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Automatic Information System (AIS) is a system whereby ships use special radio hardware to broadcast information about their current position, heading, speed, and a host of other information. The same hardware provides a display of information on all other AIS-enabled vessels in the area, giving the captain a live picture of traffic conditions. A live introduction to AIS in the program is available through the Tutorials menu.
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The program provides all available AIS information in an intuitive display on the active chart.
To get started with AIS, connect the receiver to an available serial port. For detailed information about connection to a serial port, see the Physically Connecting section of the GPS help. Once the device is physically connected, begin communicating with it using the Device Tools dialog or the Device Finding Wizard.
There is also an option to connect to web address, since some sites provide live AIS over the internet. To use this feature you must be connected to the internet, select "Internet" for the com port and set the host address and port number for the site providing the live AIS feed.
When AIS information is available, a display of all AIS-enabled traffic in the area of the boat will be displayed. The image below shows an example of what is visible.
As this image shows, a variety of information is available for ships in range of the AIS receiver. In this case, we can see:
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A number of icons are associated with the program's AIS system. These are summarized in the table below.
Objects outside the
AIS Filter radius are drawn as dots.
Objects for
which length and width are not known are drawn as triangles.
Objects for which
length and width are known are drawn as an appropriately scaled boat.
Objects travelling
at greater than 0.5 knots are filled with green.
Objects travelling
at less than 0.5 knots are filled with yellow.
Targets within the
CPA and TCPA limits (set in the AIS Options) will appear larger and will
be filled with red.
If the connection with the AIS receiver is lost, all targets will be framed
in red in place of yellow.
If no update has been received in six minutes, a red stroke will be drawn
through the icon.
One important addition to the AIS specifications unique to the program is the filtering of information outside a user-configurable radius. In order to reduce clutter, objects outside this radius are displayed as coloured dots as shown below. When an object is selected by left-clicking on it in the Chart View, it is fully displayed as if it were inside the filter radius.
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