dAISy Open Source AIS Receiver

[Lake-Effect]

Nice little AIS unit Mr Studer!

Originally Posted by travellerw

As to WIFI.. I love the potential of the ESP8266 boards, but they have some puzzling shortcomings. The first being, how do you pass them the WIFI connection information and credentials. More specifically, how could a laymen do that without indepth knowledge of electronics. In any case, what if we come up with a solution but leave the connecting up to the end user. Would this get around the FCC certification rule?

I have an electronics & software background, and my winter toy was the ESP8266. They're pretty cool, and quite powerful for $5.

Basically, there's two ways to use the ESP8266:

• from the factory, it comes with preloaded 'AT' firmware which makes the ESP8266 a little wifi modem that any computer/microcontroller can control serially. In such an application the host computer can bang in the connection params, or set the thing to act as an access point (AP)
• you can write firmware that gets loaded on top of the wifi libraries.

Either way... the basic ESP8266 modules require some skill to use. There are now some fancy boards with the USB programming interface built-in, and the boards can now be programmed using script languages like Lua, Python, BASIC, Javascript. Slightly lower barrier to entry.

If you follow some links from Adrian's Tindie page, you'll find the source created by the guy who added an ESP8266 to his dAISy.

The Lady Ada ESP8266 board is FCC approved. I presume it can be incorporated into a short-run product without requiring further certification.

[travellerw]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

If you follow some links from Adrian's Tindie page, you'll find the source created by the guy who added an ESP8266 to his dAISy.

Thanks for posting this.. Very cool, he even includes the sketch if you want to replicate his efforts. If I can make that work, then my daisy might come out of my "backup" box and be hooked up all the time (i.e. a hot backup).

[astuder]

For those playing along at home, the circuit below makes the auxiliary serial output of dAISy usable for at least some NMEA 0183 devices. It was successfully tested with a vYacht WiFi router and a Garmin 740S.



The exact resistor values don't matter, anything in the same ballpark should work.

Obviously that's not a sane solution for most people. I finally have all the parts for a proper RS-422 / NMEA 0183 adapter and plan to build a few prototypes over the holidays.

On another note: Does anybody use dAISy with Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan)?

[astuder]

Here we go, a NMEA 0183/RS-422 add-on screwing to the back of dAISy:



I also added a DC/DC converter to power dAISy from 12V (or more, the power supply can handle up to 36V).

The downside of the add-on is, that power consumption increased significantly, from less than 100mW to about 420mW when powered from 12V or 330mW when powered from USB.

This add-on still needs verification in the field. If a current owner of dAISy wants to test drive it, drop me an email or PM. You will need to trim and solder 3 wires to dAISy.

[travellerw]

Originally Posted by astuder

Here we go, a NMEA 0183/RS-422 add-on screwing to the back of dAISy:



I also added a DC/DC converter to power dAISy from 12V (or more, the power supply can handle up to 36V).

The downside of the add-on is, that power consumption increased significantly, from less than 100mW to about 420mW when powered from 12V or 330mW when powered from USB.

This add-on still needs verification in the field. If a current owner of dAISy wants to test drive it, drop me an email or PM. You will need to trim and solder 3 wires to dAISy.

I would be all over this, but I'm not back at my boat till Feb.

I'm sure someone will be along shortly to volunteer

P.S. Do you know which component is drawing all the power? Although, we are still talking less than a W, so most wouldn't really complain.

[astuder]

Originally Posted by travellerw

P.S. Do you know which component is drawing all the power? Although, we are still talking less than a W, so most wouldn't really complain.

The RS-422 driver consumes about 235mW, which is basically the difference when powered from the USB side.

When powered from 12V, the DC/DC converter is only about 80% efficient at that low current, which together with some protection diodes accounts for the ~100mW overhead vs. USB.

[Tenedos]

I did start a thread on the topic alone but thought it would be relevant to follow-up here as well.

After my AIS wireless died, I developed a DIY solution with a Raspberry Pi to add wireless support to serial AIS receivers. I don't have a dAISy to test but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with it too. Would some who has both a dAISy and Raspberry Pi test it?

I published a how-to on a blog post: https://www.partmarine.com/blog/wireless_ais_howto/

Originally Posted by Tx J

An interesting device and CF thread, thanks to Adrian, the OP, and commenters, lots of good info.

One of the main things on the dAISy dreamsheet seems to be an added wireless (WiFi and/or Bluetooth) capability.
.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Tenedos

I did start a thread on the topic alone but thought it would be relevant to follow-up here as well.

After my AIS wireless died, I developed a DIY solution with a Raspberry Pi to add wireless support to serial AIS receivers. I don't have a dAISy to test but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with it too. Would some who has both a dAISy and Raspberry Pi test it?

I published a how-to on a blog post: https://www.partmarine.com/blog/wireless_ais_howto/

Also worth checking out openplotter, Home | Sailoog
Easy to set up headless and very powerful.

[astuder]

Originally Posted by Tenedos

I did start a thread on the topic alone but thought it would be relevant to follow-up here as well.

After my AIS wireless died, I developed a DIY solution with a Raspberry Pi to add wireless support to serial AIS receivers. I don't have a dAISy to test but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with it too. Would some who has both a dAISy and Raspberry Pi test it?

I published a how-to on a blog post: https://www.partmarine.com/blog/wireless_ais_howto/

That's a good write-up, should work even for Linux n00bs like myself :-)

Coincidentally, I'm currently working on a 2-channel receiver in the form factor of a Raspberry Pi HAT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0JfjMVCuac

Should have a few spares at hand 2-3 weeks from now.

[TheOffice]

This is a GREAT unit! Did the Lauderdale to Annapolis and the Annapolis Bermuda race with it connected to my laptop and OPENCPN. Once I had to unplug it and restart it over 2400 miles.

[Tenedos]

Originally Posted by astuder

That's a good write-up, should work even for Linux n00bs like myself :-)

Coincidentally, I'm currently working on a 2-channel receiver in the form factor of a Raspberry Pi HAT.

Should have a few spares at hand 2-3 weeks from now.

That looks awesome! I would love to play with one of those if possible.

[Polyphemus]

That looks great!

Are you going to sell them on Tindie too?

[astuder]

Originally Posted by Polyphemus

That looks great!

Are you going to sell them on Tindie too?

I just received the first batch of assembled boards. It will take a week or two until the documentation is good enough for putting it up for sale on Tindie. But drop me a message if you want to get your hands on one earlier.

[astuder]

There was a question about the dAISy HAT from rgleason on another thread:

Adrian, is the dAISy HAT dual channel receiver also capable of USB connection to a Win PC?

The Raspberry Pi can't be connected to a PC via USB directly. Most people set up the RPi as a NMEA server and make AIS data available over the wired or wireless network. The upside is, that this also works for devices without USB, e.g. iPads.

See the website of kplex for two configuration examples
Kplex: An NMEA-0183 Multiplexer

[muttnik]

Note for anyone building something with dAISy and kplex or a similar program. In this thread on the kplex google group it was reported that the dAISy device can take a while on boot to show up as a file system entry (sailoog says 12 seconds). This may lead kplex configured to start at boot time failing to see it and therefore not picking up data from it. The right way around this for kplex would probably be hotplug rules (udev on raspbian) to restart kplex when the dAISy is inserted. kplex doesn't itself link into udev because it's cross platform and udev is only one hotplug system on one platform...The current hacky solution is to put a delay in the kplex startup which breaks out when the device shows up. The slightly better solution is the device polling currently untested in the kplex development branch