Live AIS Via Internet

[hsi88]

Why would you want Internet AIS if you have real AIS? To augment the data provided by AIS. To include boats not covered by AIS.

I'm not a plugin developer, but if I was writing the code, I would ignore Internet data that was already available via my AIS receiver. I would also filter out any signals that were found over land (either real or Internet). I would show any data older than a minute with a special icon (or color). I would allow filtering of data older than x minutes, although I have found that old data is useful if a boat is at anchor and turns off their equipment.

Sure, some kid (or terrorist !!) might put his cell phone on a drone and fly it over the Chesapeake. But I'm not much worried about that. They could do that with AIS as well. Until they make AIS transponders that can be purchased for a couple hundred bucks, cell phone data is a nifty alternative to nothing. How many people actually keep their charts up to date? Hell, the NOAA charts aren't even up to date. When I used paper charts, some of the data was 20 years old !

Look at it this way. Why are we paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for $20 worth of parts made in China. And perhaps cheap radar is really the better alternative. Are we that far away from some company producing a smaller, less powerful radar unit for recreational boating? (under $500) But giving it more thought, do I want to boat in a crowded waterway where everyone is shooting radar signals? I'd feel like a hot dog in a microwave oven!! I already find myself wanting to wear lead jockeys when I go past police radar traps and speed signs!

Remember the uproar when GPS started replacing Loran? And actually those folks were justified in the early days of GPS. It was not all that accurate. Remember when people used the sextant? Oh the uproar when Loran replaced that fine piece of equipment!!

[hoppy]

Originally Posted by hsi88

Why would you want Internet AIS if you have real AIS? To augment the data provided by AIS. To include boats not covered by AIS.

I'm not a plugin developer, but if I was writing the code, I would ignore Internet data that was already available via my AIS receiver. I would also filter out any signals that were found over land (either real or Internet). I would show any data older than a minute with a special icon (or color). I would allow filtering of data older than x minutes, although I have found that old data is useful if a boat is at anchor and turns off their equipment.

Sure, some kid (or terrorist !!) might put his cell phone on a drone and fly it over the Chesapeake. But I'm not much worried about that. They could do that with AIS as well. Until they make AIS transponders that can be purchased for a couple hundred bucks, cell phone data is a nifty alternative to nothing. How many people actually keep their charts up to date? Hell, the NOAA charts aren't even up to date. When I used paper charts, some of the data was 20 years old !

Look at it this way. Why are we paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for $20 worth of parts made in China. And perhaps cheap radar is really the better alternative. Are we that far away from some company producing a smaller, less powerful radar unit for recreational boating? (under $500) But giving it more thought, do I want to boat in a crowded waterway where everyone is shooting radar signals? I'd feel like a hot dog in a microwave oven!! I already find myself wanting to wear lead jockeys when I go past police radar traps and speed signs!

Remember the uproar when GPS started replacing Loran? And actually those folks were justified in the early days of GPS. It was not all that accurate. Remember when people used the sextant? Oh the uproar when Loran replaced that fine piece of equipment!!

Why bother for a couple of extra targets that will only appear if both of you are within phone/internet signal from land. Then how many people will think internet AIS is the real thing and nerve get a proper AIS transponder.

You compare this with Loran/GPS... Total rubbish. Internet AIS is a vast step down from AIS for the reasons already mentioned whilst GPS was an improvement.

If you want to compare a change in AIS to Loran/GP, then it would be replacing VHF with satellite radio as the AIS transmission medium. Then there will be an uproar when commercial shipping no longer need to transmit on VHF after a certain date effectively forcing pleasure boater to upgrade by then as well


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[hsi88]

I get your point and agree with a lot of what you said. But I also see plenty of boats with no charting equipment at all. No AIS, no GPS, just their trusty iPhone in hand. They will never fork over money for real navigational equipment.

