Hmm, well it’s all done, it all appears to be working. I fired up my old MarineTraffic account and created a receiver, added the details to the Pi but although I can see traffic on the Pi, nothing appears to be being uploaded.
My receiver is just showing inactive.
Wait for it. Mine took about half an hour.
Is the station icon on the marine traffic map yet?
S
Ahh right, could just me being impatient. I expected it to show straight away.
I’m showing when I click on my own receiver.
My job is done! 
And thanks for the tip. I fixed the link.
S
And it’s live but it’s not instant gratification like ADS-B.
Also, it’s using my Diamond X510 vertical so although it’s plenty of aerial in the air, I kinda use that for other things.
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It’s also not very interesting. When I look at the status of my receiver, basically all I see is dots on a screen with Class A or Class B next to them. I don’t seem to be able to find out more unless I go to the main view with all the receivers. I’d quite like to know more details about what I’m receiving.
I also have no idea how well my receiver is working compared to others around, there doesn’t seem to be a way to see that. I’d like to know how effective my setup is.
You are doing better than I am but you have a better location and many, many more targets.
I’m also using my 2M/70cm vertical.
I’m contemplating building his tuned AIS antenna just to see if it is any better but that is about where my enthusiasm wanes.
I pipe the output to Shipplotter which gives me a bit more information. It is Sunday morning in winter so there is very little port traffic and almost no pleasure craft.
Sorry about the map quality, I was just trying to show the detail.
You can also use OpenCPN but my version doesn’t show much detail about the ship.
The OP has obviously noticed the difference in development of ADS-B compared with AIS.
I wish him luck.
S.
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I have not tried it myself, since I’m far away from the sea or the St. Lawrence river, but check out AISDeco. It works with the RTL-SDR dongle and an RPi, just like ADS-B.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think it can be configured to decode more than one frequency, if within the typical 2MHz coverage of an RTL-SDR.
This is a better view where I can actually see what I’m receiving.
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Oh I hate this place. Now seriously considering a pair of these that I would mount at the top of my mast, below the hexbeam. One pointing 45° and the other around 150° with a phasing harness.
I think they’d work well, would give me full coverage and let me have my X510 back
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Wouldn’t you need more than 2 to get full coverage from your location?
3dB Azimuth beamwidth seems to be about 60degrees so from your location wouldn’t you need 4 ?
Looks as if you have about 270 degrees of sea that you can see. Boston to central London
I was looking at the 90° width which is about 6dB down and figured I could live with that. You’re right though, more would obviously be better but there’s a limit.
By full coverage, I didn’t mean the full 360°, I was thinking north to south via east really.
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It’s easy here. 180 degrees. Sea starts about 4km south of me and I’m pretty much in the middle of the south coast 
After not looking at it for a week i realized I had completely lost interest so I have shut it down.
The Pi is back receiving what little aircraft traffic there is around here.
S
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Heh heh, I didn’t last a week until I turned it off. So much for my thoughts about buying aerials, etc!
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I only lasted a week because it was set and forget.
And I forgot.
The one useful thing I remember using it for is propagation reporting. When there is a band opening I would suddenly be seeing ships hundreds of kilometres away half way to Perth or off the New Zealand coast.
But you have to be looking to see it.
S
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There is an island somewhere in the deep blue sea occupied only by a Raspberry Pi 3B+.
This single RPi is functioning as a:
- ADSB feeder (via Flightaware USB stick)
- AIS feeder (via COMAR AIS hat)
- PiHole
I am slowly moving towards turning it into a weather station, VPN. Eventually I want to give it a Sim Card so I remotely power cycle all electrical equipment at the location.
It runs on 100% solar power and connects to the internet via a 5Ghz wifi signal transmitted via a parabolic antenna from 5km away. Yes - this works.
All of the above works perfectly with absolutely no conflicts or problems. It has been fully operational since early 2019.
2 years ago I just slapped the hardware and installed VNC server. I have installed and configured
I have installed and configured the device completely remotely via VNC, from 10,000km away.
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It’s amazing to have a fixed IP address so remote.
I live just 12km from the capital and there is no fixed IP address unless I pay enormous amount of money. And yes, this is the first world.
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“fixed IP address” - This is the reason, humbly I don’t even try to “try it”.