AIS on Android
I always enjoy David Berry’s very informative articles in PBO but must take issue with him when he says in ‘See and be seen’ (Feb19) that ‘it is currently impossible to overlay AIS data from a marine VHF onto any Android chartplotter’.
The set-up on my own boat is a Standard Horizon Matrix AIS/GPS GX2200E DSC VHF Radio which provides AIS data from the same masthead antenna as used for VHF reception and transmission, I presume through a built-in active splitter. The information can be viewed as a quasi radar display on the radio’s small screen or be sent via a separate wired output to a standalone chartplotter using NMEA0183 protocols at 38,400 baud.
I feed this wired output to a Comar wifi hub adjacent to the radio from where it is transmitted wirelessly to my two Android tablets which run the Marine Navigator package, available for less than £10 from the Google Play Store. I use UKHO raster charts supplied by Visit My Harbour, which cost £15 for UK and Ireland coverage or £30 for UK, Ireland and near continent.
The 10in tablet serves as my principle chartplotter and the 7in tablet as a backup along with paper UKHO Leisure Series paper chart folios. Set-up is stunningly simple: I simply connect to the Comar hub just as I would to any other wifi router or hotspot. Then I open Marine Navigator, go to ‘Settings’, tick the box to turn on the AIS Overlay, set Internet Protocol to TCP, set the Server Address to 1.2.3.4 and the TCP Server Port to 200. All that then remains, if one wishes, is to alter the Collision Detection Range and Safe Passing Distance parameters, both expressed in metres. Charles W Morland by email David Berry replies:
Thanks for the information, Charles, you’ve obviously found a solution that works to provide received AIS data on an Android. Again though, as you describe it, this will require a wifi hub linked to your receiver which increases the cost of the installation. Also, readers need to take note that the radio only receives AIS data and the main point of my article was about transmitting our own position. But I’m not about pouring cold water here: your set-up clearly works and provides AIS onto an Android platform using a configuration that I didn’t find.