workboats and fishing vessels to increase their visibility even in extreme weather conditions or high-traffic environments and top generate a safety distress message to surrounding AIS equipment, including vessels, base-stations, and possibly SAR teams.

See attached examples... (order from YOUR dealer)


Tore

[sinbad8]

TheOffice..

For normal AIS traffic around you, an AIS receiver

The AIS targets from Marine Traffic can only be viewed within Internet range.

Say you are on a round the world trip,your people will be able to follow you even across the large oceans provided you have set up a subscription with MT.

Tore

[sinbad8]

Djerry.

For ONE thing,it´s good advertising,that such a large group of mariners are using their services.

Secondly,they will make money on any extra service ordered by the users.
Think about all the yachting clubs with regular off-shore regattas,the many round-the-world sailors who would want to invest $16.- per month so their people at home could follow their tracks by satellite.

There are also,like me,a large number of past sailors, who would enjoy following friends and associates on their way across the oceans.

Small amounts to pay for security,when you consider what you spend on your boat otherwise.

Marine Traffic seems to be interested,so we´ll see. So far not so much interest shown by CF readers,only 150 views.

Tore

[netizen]

Hi Tore,

I think this is brilliant idea. I have family sailing around the globe and I'd sure like to monitor their position from opencpn, with all the bells and whistles I'm used to, instead of MarineTraffic's website.
Count me in!

[sinbad8]

Netizen... Unfortunately, you seem to be the only one who support seniors and landlubbers,old sailors,now become ´armchair sailors. In fact the mighty powers of the OpenCPN brigade seems to despise everybody with their sails down and engines stopped.

There are MANY reasons for porting AIS targets onto OCPN.

1.Family and friends
2.See the traffic in destination ports
3.Search for other sailor friends afloat
4.Yachting clubs,searching for their boats
5.Following deep-sea regattas. (or local for that matter)
6.For yachtie´s security across the oceans (with transducers)
7.Finally... Why the hell not???

The largest source of AIS targets comes from Marine Traffic,they have free internet based services and also satellite based AIS services at a supplement. They also have their own system for receiving AIS data for plugins.

Tore

[netizen]

I know.
I've started looking into it for myself (that is monitoring a target ship moves). It seems they sell data exports, but you can freely access the HTML version at http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/index/positions/all/mmsi:<target MMSI> and parse it. That's what I'll probably do if you don't go on with your plugin idea.

Now for the opencpn plugin side of things, I've never coded one before and I'm not sure how I could integrate this information best…
It seems a dedicated layer would be the way to go, yet I'd like to use the existing track stuff (after all, this is just a track of a remote ship).
If you have any insight about that part, I'd be happy to hear it!

[sinbad8]

Here´s the link to Marine Traffic describing how their API connection works to query their AIS data.


AIS API Documentation | AIS Marine Traffic


All we need is a small plugin. ANYONE??


Tore

[netizen]

Sweet. :-)
Let me have a look into it…

I take it you don't plan to code the plugin yourself?

[netizen]

I've tried a couple API service options to get pricing: there's nothing of interest for me that would come for free (vessels in a small area, short-term track history for a single vessel), even using low frequency updates.
APIs are nice, but why would I bother when I can just parse the free data offered through HTML?

[PamlicoTraveler]

Did this ever happen? I am interested in seeing AIS data within OpenCPN and I stumbled on this thread to see if it existed. I don't need it for navigational purposes - I just like to see where my friends are.