Receiver network

Share your AIS

If you run an AIS receiver, you can send what it hears to AIS Trail and put more ships on the free live map. Your station gets a public page with its statistics, a place in the station list, a "founding station" badge if it is one of the first 20 to connect, and an email if it goes offline (if you give us an address and confirm it). There is no payment: this is a volunteer network.

Add a receiver Is my station connected? Manage your station Station list

No account is needed. Adding a receiver means accepting the Station Terms.

How it works

  1. Add your receiver. A name and an email address are optional. You get a station key, shown once, and a UDP port of your own.
  2. Point your software at us, over HTTPS or UDP. Your station page shows the exact settings for the software you use.
  3. See it on the map. The station page shows whether it is online, messages per minute, ships heard and uptime. For a new station's first 24 hours, ships that only it hears are held back while we check its data.

HTTPS Recommended

Your software sends with the station key, so it works from any network. For AIS-catcher:

-H https://api.aistrail.com/feed userpwd station:<YOUR_STATION_KEY> gzip on interval 10

UDP

The easiest: add one UDP output to the software you already run. UDP is locked to the first network that sends; HTTPS with the key works from anywhere.

feed.aistrail.com <YOUR_PORT>

Supported software

  • AIS-catcher: HTTPS or UDP
  • docker-shipfeeder: HTTPS or UDP
  • rtl_ais: UDP
  • AIS Dispatcher: UDP
  • OpenCPN: UDP
  • kplex / Signal K: UDP
  • dAISy: read it with AIS-catcher and send over HTTPS, or forward it with AIS Dispatcher over UDP

Other software that can send AIS sentences (NMEA 0183) over UDP works too.

Your data

  • Send only what your own antenna hears over the air, not data relayed from another network. Do not use a receiver that another network supplied under its own terms.
  • You can send the same data to other networks at the same time.
  • AIS Trail may use the data in its products, including paid ones.
  • Your station is shown by the name you choose, or as "Station" and its number. Coverage is shown in 0.1° cells (about 11 km); the station's location only if you turn it on. Your email address is never shown.

The full text is in the Station Terms.