AIS Alarm

[Lonnie]

AIS Alarm
I am using CPN for navigation and would like to include AIS with the system. But I do not alway leave my laptop turned on during long passages to save on electrical usage.

Is there anyway I can set up an alarm to the AIS system that would be activated if an AIS signal would be received by my antenna, while my laptop is turned off?

Thanks, for any info.

Lonnie

[denverd0n]

Not exactly sure what you mean here. I would think it is pretty obvious that, if you are using the laptop to interpret and plot AIS contacts, then it can't alarm you if it is off. So, do you have some sort of stand-alone AIS receiver that you could connect to a stand alone chart plotter and/or other AIS display unit?

Or are you looking for some sort of black box that sits between the AIS receiver and the laptop, and sets off an alarm anytime it receives any AIS signal? I don't know of any device that works like that, but I'd bet that some of the hams I know could homebrew one if they wanted to (not me, though).

[Lonnie]

Thanks for your respone. Yes, I am looking for a "black box" that would activate an alarm should an AIS signal be received. This would allow me to leave my laptop off to minimize electrical usage.

Should the alarm be activated by an AIS signal, if necessary, I can than turn on my laptop for additional information on the ship that set off the alarm.

I have to believe there is some device that would fit this need in alarming you to conserve electric in not continuously running CPN on your laptop.

Any additional input would be great.

Lonnie

[xymotic]

I **think** you could do this with maretron, but it would be quite expensive. And this scenario is pretty much exactly what the Vesper units are designed for.


Not really a black box, but it would do what you want with minimal power.

The other way would be to use a Standard horizon vhf 2000 and setup an alarm on it, but you have the same problem, do you normally leave VHF on on a long passage?

[conachair]

Fairly sure there's nothing off the shelf. You'll need a black box to turn the signal from the antenna into nmea which opencpn can understand anyway, so maybe someone who knows could make up a little box based around an arduino board or something which would watch the nmea for some ais data and ring a buzzer if it saw any.