group buy: AIS receivers

[micoverde]

(posted this in main forum as well)

Some yachting friends and I have put together a group purchase of NASA marine (UK company) "automatic information system" receivers.

Basically these units pick up continual broadcasts from commercial shipping (via your VHF ant) and pass it along to your navigation software. There are several companies offering software to support AIS -- Nobeltec VNS 8.0 etc but software will be included with this unit as well as a power cord and serial interface cable.

We're shooting for a purchase price of around $200 per unit -- Nobeltec sells the exact unit in their online store for $330 currently.

Link to the manufacturer's site:

http://www.nasamarine.com/AIS/AISENGINE.html

More info about the A.I.S standard from USCG:
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/enav/ais/default.htm

Anyone interested can send me an email: micoverde@gmail.com

Here's a link to a screenshot of what it looks like when integrated with Nobeltec VNS (supported in new VNS 8.x):

http://www.milltechmarine.com/images/VNS.gif

[Weyalan]

You can buy the NASA AIS engine on Ebay "Buy it Now" for 119 UK pounds, which is equivalent to US$207 or AUD$290

The site has a whole range of NASA gear for pretty cheap. I have purchased from them, and had absolutely no problems (I bought the NASA Clipper GPS repeater for 75 UK pounds, or US$131

If you are patient, you will probably be able to bid and win the AIS engine for less than the aforementioned price.

The site address is http://stores.ebay.com.au/Online-Ma...sQ3amesstQQtZkm

[micoverde]

Found it: http://stores.ebay.com.au/Online-Marine-Mart

That's a pretty good price for the AIS engine -- about $10 USD cheaper than the one I originally purchased from another UK reseller.

[Talbot]

I was not a great fan of the concept of AIS as I believed it to be inferior to radar. I have to report that I have totally changed my mind following experience of the AIS engine connected to a laptop, and the display then shown by 3rd part software. This software takes the reported GPS positions and your own (fed into a serial link on the AIS engine) and does CPA calculations, It displays results over a satellite world picture and is quite cheap (dont have the name of it, but wil find out and post it here as I will be buying it myself)

[Sandero]

I like the AIS concept but perfer to be able to display the info on my C80 raymarine. I am not certain that this engine will do that and so I wait for one that does.

Jef
sv Shiva
Contest 36s

[Talbot]

promised to post this earlier:

Check out http://www.shipplotter.com/ for a good way of displaying the output from AIS onto charts and getting CPA data via a laptop.