AIS Receiver for Raspberry Pi
I am running Signal K on a Raspberry Pi and am looking for an easy way to receive AIS signals. Can anyone recommend a suitable hardware device? Ideally, it should be a model that can be connected directly via USB.
11 Replies
very happy with one of these.. never gets turned off. https://shop.wegmatt.com/collections/frontpage/products/daisy-hat-ais-receiver
We used one of the cheap SDR USB sticks with https://github.com/dgiardini/rtl-ais
Thanks for sharing. What kind of antenna are you using?
Flowerpot that @tobias_r built. This was on our previous boat. On the current one we have an AIS tranceiver connected to SK via NMEA 2000.
👍 daisy hat reciever.
I use it on RPI at my home address as a contributing station for marine traffic.
i have benchmarked it against othe AIS RXrs .. and it works very well.
as its running of an AC supply, i put a power supply filter between AC plug pack & RPI.. to filter the DC supply.. which may be overkill, but i was trying to maximise performance.
inm response to the question about “what antenna”…
i would reccomend a dedicated “AIS antenna”.
these are “tuned” to the specific AIS channels (two) … and if its a “gain antenna” … it will have “some” rejection of other marine VHF channels… which helps.
also .. to the extent practical, try to kepp your VHF two way, and AIS antennas separated as much as possible .
Using the same antenna works quite fine as well, at least with an active splitter.. Right now I'm seeing targets up to 52NM away https://ais.oarc.uk/?ReceiverID=33
52nm … thatys impressive range!
node red here records the AIS class a & b distances & grafana plots the max - changes all the time! Class A can be far off, presumably tropospheric ducting but class B distance varies constantly as well, image is max ais distances from a home made j pole on radar arch & daisy hat, but proving very difficult to get a handle on how good an antenna is at receiving as the max received range changes so much.
Yep, in certain conditions you can get crazy ranges. There was Sporadic E when we sailed from mainland Portugal to Madeira a year ago. We could see AIS targets around Corsica and hear the Canary Islands coast guard on VHF.
Here is a DIY instruction if you are into that 🙂
https://pysselilivet.blogspot.com/2020/05/ais-reciever-for-raspberry-pi-2-channel.html#more
Combine with this software 🙂
https://pysselilivet.blogspot.com/2023/12/ais-receiver-and-dispatcher-best.html#more
i did a DIY j-pole from copper tube - worked ok, but ultimately i was uncomfortable with its durability (or asthetics)
& for my home AIS station i went with the “longest” fiberglass (commercial) whip, and mounted up as high as possible .. albeit i live at sea level… but on the coast.
but also put a LNA & filter direct at antenna (rpi is some distance away) ….
yes ive see weird stuff that like that also, certaionly randomly i get a report from 80+nm .. but its usually “one report” only,
and as you say, atmospheric conditions for certain at work.
my typical range (from home with antenna at ~13ASL) is around 30-36nm.