Hi,
Searched a while but not found anything, wondering what the e.g. the marintraffic API can get...
I find myself going from SignalK/Freeboard to Marintraffic to get pictures of the boats around me...
A pop up that displays a picture and other Metadata would be nice, preferably configurable to different sources.
Anyone agree?
8 Replies
@Ilker was interested in the same thing i think
Yes, though finding an open source has been challenging
Do you mean an open data source?
I agree to that, but since I guess quite a few SignalK users contribute to Marinetraffic, Vesselfinder(AISHub) AISCatcher or similar quite a few of us enjoy their service as compensation for contributing with data.
I just hoped that they had an API (where you will need an access key)
What don't I understand?
That my suggestion is to make that popup available in Freeboard (probably a lot less info) to avoid jumping from Freeboard to Marinetraffic or similar.
In my FreeBoard I see all vessels that is visibla to my own AIS, but not photos. I sail alot in the Öresund strait that is very busy trafficwise, beeing able to identify the boats from photo is very useful more often then you would think.
Example screenshots
I am against displaying unnecessary information on the chartplotter screen.
In fact, you want to refer to an external handbook. So go to the handbook. You should not put the handbook on the map screen.
But in principle, the idea of long-term caching of AIS information with its gradual enrichment (include photos) for further offline use might make sense.
One could include myshiptracking.com, this service nicely delivers a picture of ost vessels as long as you know the mmsi
https://www.myshiptracking.com/requests/getimage-normal/257182000.jpg
marinetraffic, vesseltracker etc. do not allow to easily and directly access a photo, there you need to go on their full website every time you want to see a picture
As a related question: Does someone know other services, where you can directly access images of vessels via the mmsi?
From a client perspective the "quick and dirty" solution would be to just provide a link to a URL like the ones mentioned above.....but there is a well established Signal K pattern of having a well defined path available for all clients to use and a plugin as the bridge to the service provider.
I am keen to provide a link in the FSK vessel properties page to an agreed path for a vessel photo e.g.
/signalk/v1/api/vessels/<id>/photos which can then be provisioned by a plugin to source images from the source of choice.