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ais-catcher

AIS receiver and decoder for marine vessel traffic, with a web map

What it does

Receives AIS transmissions from ships on 161.975 and 162.025 MHz using an SDR, decodes the position and identity messages, and plots the vessels on a web map served locally.

Why you would want it

It is the most capable open AIS decoder available, and coastal monitoring is a natural companion to ADS-B aircraft tracking on the same receiver hardware.

Before it will work

An RTL-SDR or similar receiver and a VHF marine-band antenna. You must be within range of the coast or inland waterways.

How it installs

  • git (cmake) — https://github.com/jvde-github/AIS-catcher at v0.70
  • build dependencies: build-essential, cmake, pkg-config, libsoxr-dev, libsamplerate0-dev, librtlsdr-dev, libairspy-dev, libhackrf-dev, libcurl4-openssl-dev, zlib1g-dev
  • Dependencies are declared rather than discovered, so --dry-run can show the whole set before anything is installed. AHRL's approach hides them inside a downloaded script.

Binaries this produces:

  • AIS-catcher

Known problems

Upstream's own installer downloads and executes a shell script. We do not use it: this manifest builds from a pinned git tag with declared dependencies so the install is inspectable before it runs.

Keeping it current

  • probe: github release (jvde-github/AIS-catcher)
  • strategy: rebuild

Source: catalog/packages/ais-catcher.yaml