AIS Alarms on Ownship

[Neptune's Gear]

In this instance, I have again emailed Matsutec, and included some of the info from this thread.
Although I was given the brush off the first time I did this, this time they have agreed with us that this is a logic bug in the firmware, and they will release a patched version in the next week.

That is a pretty good response IMO, better than we would get from most manufacturers.

I'll post here if and when I get the patch, in case anyone is interested.
Matt

[DotDun]

Originally Posted by Neptune's Gear

That is a pretty good response IMO, better than we would get from most manufacturers.

NO! This bug is very elementary, any decent manufacturer would never release a product with such an egregious bug. It's obvious this unit is built by neophytes in the marine vertical.

[Neptune's Gear]

At least they acknowledge it and agree to fix it, which is more than some!

[bdbcat]

Guys...

Good news from the AIS unit vendor front. It helps to have very specific reports, with accuarate message logs, to get some response from a commercial vendor like this.

Well done, Matt.

Thinking again about this problem while underway today and daydreaming....

To solve this particular problem in OCPN side, we really don't need a separate options entry field for ownship MMSI. We simply do this:

If we ever see an AIVDO message in the datastream, we snag the MMSI and declare that MMSI to be the ownship MMSI.

Then, if we ever see an AIVDM message with this same MMSI, we process as normal VDM, but set a flag to preclude doing any CPA calculations and/or alerts for this target.

So, ownship appears in the AIS target list, but will not cause CPA alerts.

Better than nothing, at least until the transponder firmware is updated.

Comments?

Dave

[Neptune's Gear]

Yep, that would be great, as it would also still confirm that the AIS is still transmitting, AND prevent the alarm (false alarm in this case)
Matt