Remember we are talking about OpenCPN. This sentence is on the first page of the User Manual: DO NOT rely upon OpenCPN for safety of life or property. But I will bet there are lots of folks out there happy to use it as their only navigational aid because it is free. Better than nothing, wouldn't you say so?

In the mean while, being a software engineer (mainframe) for 40 years, I will start to look at the Developer Manual. I'm an Assembler coder by trade. I learned C and PHP. Can't imagine this will be that difficult.

Bob

[DotDun]

Value of data:

1. Radar - Live pictures of EVERYTHING above the waterline 24 or 48 times a minute
2. VHF AIS - Live updates every 30 seconds (worse case) of AIS equipped vessels
3. Internet AIS - Guaranteed to be >30 seconds old and in some cases several minutes old. No guarantees on what it includes. Easily spoofed.

In dense fog? Stay moored unless you have #1.

[RhythmDoctor]

Originally Posted by hsi88

I get your point and agree with a lot of what you said. But I also see plenty of boats with no charting equipment at all. No AIS, no GPS, just their trusty iPhone in hand. They will never fork over money for real navigational equipment...

And the vast majority don't want to spoil their time on the water (and their privacy) trying to get some crowdsourcing app to work without draining their battery. So you're unlikely to get a participation level that's high enough to make it a useful tool for collision avoidance. And those who do go to the trouble will be divided up among several competing services, which makes any one service even more incomplete.

Originally Posted by hsi88

... But I will bet there are lots of folks out there happy to use it as their only navigational aid because it is free. Better than nothing, wouldn't you say so?

I do not use it because it is free. I use it because it is fantastic software, with a developer community that responds to bug reports and reasonable requests for helpful features. (And it is not my only navigational aid.)

Also, it is not free. I have voluntarily donated multiple times, and suggest that others do the same.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by RhythmDoctor

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't suggesting that you were driving along the beach. I was suggesting that you were observing someone else's "boat" on the beach, but it is actually someone else driving with the crowdsourcing app running on his phone...


...same issue. You make the incorrect assumption that it's a boat on the beach, so the chart must be wrong. So you make an incorrect mental adjustment to the chart that could lead to other incorrect conclusions on that chart, with potentially dangerous consequences.

This is the danger of having bad data, which can be worse than no data. With the cost of real, VHF frequency-based AIS receivers plummeting, I see no reason to mess around with far inferior crowdsourced information.

.

I didn't misunderstand you. I was providing a non-AIS situation where bad data was better than no data.

I was talking about a chartplotting sitaution with NO AIS data (live or internet) and the chart is off such that it shows the boat you are on, on shore. It happens quite often. It does not mean we would be better off without GPS and chart plotting.

Live AIS may be coming down but when you factor in installation, it's still a few hundred dollars. Assuming you have live AIS data, of course it's better but if you don't have it and you already have the chartplotter and internet access, it's essentially free.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by RhythmDoctor

Except that OpenCPN already uses green and red color coding to indicate threat level of real AIS targets.

Then it must be impossible to pick another means of presenting the data.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by hoppy

But if you have AIS why do you need the internet AIS? You have all vessels that you might need to worry about the CPA on your AIS. My AIS tells me if the target is a sailing boat, cruise ship, a tanker etc. if I can't tell which ship in the distance that interests me, a compass bearing is more useful than a photo identifying which is which. If it gets to the point I want the photo, I can get online, but I don't see much point in it.


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

Because the whole point of this discussion was YOU DO NOT HAVE LIVE AIS.

[Schooner Chandlery]

AIS receive is available on your VHF radio (w/o an antenna splitter even) if you use the Standard Horizon radios with it built in e.g. SH GX2100. No brainer cheap. Well, you do have to have a GPS feed. But why would anyone, who has their VHF on anyway because you've got to be monitoring 16, want to complicate matters and introduce additional failure modes by using via internet? Seems to be the wrong tool for the job. AIS on internet is entertaining for someone who really isn't relying upon the information, sure, but if you need it -- why handicap yourself that way?

