New rtlsdr Plugin

[rgleason]

Rooie Dirk https://github.com/RooieDirk/rtl_ais
I tried to compile this and got some cmake errors. I wanted to see if it would work under windows. Just to confirm, is it a plugin for Opencpn? I put the opencpn.lib in build directory.

[rgleason]

I also found this version which is another development version which has more complete instructions for linux and windows installation.
https://github.com/duichan/rtlsdr_pi

Should I try to compile this one?
It would be helpful to understand more clearly the purpose of these with respect to Sean's version. Thanks.

[rgleason]

Duichan's version compiled and is packaged for windows
https://github.com/duichan/rtlsdr_pi

I have uploaded to Opencpn Beta File Thingie rguser rgpass
under the 4.1.718 Win PI directory. Find
rtlsdr_pi-0.13-ov4.1.718-duichan-win32
I have not had time to test it.

[rgleason]

Adrian Studer (dAISy) has new drivers posted on his github account that he is beta testing. Early results indicate greater sensitivity. Ask him which version to use for you decice.

[autumnbreeze27]

Looking for somebody to point me in the right direction.

I bought a rtl-sdr.com dongle off amazon for $25, it came with 2 crappy antennas. I am on a boat in a marina with AIS coming at me from all sides.

I was able to install sdrsharp running, could listen to local FM stations... then I tried to tune in the AIS freqs and thought I could see some signals, but I'm not sure I was able to get all of the settings right, and never got aismon working, I have the loopback on my PC setup properly, but didn't see a way to get it working.

I'm trying to help a buddy get AIS on his boat, so that's why I bought it, but I didn't do my research first and figured if the radio was software controlled that it wouldn't be this complicated.

I've tried going through this thread but there's been so many changes it's hard to know what the latest/easiest (if there is such a thing) solution is. At this point I'm going to tell him to just buy a VHF that is supported and hope I find a use for this thing somewhere off the coast of Mexico.

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by autumnbreeze27

Looking for somebody to point me in the right direction.

I bought a rtl-sdr.com dongle off amazon for $25, it came with 2 crappy antennas. I am on a boat in a marina with AIS coming at me from all sides.

I was able to install sdrsharp running, could listen to local FM stations... then I tried to tune in the AIS freqs and thought I could see some signals, but I'm not sure I was able to get all of the settings right, and never got aismon working, I have the loopback on my PC setup properly, but didn't see a way to get it working.

I'm trying to help a buddy get AIS on his boat, so that's why I bought it, but I didn't do my research first and figured if the radio was software controlled that it wouldn't be this complicated.

I've tried going through this thread but there's been so many changes it's hard to know what the latest/easiest (if there is such a thing) solution is. At this point I'm going to tell him to just buy a VHF that is supported and hope I find a use for this thing somewhere off the coast of Mexico.

Try to run rtl_fm and redirect the output to aisdecoder, or just rtl_ais (which is rtl_fm and aisdecoder combined decoding A and B) with the correct calibration coefficient.

The plugin for opencpn should do this automatically, but requires a lot of ais traffic to automatically determine the error coefficient, otherwise you can manually calibrate it.

[rgleason]

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post1877675

Adrian Studer (dAISy) has new drivers posted on his github account that he is beta testing. Early results indicate greater sensitivity. Ask him which version to use for your device.

https://www.tindie.com/products/astu...-ais-receiver/
https://github.com/astuder/dAISy
[POTM] dAISy - A Simple AIS Receiver - Projects - 43oh


I have downloaded and just had a chance to try the new more sensitive drivers and it is working much better. I am picking up more signals than before and they seem to be further away. It is hard to determine what the on-the-water performance is because I am doing this at the house, on the first floor, behind some trees, but the dAISy with this new program is definitely more sensitive. --This is using the same Coax Colinear Antenna as before.

Thank you Adrian, for your support and improvements.

[rgleason]

Sean, rtlsdr is creating some problem when the rtldsr.exe is in the plugins folder.
It causes Opencpn to freeze when Options > Plugins.

As a result I have had to remove it before being able to use any plugins.
On Windows.

