MMSI, DSC, AIS

Started by Gobi King, January 09, 2019, 11:13:48 PM

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Gobi King

I have a small 17 ft alu boat.

I have been competing in the biggest Gobi contests for many years and now I want to graduate and participate in a few of the walleye tournaments.

The walleye guys require boats to have Marine Radio.

Well, I bought a few Standard Horizon units:
1. HX870 - GPS DSC handheld (floating)
2. HX210 (floating)
3. GX1700 (GPS DSC static unit)

. I want to cover safety in the spring months after ice out when I go out on the big lake or on Detroit River (shipping channel)

Here are my questions (please pardon newbie my lack of knowledge in this area)

1. I have 1 handheld GPS/DSC unit and a fixed boat unit with DSC, do I need to get 2 MMSI #s?
2. Do I need to add in AIS class b?
3. ACR unit, do I need one? I will around 8 miles off shore max.

Anything I should be thinking of?

Shibs - aka The Gobi King
Fichigan

David Hall

one MMSI number can be used for both devices. I believe it is vessel specific.
AIS is a nice safety feature, I have vesper XB8000 on my boat and glad I do, I came into my harbor in fog so heavy visibility was a mere 50' that is less than 2 boat lengths,  I could see a vessel in the channel and my AIS told me who it was, I slowed to idle speed and when I made visual contact it was a whale watching boat 50' in front of me and they were backing down to give me room to get into the channel.  they had seen me on their AIS and I saw them on mine and it was a simple passing at the jaws instead of a collision.
just so you know, I will always vote yes for anything that adds another level of safety on the sea. 

Gobi King

David,
Thanks,
I spoke to the coast guard guys at the fishing show last weekend and they said I should get unique MMSI for each.
The guys at the walleye club concur with you and said one will do.

If it is tied to a vessel then, 1 # makes sense,
If it is tied to the person then, 2#, one for fixed unit and one for the handheld makes sense.

If I get a unique #for the handHeld, can I use it on my smaller boat? i.e. the handheld unit, can it be independent of the vessel?

Vesper - it has wifi feature and can connect to WIFE devices, does that mean you can watch AIS display on a PDA device? If that is yes, then that is neat,

It does get foggy quite a few times a year here to, most of the launches are on an access lake and we have to take a shipping channel out to the big lake, big lake barges and other big lake monsters which  are 1000 ft long, yes 1000 ft.

So I am sold on AIS, I need to figure out how to mount all these antennas and keep a cover on as I want to slip my boat for a few months. I spoke to a custom arch outfit. There were local in Traverse City but has since moved to Toledo, They can fab me an arch which would weigh 65 lbs.

I need to get cracking on this after I get the boat out of storage.

Shibs - aka The Gobi King
Fichigan

Ron Jones

As someone who spent their whole life popping up in the middle of the ocean without really knowing what was going on around me, I cannot sell AIS enough. Best form of cheating there is. In all honesty, I'd rather have it than RADAR. The MMSI goes with the device, nothing to do with the vessel.

We have had GPS/AIS interference in the past. I know their isn't much room on a 17 ft boat, but separate them as much as possible. Also, height is WAY more important for AIS, which is line of sight, than GPS. If your separation includes height put the AIS antennae up high.

Ron Jones
Ronald Jones
To those who have gone to sea and returned and to those who have gone to sea and will never return
"

David Hall

my vesper AIS unit runs off my regular VHF antennae, through a special splitter and feeds into NMEA2000 so I only use one antennae, also the vesper feeds GPS data to my MFD so I also use only one GPS antennae.  And yes it is capable of acting as a wifi hub,I do not use it that way but I have an app called Marine traffic on my phone and Ipad.  It shows real time data such as location, heading, speed as well as historical data for the day, what time I left the harbor, Speed and heading and course. 

Gobi King

Update:

I have 2 devices which has MMSI capability:

1. Fixed antenna boat radio
2. Portable walkie with GPS

I registered both and have unique MMSI #s for each.

for #2, the registration was simpler as there is an option to pick if the unit if portable.
Shibs - aka The Gobi King
Fichigan

Gobi King

Quote from: David Hall on March 29, 2019, 06:38:15 PM
my vesper AIS unit runs off my regular VHF antennae, through a special splitter and feeds into NMEA2000 so I only use one antennae, also the vesper feeds GPS data to my MFD so I also use only one GPS antennae.  And yes it is capable of acting as a wifi hub,I do not use it that way but I have an app called Marine traffic on my phone and Ipad.  It shows real time data such as location, heading, speed as well as historical data for the day, what time I left the harbor, Speed and heading and course. 

David,
AIS is next on my list,
I need to get a Bidirectional AIS transducer,
Gotcha, same antenna with inline splitter/filter
Shibs - aka The Gobi King
Fichigan

David Hall

Not all of the transponders are created equal.  Only vesper does this much and only vesper can feed FPS data to a MFD at least when I was looking around a few years ago such was the case.  Other brands may require a dedicated antennae and won't have the WiFi hub and also may not feed gps data to you MFD. 
others may have caught up but I'm not sure as I haven't looked into them since I bought the vesper.

Gobi King

Quote from: David Hall on May 29, 2020, 11:24:22 PM
Not all of the transponders are created equal.  Only vesper does this much and only vesper can feed FPS data to a MFD at least when I was looking around a few years ago such was the case.  Other brands may require a dedicated antennae and won't have the WiFi hub and also may not feed gps data to you MFD. 
others may have caught up but I'm not sure as I haven't looked into them since I bought the vesper.

I have not taken the time to research this,
https://www2.vespermarine.com/xb8000-ais-transponder

Looks pretty fancy to me, I will wait till 4th July deals to snag one.
Signal processing and splitting is one thing that I understand, heck I remember this project I worked on, implementing 2 logical arrays off a single physical array.  ;D

I can nema it to my chartviewer to see the other ships, but I am more interested in the big guys seeing me as I am a very very very little dot when compared to the 1000 ft delivery giants that roam the Detroit river.

Alan has the FLIR and I need to get something like it for early morning launches.
Shibs - aka The Gobi King
Fichigan

David Hall

It is comforting to know that the big boys can see you with AIS and your right about the Flir thermal cameras, that is next on my list of things I want to have, right behind get the boat running! and get a good cover made to protect it and get gauges for my turbo exhaust temp and boost pressure and  high water bilge alarms for three compartments. Im still a ways away from thermal imaging.

David Hall

I guess Im not as far away as i thought.  my new M232 TIC arrived this Tuesday past and I have been going through the install and planning it.  First thing is my GPS antennae sits right where I want to mount the camera, that is dead center fore of the Radar and below its beam.  so where to move the GPS?  conundrum #34.  I have read an article stating that being up high on a pole or mounted on a small base right on the hardtop makes little or no difference to GPS?  I would sure like to know if this is true or not.  I cannot seem to find a definitive source from google as of yet, since this particular GPS feeds both my AIS and MFD. I do experience more than "occasional" loss of data source error messages. I assume they must be GPS related, but I do not know for certain.

Gobi King

David,

You will be fine putting in the GPS antenna  a little offset.

Us rear side sonar guys have a rear GPS antenna just above the rear sonar on the transom so the bottom scans of the contour is super accurate and not OFFSET by 10 ft or the length of the fish finder unit (with built in GPS) and rear sonar.

Using the same logic, your Screen does not use a GPS built in but get the signal from the antenna, you position in the map will be offset by the distance from the GPS and the screen but I don't think that distance is too much to be an issue.

PICs of install please.

M232 TIC - night pics too pls,

Shibs - aka The Gobi King
Fichigan