I was pleased to see the AIS targets using my SH AIS feed to my B&G chart plotter and to my notebook there the AIS is more detailed than on the radio, of course. Backup is seeing the AIS on the radio itself. I also like using AIS to verify radar signals are what I think they are (on the B&G) all-in-all very good onboard systems.

[hoppy]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Because the whole point of this discussion was YOU DO NOT HAVE LIVE AIS.

I'm just saying, that if you desperately want to have AIS even though it is not live, then there are already tools that allow it which don't mix questionable value data with real life navigational tools.

The "do not use for navigation" message is just a legal disclaimer in case the navigator of Vestas wanted to use OpenCPN on VOR.... Those messages are ignored anyway. If OpenCPN offered internet AIS, how will anyone know the difference between the warning for the AIS which is a serious do not trust this feature and the warning for legal purposes.

[hoppy]

Originally Posted by hsi88

I get your point and agree with a lot of what you said. But I also see plenty of boats with no charting equipment at all. No AIS, no GPS, just their trusty iPhone in hand. They will never fork over money for real navigational equipment.

Remember we are talking about OpenCPN. This sentence is on the first page of the User Manual: DO NOT rely upon OpenCPN for safety of life or property. But I will bet there are lots of folks out there happy to use it as their only navigational aid because it is free. Better than nothing, wouldn't you say so?

Those people will never install OpenCPN and will not have have an understanding of why you need it.

In Stockholm I had a friend with a wankerboarding boat. Before the smart phone days, he would go into central Stockholm in his boat (10nm through the lakes) navigating with only a street map. He once broke a prop on a hidden rock. A few years later I bought a boat and had a Garmin GPS fitted and had the Stockholm sea charts. Both clearly marked the position where part of his prop still lays.

Maybe he has the navi apps on his phone now, but I doubt he knows how to use it.

Originally Posted by hsi88

In the mean while, being a software engineer (mainframe) for 40 years, I will start to look at the Developer Manual. I'm an Assembler coder by trade. I learned C and PHP. Can't imagine this will be that difficult.

Bob

My condolences to you....

28 years mainframe Cobol. Ran for the hills or at least to a system programmer whenever we had issues with assembler


A lot of things are not difficult, but some things just shouldn't be done

[hoppy]

Someone on another forum bought one of these fishing net beacon's as his AIS transponder. I have followed him on Marinetraffic and it seems to work (he's in Spain/France so no idea on AIS range). The only difference I can see is that the AIS is "unknown" rather than "Sailing vessel". I think it's better than a phone app transmitting a position to only internet AIS viewers

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[bcn]

I would really stop to call this type of data streams "xyAIS"

These are crowd sourced or harvested location data streams with data objects that are as well present in an AIS data set. Now it will depend very much from the "crowder" and it's software and business policy how much these data are usable to help for a safe passage.

There have been a lot of arguments in this thread that would make me feel quite uncomfortable using these data navigating.

Is it viable to make an application which gathers quality controlled data - yes.

Does this exist - IFAIK not.

And that people looking on the screen of their iX, And or Surface tablet trusting those icons more than rising the view - yes.
Perhaps they shouldn't use any type of navigational aids and just look what is around - but that is a bit hoping that the neighbor in the car in the other lane will not read mails or refrains to answer a WhatsUp. The same stuff will happen on urban/crowded waterway sceneries.

Should OCPN be is this play?

[monte]

Marinetraffic also has subscriber services such as satelite AIS. I guess it's mainly used by shipping companies as a method to track vessels, but certainly the way of the future will be replacing AIS base stations with satelite stations, or at least complimenting the existing base stations with satelite AIS data for worldwide coverage.

[CarCode]

Hubert,
the title of this threat is already wrong. It must be "Dead AIS via Internet" and not "Live AIS via Internet".
However it is strongly recommended that OCPN includes all these nonsense stuff because the people always wants useless functions like chart fogging and such things. Also it is very importand to integrate Facebook, Twitter and the such into OCPN. These people here needs all that...

Gerhard