v0.66

Version 0.66

• Improve documentation for configuration via JSON
• Fix chart colors when running web viewer in iframe on Firefox
• Technical details of equipment added to shipcard (press information icon in sender field)
• CS unit for class B is displayed in shipcard of the web viewer if available
• Serial devices can be initialized with an init sequence
• Remodelling of realtime NMEA tab with options to filter on MMSI and share NMEA lines with decoder tab for message parsing
• Option to track NMEA in webviewer for a specific ship or station
• Shortcut to measure distance between two objects or points is now SHIFT-CLICK to select the first point. This should improve behaviour for devices that cannot distinguish between a left and right mouse click.

v0.65

various smaller fixes

v0.64

Various updates to improve stability, security and minor bug fixes.

v0.63

Enhanced Features

• Data throughput: significant reduction in data throughput to community hub
• Online NMEA decoder: Built-in NMEA decoder in the local webviewer
• Kiosk Mode: Full-screen display mode for dedicated monitoring setups
• MSGFORMAT Configuration: Flexible output format definitions for customized data presentation. Introduction of msgformat binary_nmea to save on bandwidth
• Extended Binary Messages: Additional binary message types now decoded and displayed
• Verbose JSON Output (-o 6): Enhanced JSON format with detailed field descriptions (WIP)
• Debian Trixie Support: Compatibility with Debian 13 (Trixie)
• Filesystem-based Map Tiles:

  # Serve map tiles from filesystem
  AIS-catcher -N 8100 FSTILES /path/to/tiles
  # Filesystem overlay maps
  AIS-catcher -N 8100 FSOVERLAY /path/to/overlay

v0.62

ADSB support

AIS-catcher can connect to a ADSB feed over TCP. The plane feed will then be visualized in the WebViewer. To input formats are supported, Beast, e.g,

AIS-catcher -t beast localhost 30003 -N 8100

and BaseStation format:

AIS-catcher -t basestation localhost 30002 -N 81000

Binary Messages

The WebViewer now shows the data coming from selected binary messages. Note that not all regions have these messages.

Offline Maps

Support for offline maps in mbtiles format in the Web Viewer

include an offline map in mbtiles format

AIS-catcher -N 8100 MBTILES map.mbtiles

or as overlay

AIS-catcher -N 8100 MBOVERLAY map.mbtiles

Debian packages now support RTL SDR V4 (the RTL-SDR library is build from source and statically linked into the executable)

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