[HN Gopher] Vessel Finder ___________________________________________________________________ Vessel Finder Author : gscott Score : 53 points Date : 2021-03-29 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.vesselfinder.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.vesselfinder.com) | not_knuth wrote: | I was quite surprised that this website seems to use a self-made | map viewer. Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but it feels like by | now everyone either just uses Google Maps and a minute, hardy | fraction uses something based on OSM. | tyingq wrote: | If you pull up a map through their embed functionality, you can | see OpenLayers (https://openlayers.org/) and OSM is in there | somewhere: | | https://www.vesselfinder.com/aismap?zoom=8&lat=36.00&lon=-5.... | not_knuth wrote: | Thanks! Good to know... | Etheryte wrote: | The increased pricing model Google Maps brought along a few | years ago [1] makes it a lot less appealing for public-facing | projects these days. It's still great for internal tools that | have limited and predictable volume, but for anything public | you'll both be building a cache layer yourself to reduce the | costs as well as monitoring it closely. Something as simple as | ending up on the HN frontpage could easily burn through your | planned budget. Setting quotas only solves the problem so far | since your service will still be unusable once you hit them. | | [1] https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing | kabes wrote: | Nautical maps (available, but not the default on vesselfinder) | are usually a bit special. There's custom standards like ENC | s-52/63/57 etc. Typically with a huge amount of symbol layers | etc. Which is just one of the many reasons they may have gone | with a custom openlayers solution | rst wrote: | It could be a custom rendering of OSM data... whatever it is | has full street grids for land-locked villages in the middle of | France, which I can't imagine them gathering on their own. And | their requirements (particularly for the vessel overlays) are | peculiar enough that having their own renderer seems pretty | reasonable. | RicoElectrico wrote: | Clicking [i] in the bottom right corner reveals this is | indeed based on OSM data. | | Kind of stupid design, as the [i] button is so big that a | small always visible attribution could have fit better (just | like on osm.org). | | This is seemingly one of default options in OpenLayers (my | guess based on how often I see this type of attribution). I | wonder why people choose OL anyway. Sites using it in my | experience have on average jankier UX than those based on | Leaflet. | mik3y wrote: | If you're interested in building your own ship tracker, have I | got an incomplete (but functioning!) quarantine boredom project | for you: https://github.com/mik3y/airdash | | The hobbyist AIS tracking world seems to be a bit less popular | than the plane tracking (ADS-B) world. I started the project | above to try to build a common frontend where one could show | both; mainly because there weren't any frontends I could find for | AIS traffic. | | If you just want to decode the data, try rtl-ais: | https://github.com/dgiardini/rtl-ais | | I wrote up some quick instructions on getting it working on | rasberry pi here: | https://github.com/mik3y/airdash/wiki/Running-RTL-AIS-on- | Raspberry-Pi | | And a dockerized version here: | https://github.com/mik3y/rtl-ais-docker | hrishi wrote: | this is awesome, will definitely be checking it out. | | ADS-B is definitely more popular than AIS, and I've always | wondered why. Perhaps it's that airplanes evoke more wonder, | and is more accessible over land than poor old ships? | | Do DM me if you're looking for a position, or if you'd just | like to chat about vessels, AIS and anything maritime. | | We're building maritime intelligence at Greywing (https://grey- | wing.com), and I'd love your input. In fact we have a Launch HN | post up right now, so if you have any thoughts do drop them in! | mik3y wrote: | Neat product! I'm a novice in this space but I'll definitely | keep eyes on. | | On adoption.. I think your hunch is at least part of it. I | think another part, one that is very solvable, is there are | not a whole lot of instructions for DIY hardware & software | setups out there. | | My impression is most AIS hobbyists use kits & proprietary | hardware shipped from commercial providers (eg | MarineTraffic), while rtl-ais is pretty obscure. Documenting | what I can as I go to change it. | floathub wrote: | While we don't have a standalone AIS hardware product, we | do have hardware and software that lets you relay AIS data | both to us and out to other vessel monitoring systems. More | data here: | | https://support.floathub.com/hc/en- | us/articles/360001334348-... | | software only version here: | | https://github.com/floathub/sfh | | drop a note if you want any more info. | skeletal88 wrote: | What are you using to display the S-52 and S-63 charts on the | web? I worked on a VTS product (a small vendor, not any of | the big ones), and there I learned that: | | 1) The sea charts are hugely expensive, the chart sellers | want to sell you a subscription for a limited amount of time, | that would just disappear when the time is over. "safety" is | their justification for it 2) There are no open source | libraries for drawing charts, the desktop chart drawing | libraries are expensive, and it seems that the web products | that output WMS are even more expensive. | giantrobot wrote: | ADS-B you can pick up from just about anywhere since planes | are flying. AIS requires you be near enough a decent sized | body of water/waterway. | dan_quixote wrote: | Do you know of any APIs hosting ship AIS data for free? I did a | bunch of digging on this a few years ago and essentially came | up empty-handed. | cinbun8 wrote: | 10 points to you if you were able to zoom in correctly on the | Suez Canal | Black101 wrote: | https://i.imgur.com/uGHmeOI.png ... The 6th of October gave it | away.... | argvargc wrote: | https://myshiptracking.com is an alternative without as many | paywall restrictions. | | (Note that initial load of ship data can be slow.) | spockz wrote: | What astounds me is that we have ships ferrying things from all | over the world which are available nearby as well. Take this LPG | Tanker, taking lpg from Egypt to the states and now its way to | Singapore. You would think there are less roundabout ways of | getting lpg ... | rob74 wrote: | What's even more mind-boggling to me is that container | logistics are so cheap that a pair of jeans now goes from | Kazakhstan (cotton) via Turkey (spinning) via Taiwan (weaving) | via Poland (dying) via the Philippines (sewing) via Tunisia | (finishing) to finally be sold in Germany (or elsewhere in | Europe) - see http://competendo.net/en/A_Pair_of_Jeans . So, | because shipping costs next to nothing (or, at least, it used | to), you can optimize your supply chain and find the cheapest | alternative (probably also with the laxest regulations) in a | global race to the bottom. Capitalism at its best... | slowhand09 wrote: | Also https://marinetraffic.com ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-29 23:01 UTC)