[sbfreddie]

Originally Posted by rooiedirk

I've made a few changes to rtl_ais. There is a hacked version of the library on the net that gives a few extras.
. For the compiling there is now cmake. (Go to the build directory. do #cmake .. and then make.)
. added also rtl_test. this will allow to find the ppm. (rtl_test -p)
. added an option (-w) to enter a bandwidth. default is as narrow as possible.
. for linux the kernelmodule is now auto deattached. So no more blacklisting.
. the library is now compiled into the program. So only one executable file.

TODO
There is also a hack to increase the HF gain. would be nice.
Split the aisdecoder in a few seperated threads. I think this will increase the number of received sentences.

This version is on https://github.com/RooieDirk/rtl_ais

Dirk:
I am trying to build this version of rtl_ais, but the build dies during linking:

Linking C executable rtl_test
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lconvenience_static
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [src/rtl_test] Error 1
make[1]: *** [src/CMakeFiles/rtl_test.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2
Installing rtl_ais Failed

What is lib convenience_static?
What have I done wrong?

Thanks,
Freddie

[virtualground]

Like sbfreddie, I've had no luck trying to compile rooiedirk's version of rtl_ais.

There's a build script, but it stops immediately, claiming not to find files.

I went into rtl_ais-master/rtl-ais/src and did

cmake .

make

but got fatal error: libusb.h: No such file or directory

even though I have both libusb-dev and libusb-1.0-0-dev installed. It looks like there's an elaborate routine for finding a version of libusb in rtl_ais-master/rtl-ais/cmake/Modules, but it isn't working, or I don't know how to make it work.

This is too bad, as I like rooiedirk's idea of multithreading in a future version.

I have the version described by piluso (in message 184) up and running successfully on both an i386 laptop running Lubuntu and a Raspberry pi 2 also running Lubuntu. Just got it working in the past couple of days, and today went up on Tank Hill in San Francisco (it has a clear view across the bay to Oakland harbor) with my Rpi2 and captured all the traffic in the bay. Very gratifying to see the visible ranks of freighters anchored en echelon in the bay showing up on the screen, all pointed in the right direction!

[rgleason]

I've tried to compile a new version of rtlsdr_pi from Pavels's fork, rooiedirk's fork, and Sean's repository. None of them seem to work for windows.
I have downloaded a recent version of rtlsdr_winutilities.zip from sourceforge opencpn/opencpnplugins and unzipped and installed the "bin" subdirectory under the "buildwin" directory. Then have git fetch -all and git pull origin master and tried to build it.

It builds fine and eventually I installed it into Opencpn 4.2. After installing rtlsdr_pi I try to open Options > Plugins and the OpenCPN screen goes blank and O stops.
Eventually I have to shut Opencpn down with a black screen.
When I look in the opencpn.log file I always find:

1:51:34 PM: PlugInManager: Loading PlugIn: C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenCPN 4.2.0\plugins\rtlsdr_pi.dll
1:51:34 PM: Error: Execution of command 'C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenCPN 4.2.0\plugins\rtlsdr_pi\bin\rtl_ais -h' failed (error 2: the system cannot find the file specified.)

1:51:34 PM: PlugInManager: Loading PlugIn: C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenCPN 4.2.0\plugins\rtlsdr_pi.dll
1:51:34 PM: Error: Execution of command 'C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenCPN 4.2.0\plugins\rtlsdr_pi\bin\rtl_ais -h' failed (error 2: the system cannot find the file specified.)

and sure enough, there is no rtl_ais command in the bin directory.
There i aisdecoder.exe and rtl_fm.exe but no rtl_ais.exe.

[sbfreddie]

Originally Posted by rgleason

I've tried to compile a new version of rtlsdr_pi from Pavels's fork, rooiedirk's fork, and Sean's repository. None of them seem to work for windows.
I have downloaded a recent version of rtlsdr_winutilities.zip from sourceforge opencpn/opencpnplugins and unzipped and installed the "bin" subdirectory under the "buildwin" directory. Then have git fetch -all and git pull origin master and tried to build it.

