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From Mirrorbow Technologies Ltd |
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| PlaneGadget Radar USB ADS-B Receiver | MarineGadget Radar USB AIS receiver |
| About ADS-B | Buy Now | Accessories | ADS-B FAQ | About AIS | Software Options | AIS Accessories | AIS FAQ |
Frequently Asked Questions
I want to watch ships using my laptop from land, what do I need?
You will need a computer with a USB port, a MarineGadget-Radar and suitable plotting software such as ShipPlotter. You will also need a suitable marine antenna or taxi antenna designed to work around 162Mhz.
I want to use the MarineGadget-Radar on my boat, what do I need?
You will need a computer with a USB port, a MarineGadget-Radar and suitable plotting software such as ShipPlotter that can decode AIS NMEA 0183 VDM messages. You will also need a separate marine antenna or taxi antenna designed to work around 162Mhz. You cannot use the same antenna as your marine radio.
To plot the ship positions relative to your position your computer will need to know your current position. So you will also need a way of getting your gps position into the computer. This could be a GPS USB dongle (there are low cost ones freely available, including on ebay...or you may want to use an NMEA to USB adaptor to connect your boat GPS.
Which plotting software can I use
The MarineGadget-Radar connects over USB, however it appears as a serial com port to the software. So you will need plotting software that can read from a serial com port AIS messages in NMEA 0183 VDM format. This includes ShipPlotter, Seaclear and SoftwareOnBoard.
How far can I see ships?
Like marine VHF radio AIS signals are normally line of sight. So it depends on the elevation of your aerial and the curvature of the earth. Normally you will see fro 10 to 50 miles. However in special meteorological conditions such as tropospheric ducting (where the signals are bounced and curved around the earth) you can sometimes see ships more than 250miles away.