Raspberry Pi to send AIS tracks to Navionics App

[zachduckworth]

Hi all,

I’ve decided to finally get my Raspberry Pi project moving. I have a dAISy hat board and the other bits of hardware coming. I know I have a lot of options for the Pi and I’ll eventually want to explore everything it can do for me. For now I just want to relay the AIS tracks to my iPhone via wifi and have them come up on my Navionics app. Does anyone have a link to a how-to on doing this, or do they have first hand advice on how to do so? Would either chartplotter or OpenCPN allow for this? I used a Quark Elec A026 to do this before but I want to try out using the Pi because there’s a lot of other stuff I can do using the Pi. Thanks!

[wholybee]

When you say "AIS Tracks" do you mean live AIS data, or you want a track of where you have been to be sent to Navionics?

For live AIS data, it's pretty easy, just output it on a UDP port, and point Navionics at that port. You can do this directly in OpenCPN, or in SignalK.

[zachduckworth]

Originally Posted by wholybee

When you say "AIS Tracks" do you mean live AIS data, or you want a track of where you have been to be sent to Navionics?

For live AIS data, it's pretty easy, just output it on a UDP port, and point Navionics at that port. You can do this directly in OpenCPN, or in SignalK.

I meant live. I’m going ti try to get it up and running with SignalK tomorrow. Should be easy. I’m trying to figure out how/where to install it physically on my 1984 Islander Bahama 30…. not to many options..

[barcoMeCasa]

Best game in town by far for Pi IMHO...

https://openplotter.readthedocs.io/en/3.x.x/

[stevead]

Have a look at this thread from the OpenCPN forum. Answers your question specifically. Remember that you need to have an active subscription for the Navionics app in order for it to receive AIS data.

[zachduckworth]

Originally Posted by stevead

Have a look at this thread from the OpenCPN forum. Answers your question specifically. Remember that you need to have an active subscription for the Navionics app in order for it to receive AIS data.

Interesting thread. I’m using a dAISy Hat, not NMEA-anything. My instruments are all old Seatalk circa 2003. They are currently all “dead” because the boat is relative new to me and I’ve systematically stripped all the old electronics out of her with the idea of completely modernizing her for her purpose (coastal cruising in SoCal). I am not missing the wind instruments or even the GPS, because (1) I don’t race and (2) I use a collection of tablets and phones for GPS. I’ll install a GPS soon however, and having one hooked into the battery will be a nice redundancy. The only instrument I do want to get back online soonish is the depth finder. So if Signal K is a bear for looping in Seatalk that’s a good thing for me to know. I need to start looking into the more technical threads some more..

[zachduckworth]

Ok - I was able to get it working.
That was fun!
I also realized that my masthead antenna needs to be replaced. Or maybe the active splitter was reducing the range when I was using the A026? For some reason I’m getting a lot more hits and farther away with this new set up than with my old one… despite being in my apartment (I live by the marina…).

I’m enjoying seeing the AIS target so much zi may get a second Pi and a little desk top antenna and just leave it set up in my apartmemt.

Anyway, I’m very pleased that I was able to get this working.The next project will be installing it in my 1980s era cruiser, and then maybe getting the old Seatalk instruments to talk to it. I need some charts for Open CPN too, since I don’t have sny on there yet…