AIS receiver and decoder

Because of my love of sailing and boats, another amateur-related hobby I enjoy is receiving, plotting, and tracking the marine AIS transmissions from nearby vessels as they traverse the Clyde.

To do this, I have a SevenStar 2rxPro receiver, which listens on both AIS frequencies, receives the packet-ised location data, and decodes it into NMEA strings. This data is then passed from the 2rxPro to my RPi over a serial connection. Running on the RPi is MM3NDH’s excellent aisdecode software, which takes this NMEA data and plots it on a map. Nathan NDH is constantly adding new features to this software, and I’m pleased to be a guinea-pig in using it! At present I am piggy-backing off my 2m amateur colinear, but hope before long to have a dedicated AIS antenna which will, I think, improve my coverage.

You can see what vessels I can hear by visiting my AIS tracker page.

Alongside hosting the local map (above), I also feed the data to other locations. The primary aggregated location is the OARC AIS project, which can be found at https://ais.oarc.uk. I also feed my data to various marine tracking websites.

I love how amateur radio allows you to develop interests that are technically outside the scope of amateur radio, but nonetheless use the same skills developed within the hobby.