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   AIS Receiving Station

   How its done

Every 10 seconds a vbs script is run. This extracts the ship position and other data from the Shipplotter program and creates a file with a .xml extension. This file is uploaded every 10 seconds to my site. The html code on the web page reads this file and superimposes it on the Google map as icons and data. The map, balloon icons and the information flags are downloaded from Google when you view the page. The .xml file is also sent every 30 minutes to the map log area of the site, where the last 100 hours of ship position data is stored.

The AIS maps show the positions of ships within 30 nautical miles of Southampton VTS which is updated every 10 seconds. There is an external link covering the whole world but the information may be up to an hour old. I use other peoples data for ship positions off the south coast of the Isle of Wight, to the west and around the Poole area, so I cannot guarantee to display ships in this area. If you have missed a ship, look in the Map History to see ships that have passed through the area during the last several days.

   Area covered

Left: Office window showing binoculars and webcam. Above: laptop running shipplotter, Comar AIS receiver and Icom R9000 general purpose receiver. Left bottom: Canon XM2 webcam.

This is a hobby site and has no commercial connections or funding and I do this because I am interested in ships and it is a useful service for fellow enthusiasts. I receive the ships AIS data signals directly on a Comar SLR200 dual channel receiver using a marine band colinear antenna. The data is displayed on an Dell Inspiron 1525 computer running shipplotter program. Ship position data is sent to the site at 10 second intervals. There will be breaks in the service occasionally because the volume of traffic on my Internet connection may prevent frequent uploads and maintenance on the computer such as windows updates etc. which requires restarting the system. Sometimes the site is not available because of a fault or computer maintenance at the hosting company - unfortunately this is out of my control.