This object is in archive! 

How about locus add ais function like oruxmaps

captding shared this idea 8 years ago
Declined

how about locus add ais function like oruxmaps


can display ship target while on sea

Replies (12)

photo
1

Good day,


as none of our team has any idea about such function, may you write us more about it. Mainly how it may work from technical point of view. It is based on receiving NMEA messages with some special parameters and display content from these messages on a map?

photo
1

Hi captding,

I've changed this to an idea but I'm not sure how many votes this quite special feature will collect. Remember, Locus is primarily a hike/bike outdoor app.

photo
1

It would be very nice for all of us who use Locus for navigation at sea!!

Today I must use the Marine Traffic app to see the AIS information

Happy voting!

Zailor

photo
2

Hi Hans,would you please contribute to this thread with your AIS experience? It sounds interesting for us "dry land rats"

photo
1

good day sirs,

many tks for your quickly reply my e-mail

i'm a chinese seaman,i use locus map about 1 years,i very like locus and appreciate locus team

my experience for useing ais function are from oruxmaps and opencpn, but oruxmaps display target information is too simple,i like opencpn display type, so i think if locus whould with ais function as opencpn will be look forward to

b/rgds

photo
1

good day sirs,

for ais function about oruxmaps and opencpn for your reference, which signal is from pilot ais plug(transit to wifi or blooth) at bridge(ship) oruxmaps also can from 3g(but it's should on line)

b.rgds

photo
1

Exceptional idea! Actually I was thinking to write a feature request for this for quite a long time...


I'm sailing yachts around the german coast. Since about 5 years I use Locus with custom scanned and geo-referenced paper charts and cached Google- and/or Eniro-maps for Navigation. Actually, Locus is my only sailing navigation software... I love Locus for its great usability and active developer team.


Last year I decided to upgrade my navigation equipment by adding an AIS receiver. The idea is to use an android tablet as main navigation frontend. A raspberry pi acts as navigation data server. The Pi runs a NMEA multiplexer and receives data from a GPS as well as from an AIS Receiver. The Pi acts as Wifi hotspot and serves the complete NMEA data stream via Wifi, e.g. on 192.168.1.1:10110. On my Android tablet I run some other navigation tool that can read the NMEA stream and decode the NMEA sentences. Now, I can see on a map where the big ships are and if I must be careful not to get hit. Very handy especially on fog or at night.


The basic idea of AIS: Every "big" ship must send out its position, speed, course over ground etc. via VHF. This is done every few seconds. The information is coded into AIS/NMEA sentences:

http://catb.org/gpsd/AIVDM.html

http://opencpn.org/ocpn/toolbar_AIS


There are some open source decoder libraries on the net, e.g.

https://github.com/schwehr/libais


To be honest, I have no idea of how difficult an integration into Locus might be. I think, a basic implementation should cover the following aspects:

  • Connect to a NMEA data stream provided via TCP/IP
  • Decode the NMEA stream
  • Visualise the AIS targets (ships) on the map and update their position / orientation as soon as a new AIS packet from this ship is received


A more thorough implementation might cover the following features

  • plot the track of moving ships
  • provide a list of current targets with their speed, course and position


The last step might be:

  • Calculate the possibility of a collision with one of the current ships (position and time of collision)
  • Provide some filter fuinctions to declutter the list of targets


The above is my quick view of what might be some interesting features associated with NMEA/AIS functionality in Locus. There are many "half-done" navigation apps in the playstore. But none of them "has it all" and only a very few have AIS functionality (Orux maps, OpenCPN). I think, by adding NMEA/AIS functionality Locus might be interesting for a whole new group of users.


I'm happy to assist with more insight from my user perspective. So, if you decide to start something please contact me in case there are any questions regarding NMEA/AIS!


Very best regards,

Christian

photo
1

On http://catb.org/gpsd/AIVDM.html I just read the following:


  1. "The GPSD project ships an AIVDM/AIVDO sentence decoder as part of the

    daemon. This document was developed to be the specification for it,

    and it will decode all sentence type described herein."

Can you communicate with gpsd from within Locus? If so, a big bunch of work of adding AIS to Locus might already been done...!


Best regards,

Christian

photo
1

Hello locuser and capting,


I was thinking about this proposal and searching for some additional information.


Firstly, it is important to keep in mind, that Locus is focused mainly on hike & bike activities. I understand it has a lot wider usage. Same it is here. It may be used for sailing purpose, but it's not it's main purpose.


I'm checking what OruxMaps do with AIS. Seems that José creted custom version Orux Blue for this purpose: http://www.oruxmaps.com/foro/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1627 because quite logically decided that such features are out of purpose of OruxMaps itself. Anyway as I see in mentioned topic, interest in this feature isn't big.


I have to say, that we are too small team (just a four people for now), to invest time into such feature, even quite interesting and I believe that also really useful (if works correctly). Locus currently do not work with any other source of NMEA messages then from BlueTooth and I see major problem in this ( adding support for other data sources), then handling NMEA messages itself.


For me, it looks like very nice possibility for starting Android developer, to create nice small add-on for Locus. All required features are already possible with Locus API.


Thanks for understanding.


@Michal: if you collect nice useful ideas for Locus add-ons (if now, you should start I think) on our manual page (dev section), this may be nice tip.

photo
1

Hello Menion,


I see your point! Can you give me a hint where I can find further information about how to start to develop a Locus add-on?


Best regards,

Jörn

photo
1

Sure. Main basics are wrote here: http://docs.locusmap.eu/doku.php?id=manual:advanced:locus_api . Anyway I'm well aware, that pages are not perfect and expect that developers has basic skills with Android and all these stuff around.

photo
1

Btw, it would also be a nice feature for hiking and tourism in harbor cities :-)


Imagine sitting on Elbstrand in Hamburg and being able to identify the ships passing by...

photo
1

Hi - Did somebody already start developing on the Add-on?


If not - i created a github repository: https://github.com/quarksteilchen/locus-addon-ais

maybe i've time to start in a few months.

Replies have been locked on this page!