Does anyone monitor AIS (Ship and Vessel Tracking?)

This seems OK. What is the problem now?

What is output of following command?

cat /lib/systemd/system/aiscatcher.service 

It still cant find the dongle

and

pi@AIS2:~ $ cat /lib/systemd/system/aiscatcher.service
# AIS-catcher service for systemd
[Unit]
Description=AIS-catcher
Wants=network.target
After=network.target
[Service]
User=ais
RuntimeDirectory=aiscatcher
RuntimeDirectoryMode=0755
ExecStart=/bin/bash /usr/share/aiscatcher/start-ais.sh
SyslogIdentifier=aiscatcher
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
RestartPreventExitStatus=64
Nice=-5
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

pi@AIS2:~ $

 

Does following command find the dongle?
If fit finds, what serial number it shows?

rtl_test -t  

 

Started feeding “VesselFinder”

CLICK ON SCREENSHOT TO SEE LARGER SIZE
CLICK AGAIN AT “Original Image” (at bottom of screenshot) TO SEE FULL SIZE

Yes

and AIS-catcher run at the command line with no parameters finds it too.

I’m not that interested in ships any more so I may just start AIS-Catcher manually and let it run for a while and then pack it away. The area I can see is well covered by other receivers.

Thanks for the help,

S.

 

IF you have only one dongle plugged into your Pi, you do not need to specify the serial number of dongle. AIS-catcher will automatically grab the available dongle.

simply delete the line -d 00000001 from config file, and see if that works.

sudo nano /usr/share/aiscatcher/aiscatcher.conf   

NOTE: Do NOT leave a blank line by simply deleting the text. Leaving a blank line in config file may cause it to malfunction.

Delete the line itself by bringing the cursor over it and pressing Ctrl and K keys together.

 

After saving file aiscatcher.conf, restart aiscatcher, and after few minutes check status

sudo systemctl restart aiscatcher   

sudo systemctl status aiscatcher  

 

This is the DIY dipole taped to glass of a window in my apartment:

162 MHz AIS Dipole

 

 

 

 

OK.

I reflashed the SD card with a new Raspi OS using the Raspberry Pi imager

Plugged the microSD card into the Pi and then ran

sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abcd567a/install-aiscatcher/master/install-aiscatcher.sh)"

Then followed these instructions

Still the same problem.

S

The difference between my successful install and your failed install is that you have RaspberryPi OS image, while I have PIaware SD card image.

As Piaware SD card image has dump1090-fa AND many other packages installed as dependencies for it, while RaspberryPi OS lacks those packages, this is most likely cause of failure of your install.

I will now reproduce your install by writing Raspberry Pi OS (2022-09-22-raspios-bullseye-armhf-lite.img) on a spare microSD card, and run bash-script to install AIS-catcher and see what happens.

Meanwhile can you please post output of following two commands?

ls /usr/local/bin/AIS-catcher   

sudo AIS-catcher   

 

I was not aware.

I’ll try that now.

S.

@SweetPea11
I tried your install, i.e. wrote Raspberry Pi OS (2022-09-22-raspios-bullseye-armhf-lite.img) on spare microSD card, installed AIS-catcher by bash script and got exactly same error as you got. :cry:

Now I am trying to debug what exactly causes this and how to fix it. This may take few hours, or may be few days. Meanwhile you go ahead and write Piaware SD card image and install AIS-catcher by bash script. It will work OK.

Good to know

Tried that on a virgin Piaware 7.0 image. Still failed

S.

Found Solution:

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev ais  

## MUST REBOOT NOW
sudo reboot   

sudo systemctl status aiscatcher   

 

image

AIS Dispatcher

Very nice Local map, at IP-of-Pi:8080

CAUTION: If you are running dump1090-fa on same PI, then AIS Dispatcher will KILL Skyaware map, piaware-web, and graphs1090

I run dumphfdl and AIS-catcher on the same machine and use combine1090 to view HFDL aircraft. I briefly used AIS Dispatcher and got around the browser conflict by simply changing the port used by AIS Dispatcher. Sorry, I can’t exactly remember where the file was, but it should be relatively easy to find if you root around the AIS Dispatcher directory created on installation.

Edit: It was not combine1090, but like you Skyaware, that was the issue. My first foray into AIS was with another program I put on my Pi along side PiAware. Anyway, same advice applies, change the port on AIS Dispatcher.

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Thanks for guidance. I will try.

I have found AIS Dispatcher also has user name asi, which caused conflict with the same user name used by my bash script for AIS-catcher. As a result, the Dispatcher failed to install. I then modified my script to use user name “aiscat” instead of “ais”. This resolved the conflict.

I have also found solution to the bug which was causing @SweetPea11’s AIS-catcher to fail to find Dongle when started by Systemd command sudo systemctl start aiscatcher. The problem was caused because AIS-catcher’s service file was run by user “ais” which did NOT have access to Dongle. Adding user “ais” to group plugdev gave user ais the power to access the Dongle. This required following command:

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev ais

After above command, the Pi is required to reboot to detect and grab the Dongle.

sudo reboot

In view of above bugs, I have done following 3 modifications to the “install-aiscatcher” bash script:

(1) Changed user name from “ais” to “aiscat”

(2) Added command sudo usermod -a -G plugdev aiscat

(3) Added instructions “REBOOT Pi” to be displayed in red in PuTTY when installation completes.

 

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Thanks @abcd567 just installed this over the sarcnet image and after setting up with adding Ais Dispatcher, it’s a lot better. I’m actually picking up ships in a port in Manchester that the sarcnet didn’t pickup from my home.

I do find marine traffic leaves a lot to be desired as they show me as 0 ships (signal is green and says online) but at the exact same time vessel finder has 6 ships.

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I have also tried several AIS software and found the AIS-catcher performs the best. That is why I decided to create the bash script to install it, adding Systemd service files to make it easy to install, configure, and use, and it will start automatically when RPi boots, and run in background, just like dump1090-fa and piaware.

The AIS Catcher has functions of receiver+decoder+dispatcher, so I do not need a separate dispatcher.

However AIS-catcher lacks a local map (something like skyaware map provided by dump1090-fa). On your advise, I installed AIS Dispatcher on RPi and got a nice local map.

Unfortuately the Dispatcher killed skyaware map and gaphs1090 runing on same Pi. Member @dvsvejk has advised that sometime ago he could find a workaround for this by changing Dispatcher’s map port number from default 8080 to something else, but does not remember the details now. I will try to find the workaround.

@dvsvejk
@Jranderson777
@SweetPea11

Found workaround for conflict between Dispatcher Map and Skyaware Map

Issue following command to open file aiscontrol.cfg, change port number from 8080 to something else, for example 8181, save file, and REBOOT RPi to restart AIS Despatcher with new port number for its map: IP-OF-PI:8181

sudo nano /home/ais/etc/aiscontrol.cfg

 

 

CLICK ON SCREENSHOT TO SEE LARGER SIZE

Post moved here:

Running ADS-B Receiver + AIS Receiver on Same RPi

 

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