Hey Selene Team:
While I was speaking last weekend at the East Coast Selene Rendezvous, I mentioned that I've set up a "roving" AIS station on board Koinonia. I actually started doing this with another interesting service called "SailLogger' (Thanks, Carl, for introducing me to them!).
As it turns out, 95% of the work required to setup SailLogger is the same as what is required to become a "roving" AIS station for Marine Traffic as well. You can easily do both.
SailLogger will do some other interesting things as well, but just becoming a roving AIS station for one of the major networks, like Marine Traffic, has advantages as well, and doesn't cost anything apart from the setup.
Running a roving AIS station has three big advantages:
(a) Your vessel is always "visible" and has accurate and timely position information on that network (e.g. Marine Traffic or SailLogger) because you are relaying your position to the network directly via the internet.
(b) You also help improve the coverage for that network in remote places where there are no shoreside AIS stations within range of your transponder. Your boat essentially becomes another AIS station for the network and it forwards all the vessels your AIS transponder receives to that network.
(c) Most of the networks will give you some kind of additional access in exchange for running a station for them. The specifics of the offer varies by network.
There are three components to any such "roving AIS station" on board your vessel:
(a) Obviously, you need at least an AIS receiver, if not a transponder.
(b) You need a full-time (or at least nearly full time) internet connection, such as starlink. Some systems, like SailLogger will "buffer" information for a while and upload the buffered data when you get an internet connection, but this obviously introduces latency in your position updates. I wouldn't recommend becoming a roving station for Marine Traffic unless you have a full-time (or nearly full-time) connection.
(c) The last component can be the most challenging. You need some hardware/software that will capture the output from your AIS transponder, format it in a way that it can be transmitted over the internet, and forward it via the internet to the network's servers.
There are at least three ways to accomplish this last part:
1. You can install appropriate software on a Windows PC or mac that is connected to your NMEA 2000 network and to the internet. I haven't taken this approach for a variety of reasons, so I can't comment on the specifics of implementing this approach.
2. If you have a Victron system that includes a Cerbo or Ekrano control device, you can install the software you need on the Cerbo. While I haven't done this, the process (as I understand it), is very similar to the Raspberry PI approach (approach #3 below).
3. You can install the necessary software (all of which is free) on a Raspsberry PI, which is a tiny (the size of a deck of playing cards) computer. The Raspberry PI must be connected to your NMEA 2000 network as well. You can do that either using an external USB gateway, like the Actisense NGT or NGX gateway, or there is an add-on board for the Raspberry PI that has a NMEA 2000 interface (see the links below for more info). Because I already had a Raspberry PI on my boat running a web-based inventory database system I wrote, this was the natural choice for me.
For either #2 or #3 above, the key is a piece of open source software called "Signal-K" which translates NMEA 2000 into a more open and accessible format that can be used for a variety of things. You'll see that there are quite a variety of "plugins" for Signal K that can do all kinds of interesting things with NMEA 2000 data.
Two of the plug-ins I use for Signal K are:
1. The "SailLogger" plugin, which forwards AIS and other data from NMEA 2000 to SailLogger. You must have a paid subscription (it's cheap: about $8/month) to SailLogger in order to use this service. Read about it at:
https://saillogger.com/
2 The "AIS Forwarder" plugin, which forwards only AIS data to a server on the internet. If you're going to be a roving station for Marine Traffic, you'll need to setup an AIS station on Marine Traffic. When you do that, they will give you two key pieces of information you need: an IP Address and a Port number, which you will enter into the AIS Forwarder plugin.
There's one more note that will only apply if you have an older AIS receiver/transponder:
I have an older Furuno FA150 Class A AIS transponder that is considered a "commercial" transponder. It's old enough (installed when I commissioned the boat in 2008) that it does not have a NMEA 2000 interface. It has several NMEA 0183 ports. Fortunately, several companies make NMEA 0183 to NMEA 2000 converters. I chose to use the Digital Yacht iKonvert (ISO version....which just means it has bare wires for the NMEA 0183 port). I just connected the bare wire 0183 cable from the iKonvert to an unused 0183 port on the transponder and set the iKonvert to "AIS Mode" with some tiny switches inside the case.
OK...so those are the requirements. They aren't really as daunting as they might sound. Here are the high-level steps to get it setup. I've also included several links below to a variety of documents on the internet that provide helpful details.
1. First, you'll need to make sure your AIS transponder's data is available on NMEA 2000. If you have a later model AIS receiver or transponder, it probably has a NMEA 2000 port already, so this step may already be complete. Otherwise, you'll need to get the AIS data on NMEA 2000 using a gateway like the Digital Yacht iKonvert or something similar.
2. Second, you'll need to either setup a Raspberry PI with Signal K, or install Signal K on the Victron Cerbo. Fortunately, Victron offers a "large" image of the Venus operating system with Signal K already installed.
If you choose the Cerbo route, you'll need to install this large image. See this link for more details on that process:
I know at least a couple of other owners have done this, so they may be able to comment on the process.
If you choose the Raspberry PI route, you'll need to setup a RPI and either a N2K "HAT" adapter board, or an external USB gateway, like the Actisense gateway.
Here's an article that talks about setting up a Raspberry PI with the PICAN-M NMEA 2000 board. The instructions for setting up Signal K will be the same even if you use an external USB gateway except that you'll choose a different port on the Raspberry PI as the data source for Signal K:
Here's a general article from the Signal K team that describes the process of setting up Signal K on the Raspberry. It does involve some Linux command line stuff, but the commands are all in the description so you can cut and paste them into a terminal/console session on the Raspberry PI:
Once you have Signal K running, you can use the "data browser" function within Signal K to check that you're getting valid NMEA 2000 data from your N2K bus into signal K.
3. The hard part is done. Now it's just a matter of forwarding the data to the appropriate AIS network. If you subscribe to "SailLogger", you can install their plugin using the admin interface in Signal K. Once the plugin is installed, you can configure the plugin and you'll also enter the identifier number that you get from SailLogger when you setup your account.
Here's a FAQ/help page on the saillogger website that answers many questions.
4. If you want to become a roving AIS station for Marine Traffic, you'll need to setup a Marine Traffic account (which is free) and then add an AIS station to your account. Once the station is added, you'll receive an email from Marine Traffic that includes an IP address and port number that you'll enter into the "AIS Forwarder" plugin. You can find the AIS Forwarder plugin in the plugins section of the Signal K admin page. Install the forwarder plugin and put the IP address and port number into the configuration for the plug-in.
5. Note that you don't have to choose between SailLogger and Marine Traffic. You can forward your data to both. Also, there are other networks, like AIS Hub (see:
https://www.aishub.net/). that you can also contribute to. SailLogger uses AIS hub already, so if you subscribe to SailLogger and also forward data to Marine Traffic, your data will be on both networks.
A note on privacy: Note that in SailLogger, you choose what data to share. Your position data is available to everybody, just like it is on Marine Traffic, but any additional data you send to SailLogger is only available to you and, optionally, through a shared page you can enable and configure.
Becoming a roving AIS station for Marine Traffic doesn't really share anything you aren't already sharing just by turning on your AIS transponder. The only difference is that when you share. your AIS data with them, you won't "disappear" in remote areas or offshore, and the other vessels that your transponder sees will also be forwarded to Marine Traffic, which improves their coverage.
So.....I know this isn't really a step-by-step tutorial. There are lots of videos and documents available on the internet that can walk you through most of the steps. My goal was just to make everybody aware of the opportunity and advantages of becoming a roving AIS station and hopefully at least point you in the right direction to get started.....
Mark Tilden
Selene 60 "Koinonia"