v0.61

MQTT Integration

• Publishing Messages

  # Basic MQTT connection
  AIS-catcher -Q mqtt://127.0.0.1:1883
  
  # WebSocket MQTT connection
  AIS-catcher -Q wsmqtt://127.0.0.1:1883
  
  # With message format and topic
  AIS-catcher -Q mqtt://127.0.0.1:1883 admin MSGFORMAT JSON_FULL TOPIC data/ais
  
  # With authentication and client ID
  AIS-catcher -Q mqtt://username:[email protected]:1883 admin CLIENT aiscatcher

• Reading Messages

  # Read from MQTT broker
  AIS-catcher -t mqtt://username:[email protected]:1883

WebSocket Support

• Text data transmission via WebSockets using ws:// protocol with -t and -Q options

Web Viewer Enhancements

• Default map view on startup
• Optimized color scheme
• Draggable shipcard functionality
• Smart shipcard positioning near vessels
• Automatic vessel track display options: On hover and On selection

Additional Updates

• Server protocol support:
  • SDR data: sdr://127.0.0.1:5555
  • Text over TCP: txt://127.0.0.1:4001
  • GPSD: gpsd://127.0.0.1:4267
  • RTL_TCP: rtltcp://127.0.0.1:4099
  • Raw IQ data: tcp://127.0.0.1:1313
• NMEA2000 configuration added to JSON settings
• System daemon restart interval set to 10s

v0.60

For Windows users: The AIS-catcher executable is build with the latest Windows MSVC compiler. Please update your library before starting the below executable. Issues have been reported on Windows 10.

• Option to send fully decoded AIS messages in JSON format via UDP and TCP (similar to screen output with -o 5). Add JSON_FULL on to ~P/S/u.

• Bug fix for connecting serial devices in macOS

• Option to select columns in the table (and many more options added):

  

• Option to use text description in tables for ship type

• Overlay in AIS-catcher webviewer that shows possibility of atmospheric ducting conditions enable long range AIS reception

  

• Added debian packages and installation script

v0.59

• Slowly improving the station page for feeders of aiscatcher.org. Color indicates number of stations covering area, opacity is linked to message count of station. To view your station statistics in this way, ensure you feed with a sharing key (UUID)
  
• Add a sharing key to -X via aiscatcher.org/addstation which will show the approximate station location in the map overlay and enable, in a few weeks, a station performance tracking dashboard.
• TAR1090 can now visualize ship positions from AIS-catcher. See for an example here.
• Additional option for -f-switch to either append NMEA lines to file (-f filename MODE APP for appending - default) or starting fresh with -f filename MODE OUT
• History for range indicator can now be configured (24 hours default) with new option for 7 and 30 days history

• Added a measure tool to measure distance and bearing between two points and/or ships. Start with CTRL-Click or activate the measure tool and press +
• Added vessel count to web viewer title (visible once on the map tab)
• Fix bug in display of icon for SARTE/EPIRB (red diamond)
• Additional option for WebViewer to bind server to specific IP address. This allows you to make the browser only visible on the local PC, via -N IP_BIND localhost. By default the webviewer is visible by other machines on the network.
• Bug fix to range rings in 'imperial' units
• Webviewer - ships tab has now a filter function to quickly look for a ship. Has also been added to the ship overview in the map tab
• Option to apply filter functionality (control message routing) to webviewer and added option to filter on station_id
• '-M DT' set by default UNLESS running with -F (turbo boost mode and no webviewer) or when overwritten with -M

v0.58

• Fix RTLSDR v4 support in Docker image
• Fix Postgres support for Windows
• Added option to add UUID to -X to claim feeder on aiscatcher.org (more to come)

v0.57

Main change is the introduction of a community feed. See vessels received by nearby stations in your webviewer. Feed the aiscatcher.org server by running with -X and enable a map layer in the webviewer with nearby vessels from a return feed.

Other changes:

• Performance improvements when drawing a large number of vessels by switching from Leaflet to Openlayers (notice this might require re-working some plugins). In openlayers it is more straightforward to plot ship icons on the canvas.
• option f that writes the NMEA lines to a specified file
• smaller default icons and setting option to set icon size
• setting option to define width of vesseltracks
• performance improvements for TCP input and UDP output
• Option to auto terminate the program if no messages received for a while, e.g. after 10 minutes -T 600 nomsg_ony. This will help cure network connections for input or devices going stale without an error

v0.56

• small performance improvements in map rendering
• You can access geoJSON output of the current ship positions by visiting the web viewer at /geojson and for KML output, please navigate to /kml (enable with the
  switches -N geojson on and -N kml on). The KML feature facilitates the visualization of ship positions in Google Earth Pro. Be sure to add a network link and configure the auto-refresh rate in GE. A demonstration of the use of GeoJSON is plotting the vessels on the tar1090 map.
• Bug fix in setting baud rate for serial devices
• Experimentation mode for NMEA2000 via socketCAN on Linux. See documentation below.
• Speed (moving/stationary) and Ship class now included as labels in Prometheus output
• Map overlays will be stored as part of the settings, so wil automatically reopen when the browser is refreshed (separate storage for day and night mode)
• Ship icon that unlocks the side table is now always visible. For narrow screens (<800px) the button will open the separate tab with the ship list
• Pyssel blog post describes procedure to show offline mbtiles maps here

v0.55

v0.55 is the latest version and introduces the following:

• "Show all track" option and setting to dim maps
• Added NOAA nautical charts as an overlay (link). These maps and the applications are not suitable for navigation (just to reiterate that).
• I created aiscatcher.org and started sharing data from my own station here. The site also contains links to several
  dashboards for stations running AIS-catcher and links to interesting (open-source) projects related to AIS and AIS-catcher.
• If you want a persistent dashboard available outside the local network, please reach out (jvde.github at gmail.com) and I will add it to aiscatcher.org. It requires a UDP stream from AIS-catcher, station name and, optionally, a rough approximation for the station location. Data is not aggregated and forwarded.
• Addition of option -N CONTEXT yyyy which will store the settings in the web browser in yyyy. This will allow to separate setting storage when running multiple web clients.
• GPS information (e.g. via serial -e ... or gpsd -t gpsd ...) is now included in HTTP client push
• Introducing data feeds with user ID to reduce security issues with data feeds, -u x.x.x.x y UUID u. For future versions we are exploring adding HMAC authentication.

v0.54

v0.54 is the latest version and adds:

• A "Settings Menu" providing access to additional (styling) options for the webclient:
  

• Option to change the displayed units in the settings menu (metric system, imperial system and AIS native units)

• Functionality to plot a list of all vessels on top of the map. This will only be visible for larger screens (click on ship icon on top right map)

• retires the Curl library for HTTP message sending and directly uses a built-in TCP client leveraging openssl where needed for secure servers. This means that if you want to send data to a secure server, you have to build with the ssl development libraries:

sudo apt install libssl-dev

v0.53

New:

• Tab that shows realtime NMEA data as it comes in, activate with -N REALTIME on.
• Experimental "Fireworks" Mode, see this video for demonstration. Activate with -N REALTIME on and selecting the option in the context menu
• Addition of Ship type as Icon to Ship table overview
• GPS input is included in screen output as NMEA or JSON depending on the output switch (-o x). GPS output can be filtered out using FILTER ON GPS OFF directly after the -o x switch where x is the output mode. Also works for TCP and UDP output.

v0.52

Windows binaries support the RTL_SDR Blog V4 dongle