Live ships map • Hacker News Board

Re: Live ships map

#41

Post by hef19898 » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 9:57 AM UTC

b_emery wrote: post #28

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me want to buy a bunch of AIS receivers and take a week or two off to travel to far flung locations to setup remote receiving locations. Nerd level: Extreme Bonus points that you cite Calculated Risk blog.

This makes me want to buy a bunch of AIS receivers and take a week or two off to travel to far flung locations to setup remote receiving locations. We've been putting them at our HF radar sites to log ship data, so that we can use the ship data in a hack to get the radars to self calibrate. The radars measure ocean currents and are in some pretty 'far flung locations'. Yes it's fun!

Besides the fun this is, setting up the recievers I mean, great hack with the self-calibrating radars, elegant and effetive, respect! Maybe one should integrate ship data to freight tracking services, so you can actually locate your container, well more the vessel!

Re: Live ships map

#42

Post by garazy » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 10:14 AM UTC

This site is really cool. Everyone interested in this sort of tracking should checkout PlanePlotter from COAA http://www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm. It does a similar sort of thing but for planes which have ADS-B transmitters and a team of volunteers sharing data. It costs 25 euros to access the shared data but well worth the money (I'm not affiliated just a happy customer).

Re: Live ships map

#43

Post by davedx » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 11:19 AM UTC

I use this to track the ships my sister works on. Awesome resource :)

Re: Live ships map

#44

Post by stunr69 » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 12:49 PM UTC

I have aggregated some of the other similar sources for vessel tracking:-

http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shiplocations.phtml http://www.mariweb.gr/ecs http://www.vesseltracker.com/app http://vesseltrax.com/ http://www.shippingexplorer.net/en http://www.fleetmon.com/ http://www.shiptracking.eu/ais/ http://www.worldvtsguide.org/index.html

Similarly live air traffic from around the world is aggregated and it uses ADS-B technique to receive flight information from aircraft:-

http://www.radarvirtuel.com/ http://www.flightradar24.com/ http://www.flightstats.com/go/Home/home.do http://casperflights.com/ http://radar.piopawlu.net/

Re: Live ships map

#45

Post by davidvaughan » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 12:53 PM UTC

mildavw wrote: post #25

I built an app that combines freely available AIS data with other relevant inventory data and sell subscriptions to some local oil-spill recovery companies: http://demo.dedicatedmaps.com/

I'm building something that might be of interest to you. Would it be convenient to contact you? If so, how?

Re: Live ships map

#46

Post by smackfu » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 1:45 PM UTC

It really needs a shaded overlay or similar that shows the coverage regions. If you don't know that a patch of sea isn't being monitored, it's not exactly reliable data.

Re: Live ships map

#47

Post by speleding » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 2:35 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #19

I live near the "oil capital of Europe" (I hate that name too), so there's quite a lot of ships floating around nearby. Very cool.

Do you mean Rotterdam? As far as I can tell it has the highest density of ships in the world.

Re: Live ships map

#48

Post by camiller » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 3:23 PM UTC

arebop wrote: post #35

I've been using http://www.boatingsf.com/ais_map.php and I like this better because (1) it's not flash and (2) your dataset is slightly more detailed. I do miss boatingsf's animations, because it gives me a better idea about the path and trajectory of a ship than just a current position and heading.

In the popup for a particular boat click "Show Vessel's Track" which appears to show a set of previous position reports with a line drawn between them.

Re: Live ships map

#49

Post by pixie_ » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 4:21 PM UTC

ggchappell wrote: post #3

Very nice, but I had to wonder why, of the thousands of ships whose positions are recorded, only 2 appear to be any significant distance from land. The answer is in the FAQ [1]: > The MarineTraffic system does not cover all the seas of the world, but only specific coastal areas where a land-based AIS receiver is installed. [1] http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/faq.aspx?level1=160#16

There's a commercial service that offers global coverage with AIS receivers attached to satellites. http://www.orbcomm.com/services-ais.htm

Re: Live ships map

#50

Post by philwelch » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 6:31 PM UTC

twelvechairs wrote: post #29

feverishaaron wrote: post #12

There are a lot of tankers sitting off the coasts. I wonder if they are holding oil that was delivered to speculators, awaiting sale?

Often tankers sit out and wait for the oil price to change marginally (yes, really - its that silly). Other than that, could be many reasons including bunkering (via smaller ships), full port, repairs/servicing, etc.

It's not that silly when you work it out. You have a ship holding 2-3 million barrels of oil and a 20-40 crew. It looks like the market price of light sweet crude varies by as much as $1 per barrel per day. Which means a difference of 2-3 million dollars if you come to port today instead of yesterday.