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

v0.56

• small performance improvements in map rendering
• You can access geoJSON output of the current ship positions by visiting the web viewer at /geojson and for KML output, please navigate to /kml (enable with the
  switches -N geojson on and -N kml on). The KML feature facilitates the visualization of ship positions in Google Earth Pro. Be sure to add a network link and configure the auto-refresh rate in GE. A demonstration of the use of GeoJSON is plotting the vessels on the tar1090 map.
• Bug fix in setting baud rate for serial devices
• Experimentation mode for NMEA2000 via socketCAN on Linux. See documentation below.
• Speed (moving/stationary) and Ship class now included as labels in Prometheus output
• Map overlays will be stored as part of the settings, so wil automatically reopen when the browser is refreshed (separate storage for day and night mode)
• Ship icon that unlocks the side table is now always visible. For narrow screens (<800px) the button will open the separate tab with the ship list
• Pyssel blog post describes procedure to show offline mbtiles maps here

v0.55

v0.55 is the latest version and introduces the following:

• "Show all track" option and setting to dim maps
• Added NOAA nautical charts as an overlay (link). These maps and the applications are not suitable for navigation (just to reiterate that).
• I created aiscatcher.org and started sharing data from my own station here. The site also contains links to several
  dashboards for stations running AIS-catcher and links to interesting (open-source) projects related to AIS and AIS-catcher.
• If you want a persistent dashboard available outside the local network, please reach out (jvde.github at gmail.com) and I will add it to aiscatcher.org. It requires a UDP stream from AIS-catcher, station name and, optionally, a rough approximation for the station location. Data is not aggregated and forwarded.
• Addition of option -N CONTEXT yyyy which will store the settings in the web browser in yyyy. This will allow to separate setting storage when running multiple web clients.
• GPS information (e.g. via serial -e ... or gpsd -t gpsd ...) is now included in HTTP client push
• Introducing data feeds with user ID to reduce security issues with data feeds, -u x.x.x.x y UUID u. For future versions we are exploring adding HMAC authentication.

v0.54

v0.54 is the latest version and adds:

• A "Settings Menu" providing access to additional (styling) options for the webclient:
  

• Option to change the displayed units in the settings menu (metric system, imperial system and AIS native units)

• Functionality to plot a list of all vessels on top of the map. This will only be visible for larger screens (click on ship icon on top right map)

• retires the Curl library for HTTP message sending and directly uses a built-in TCP client leveraging openssl where needed for secure servers. This means that if you want to send data to a secure server, you have to build with the ssl development libraries:

sudo apt install libssl-dev

v0.53

New:

• Tab that shows realtime NMEA data as it comes in, activate with -N REALTIME on.
• Experimental "Fireworks" Mode, see this video for demonstration. Activate with -N REALTIME on and selecting the option in the context menu
• Addition of Ship type as Icon to Ship table overview
• GPS input is included in screen output as NMEA or JSON depending on the output switch (-o x). GPS output can be filtered out using FILTER ON GPS OFF directly after the -o x switch where x is the output mode. Also works for TCP and UDP output.

v0.52

Windows binaries support the RTL_SDR Blog V4 dongle

v0.51.b

• Creation of an Edge Release where latest Windows binaries are stored: HERE
• Addition of an offline webclient version. This should run as usual but offline map tiles are not stored so that might work only depending what is in the cache. Graphs and tables work. To run, first go to your home directory (say /home/jasper) and clone the necessary web assets:

git clone https://github.com/jvde-github/webassets.git

Next run AIS-catcher with the CDN argument to point the webserver to the created directory with web content:

AIS-catcher -x 192.168.1.120 4002 -N 8100 CDN /home/jasper/webassets

• In case running with multiple dongles, the shipcard in the webclient now shows source (i.e. the SDR) of the last signal displayed. Also it will list all receivers that have received a message from the MMSI.
• Increased the default RTL-SDR buffer, so running on a RPI Zero W only requires activating fast downsampling -F.
• Option -ge print on to dump raw input from serial device to screen
• Bug fix in reading from certain serial devices on Windows
• Bug fix in properly closing when reading from TCP connection e.g. RTL-TCP
• Fix to internal webserver to avoid one client blocking the server when sending
• Accept VDO messages for NMEA input (-go VDO on/off)
• New options -N use_gps on/off and -N own_mmsi xxxxx added. The former toggles the use of GPS NMEA input as location for the receiver station (default is on). The latter sets the station's location as the location of the vessel with the specified MMSI. The own mmsi will be highlighted.
• Fix inclusion of libzmq in Windows auto builds
• TCP listener for NMEA output, e.g. for port 5011 run with -S 5011. AIS-catcher can read from this TCP server at address raspberrypi, e.g. like:

AIS-catcher -t txt raspberrypi 5011

or use the tcp_listener keyword in the JSON configuration.

v0.50

• bug fix to gain setting for RTL-TCP
• -u has option BROADCAST on to enable sending to UDP broadcast addresses, e.g.

AIS-catcher -u 192.168.1.255 BROADCAST on

• Add new database table (ais_vessel) that for each mmsi captures the last broadcasted data.
• MAX_FAILS option for database writes
• option to fade out vessel icons depending on signal age
• some updates to the web UI, including improvements to dark mode

Edge

Edge version, home for the Windows Binaries for the latest build.