Using RaspAIS HAT

[hughfe]

Has anyone used a RaspAIS HAT AIS receiver with AIS-catcher? Any special configuration requirements?
crw-rw-rw- 1 root dialout 204, 64 Oct 15 20:42 ttyAMA0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Oct 15 20:42 ttyOP_raspais -> ttyAMA0

[jvde-github]

Yes, worked like a serial device for me: -e 38400 /dev/....

Or use the web GUI and use settings like in your screenshot.

Does it not work?

[hughfe]

Thanks for the help. I tried some time ago and couldn't figure it out, so I've been using Openplotter with the RaspAIS until now, but I want to see if I can connect the output to ADS-B tar1090, and that only explicitly supports AIS-Catcher. Now I am wondering if Signal-K is just another name for NMEA packaged in json.

[hughfe]

What I have gathered from a quick look is that the JSON AIS format just packages AIS messages whereas Signal-K is intended to provide the same level of communication as NMEA but over a network, so I guess they are designed for different purposes.

[hughfe]

Yes, that worked well, thanks. I have data coming in now. Next 2 questions - getting it out...

1. Does AIS-Catcher support UDP broadcast (to local LAN only)?
2. If not I'll set it up as a TCP server - the web gui is a little confusing: I'm not connecting to another AIS source, I want to listen for requests to send AIS data.

[hughfe]

Ah, of course. Usually I just click on everything to see what happens, must not be on form today.

[jvde-github]

Does not seem to work though! Let me check....

[hughfe]

"Not just me for once"
Have to leave this for a bit (18:50 here)

[jvde-github]

Ok, so "broadcast" needs to be lower case of course, it is JSON, then it works

[hughfe]

Ok, so "broadcast" needs to be lower case of course, it is JSON, then it works

I think I now understand how to get AIS-Catcher to do what I want, and it's working well.
I feel that possibly the documentation is only just keeping up with development, and it tends to be written from the point of view of "how this works" rather than "how to use this".
In our example here, the UDP documentation at https://docs.aiscatcher.org/configuration/output/UDP/ says:
"Another option for UDP sending via -u is BROADCAST on/off" and then says:
BROADCAST | boolean | false | Enable broadcast mode
We can assume that on/off is equivalent to true/false, but apparently the for the web interface the property name must be in lower case (different for the command line then?).
The really neat solution would be to have a pick list of some sort for the properties and their possible values...
I found one small mistake in the web interface - when removing an MQTT configuration the message box says "Are you sure you want to remove this HTTP configuration?" in addition to the comment about connecting to other AIS sources for output above.

[jvde-github]

Fair enough. The issue is that indeed the program moves quickly and secondly the number of users is limited, so not a great investment of time to develop documentation.

My approach would to make the web GUI as intuitive as possible so no documentation is needed but at this stage for some more exotic options we are not there et. I will improve the GUI for UDP and TCP by adding a simple selection box for broadcast addresses.

[hughfe]

Thanks, I thought that might be the case. No doubt quite a lot of the users have grown with the software, so just needed to know about changes. When a new user arrives (although I did use AIS-catcher a couple of years ago for a while) they need to start from scratch.
I think the adsb.im ultrafeeder has the same issues with documentation/useability, I'll try to give them some tactful feedback!

[jvde-github]

Ok, so I have changed AIS-catcher in a backward compatible way, you can update via the Control tool.
But more interestingly, this will now allow to define UDP output in a more intuitive way:

This requires update of control tool. But this does not work anymore if an older version of AIS-catcher is running, so need to update both.

[jvde-github]

And also removed the HTTP confusing messages when updating MQTT. Thanks for flagging.

[hughfe]

I'm a sucker for an update - nice work!

[hughfe]

I made the mistake of running apt update and now I can't get the RaspAIS HAT to work!
Previously downloading linux-modules-extra-raspi worked but that does not seem to be available. I might have to reinstall the whole thing!

[hughfe]

I don't know what's wrong with this. AIS-catcher is exiting with this message:
2025-11-27T11:26:21+1300 AIS-catcher (build Nov 25 2025) v0.63-4-g210c1550

2025-11-27T11:26:21+1300 Serial: Invalid device handle 0

2025-11-27T11:26:21+1300 ais-catcher.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION
2025-11-27T11:26:21+1300 ais-catcher.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
2025-11-27T11:26:31+1300 ais-catcher.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 61.
2025-11-27T11:26:31+1300 Started ais-catcher.service - AIS-catcher Service.
2025-11-27T11:26:31+1300 JSON option is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Use MSGFORMAT instead.
2025-11-27T11:26:31+1300 Fetch Web Libraries locally at /etc/AIS-catcher/webassets

However the serial dev does work, if I open minicom on dev/raspAIS I can see AIS messages coming in.
For now I am going to reinstall Bookworm on the Pi3, because that did work.

[hughfe]

I am older but none the wiser. I can't get serial input to work on Bookworm or Trixie. I get this:

$ AIS-catcher -e 38400 /dev/serial0
AIS-catcher (build Nov 25 2025) v0.63-4-g210c1550
(C) Copyright 2021-2025 jvde-github and other contributors
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Serial: Invalid device handle 0

$ AIS-catcher -L
AIS-catcher (build Nov 25 2025) v0.63-4-g210c1550
(C) Copyright 2021-2025 jvde-github and other contributors
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
SDR support: RTLSDR AIRSPY AIRSPYHF+ RTLTCP SPYSERVER ZMQ HACKRF
Other support: SYSLOG NMEA2000 SSL PostgreSQL ZLIB SQLITE RTLSDR-BIASTEE RTLSDR-TUNERBW

But as mentioned minicom can see AIS messages arriving at /dev/serial0 at 38400.

[jvde-github]

I have uploaded a quick fix, can you please check if it is fixed?

[hughfe]

That's done the trick! Well done.
I'll upgrade the pi to Trixie again, but only change one thing at a time!