Category: AIS

The Vesper Marine WatchMate 850 Class B AIS transponder, which just received FCC approval this week, is already a very interesting product, as discussed here in September.  But an extra feature that hadn’t been developed back then, and still isn’t mentioned on the Vesper site, is the ability to use the unit as an anchor watch.  And it can be an especially effective anchor watch thanks to the intrinsic nature of AIS and the WatchMate’s particular characteristics…

Oh my.  This morning an email alerted me to this photo of an AIS Display Filter menu on a Furuno IMO-class FAR-2117 radar, and Steve Dashew’s understandable misunderstanding of what it means.  The seductive myth that ships have the technology to completely ignore Class B AIS transponders is back!  And the comments that follow demonstrate just how destructive that myth is, like:  “Wow. That is really disturbing. I am sure it is something that the
manufacturers of Class B transceivers don’t want us to know. I have been
waiting for the Vesper Marine transceiver to become available – I might
opt for the receive only unit now and save some $$$.”  Here’s the truth:  No matter how that display filter is set, the 2117 radar will continue to track all AIS targets and will automatically display a filtered one — in flashing red, with a buzzer, even! — if it should enter the watch keeper’s area of collision concern, which is exactly how the IMO intends to improve big ship AIS monitoring!…

Another show, another nifty AIS appliance from Digital Yacht.  Following the introduction of the iThing-friendly iAIS receiver in Southampton, DY showed up at NMEA with the AISnet receiver above.  It’s a pretty obvious concept, but I don’t think it’s been done before, and it could encourage a nice proliferation of land-based AIS stations flowing target data onto the web…

At first blush Vesper Marine’s just announced Class B AIS transponder seems similar to the Simrad AI50 and the Icom MT-500R, which is to say a transponder with a handy target plotting and info screen built in.  But I think the WatchMate 850 will be significantly different, because Vesper has been focused on AIS collision avoidance for years and has gotten quite good at it.  I finally got some hand’s on time with a WatchMateRX early this summer, and was even more impressed with the company when I met co-founder Jeff Robbins a few weeks ago.  I had not realized, for instance, that Vesper designed and built the AIS receiver that’s in the RX model, and they’re doing the same with the transponder as well as an interesting antenna splitter also announced…

Oops:  “Between July 27 and August 19, 2010, while conducting development testing of its Nationwide Automatic Identification System (NAIS), the Coast Guard inadvertently tele-commanded most AIS users transiting the Eastern United States between lower...

The picture tells a lot: Digital Yacht’s new AIS200N2K is the first AIS receiver I know of with NMEA 0183, NMEA 2000, and USB outputs. But get this: it can also multiplex 0183 input and gateway it to N2K, “so that traditional data such as depth,
position, speed and wind, which is available in NMEA 0183 format, can be converted
to N2K within the unit.”  All for $519!  The press release doesn’t say what’s coming out of the USB port, but I suspect it’s 0183 with a mix of AIS target data and 0183 inputs.  Maybe someone from Digital Yacht or its US and EU retail arm Cactus Marine can elaborate in comments, because I may lose my Internet connection any moment now…