It builds fine and eventually I installed it into Opencpn 4.2. After installing rtlsdr_pi I try to open Options > Plugins and the OpenCPN screen goes blank and O stops.
Eventually I have to shut Opencpn down with a black screen.
When I look in the opencpn.log file I always find:




and sure enough, there is no rtl_ais command in the bin directory.
There i aisdecoder.exe and rtl_fm.exe but no rtl_ais.exe.

Rick:
You have to build rt._ais yourself, as you can see you don't have it installed. The only problem is figuring out which one to use, cause there are several to choose from.
I build two in my script:

https://github.com/dgiardini/rtl-ais.git

and

https://github.com/RooieDirk/rtl_ais.git

However the second one does not build, sooo I guess your stuck with the first one.

Thanks,
Freddie

[rgleason]

Thanks Freddie,

Perhaps I've forgotten something but I have HSDR and SDRSharp installed. In previous efforts to build rtl_ais I thought that was required to get the libusb driver. I do not presently have the rtlsdr dongle installed however. I wonder if this is the problem? Must I have the dongle installed in order to build rtlsdr?

I guess I'll have to go back into the thread's history to find out how to get this built.

I think it is required that I build this rtl_ais before I build Sean's rtlsdr. I am not quite sure what I do, but perhaps I just copy the rtl_ais.exe into the rtlsdr folder C:\Users\..\GitHub\o-plugin\s-rtlsdr_pi\buildwin\bin along with the aisdecoder.exe and rtl_fm.exe and other dlls, so it is available when I build rtlsdr_pi.

Note that I have downloaded from sourceforge opencpn/opencpnplugins the "rtlsdr_winutilities.zip" and unzipped the bin folder and placed it under buildwin directory in rtlsdr.

Does rtl_ais require the same?

[sbfreddie]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Thanks Freddie,

Perhaps I've forgotten something but I have HSDR and SDRSharp installed. In previous efforts to build rtl_ais I thought that was required to get the libusb driver. I do not presently have the rtlsdr dongle installed however. I wonder if this is the problem? Must I have the dongle installed in order to build rtlsdr?

I guess I'll have to go back into the thread's history to find out how to get this built.

I think it is required that I build this rtl_ais before I build Sean's rtlsdr. I am not quite sure what I do, but perhaps I just copy the rtl_ais.exe into the rtlsdr folder C:\Users\..\GitHub\o-plugin\s-rtlsdr_pi\buildwin\bin along with the aisdecoder.exe and rtl_fm.exe and other dlls, so it is available when I build rtlsdr_pi.

Note that I have downloaded from sourceforge opencpn/opencpnplugins the "rtlsdr_winutilities.zip" and unzipped the bin folder and placed it under buildwin directory in rtlsdr.

Does rtl_ais require the same?

Rick:
This is the order and the pieces you need to run rtlsdr_pi.

1. You need to build and install lib-usb, however there are several ways to get lib-usb.

2. You need to build and install rtl-sdr, this allows your computer access to the various dongles. This is where my script gets rtl-sdr:

git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git

If you think its required you can set this variable during the cmake step "-DINSTALL_UDEV_RULES=ON" if you want to install the UDEV rules into the proper place in the system.

3. Next you have to build and install the rtl_ais utility, so you can decode ais messages. This is where I get it from:

https://github.com/dgiardini/rtl-ais.git

4 Next you have to build and install the aisdecoder utility from here:

https://github.com/dgiardini/aisdecoder.git

5. Finally you have to build and install the rtlsdr_pi plugin from here:

https://github.com/duichan/rtlsdr_pi.git

Seans plugin uses these pieces normally, however it has an option to use GNURadio instead of these pieces. (Mainly because most of these pieces are contained within the GNURadio install)

Thanks,
Freddie

[rgleason]

Thanks Freddie, will do this step by step.

With a search for libusb found this
https://sourceforge.net/p/libusb-win32/wiki/Home/
which points to this for more current Windows libusb

Should I be building from https://github.com/libusb/libusb
to have the most current version?
Does it work with Windows 10 too?

Libusb-1.0.20 is dated
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lib...libusb-1.0.20/