Ships · AIS · 162 MHz
Skydex AIS network
Volunteers point their AIS receivers at Skydex. Every ship they hear shows up on the map, in the world pilots fly over and in the collections spotters build, credited to your station. Free, a few minutes to set up, and you keep feeding everyone else.
Add your station · Watch it live
The ships network right now
- 12 ships receivers
- 10 delivering right now
- 6,870 ships heard in 30 days
- 64,357,653 AIS messages in 30 days
- 7 countries
Add your station in four steps
If you already run a receiver you need no new hardware, and your feeds to other networks stay exactly as they are.
Get a receiver
A 162 MHz antenna and an RTL-SDR stick running AIS-catcher, or an AIS receiver you already have on a boat or a roof. An ADS-B stick will not hear ships: different band, antenna and decoder.
Get your station ID
Sign in on skydex.online/feed (free, with Google), press Connect a receiver and pick Ships (AIS). You get an ID and a ready-made line.
Add one line
Add it to your AIS-catcher command. The ID in the line credits every ship to your station.
AIS-catcher ... -H https://<your-station-id>@skydex.online/api/ais/feed gzip on interval 15 RESPONSE offAnother decoder (rtl-ais, OpenCPN, a chartplotter)? Send plain NMEA over UDP to feed.skydex.online:10110. Put \s:<your-station-id>\ in front of a sentence to credit your station, or leave it out and feed anonymously.
Check that it arrives
Press the button below from the same network as your receiver. Your station page goes live with the first messages.
Already running adsb.im or docker-shipfeeder?
You don't need a second decoder. docker-shipfeeder has Skydex built in: add SKYDEX_FEEDER_KEY=<your-station-id> to the container's environment, pull the current image and recreate the container. On adsb.im open Setup → Advanced → AIS / Shipfeeder and paste the line below into "ais-catcher extra command line options". If the field already holds options, put a space before the line.
-H https://<your-station-id>@skydex.online/api/ais/feed gzip on interval 15 RESPONSE offGet your station ID in step 2 first: it is the part between https:// and @ in the line you get there. Put it in place of <your-station-id>. If you already added the line to docker-shipfeeder by hand, it keeps working. Use one of the two ways, not both, or the station sends everything twice.
What your station gets
A public station page
Uptime, the kinds of ship your antenna hears and the flags that pass it.
A place on the leaderboard
Stations are ranked by Signal: uptime, reach and what you heard that nobody else did.
Feathers every day
30 Feathers for every day your receiver is up 80% of the time, plus 2 Tridents every 5 days. Spend them in the game.
Founding station
The first 25 stations get a Founding badge and 25 Tridents. 14 places are still open.
Your water in the game
The ships you hear sail in the world pilots fly over, and spotters catch them into their collections.
Every ship gets a page
Ships your network hears end up in an open directory of flag states and shipyards.
Your location stays private
We publish your country and the nearest regional centre, never your antenna. Private leisure boats are never stored.
See the network
- Live network map: Every ship the network hears right now, with the stations that hear it.
- Coverage map: Where the network has heard anything over the last 30 days.
- Ships we hear: Our receivers' ships on the street-level map.
- Live globe: Aircraft and ships together on a 3D Earth.
Ships receivers
- North Ryde · Australia · Signal 914
- Claudio Station · Brazil · Signal 913
- Port of New Orleans · United States of America · Signal 908
- Skydex AIS#1 - Hamburg, Wilhelmsburg · Germany · Signal 877
- Enmore AIS · Australia · Signal 874
- Braunschweig, Gartenstadt · Germany · Signal 842
- delapoleavenue · United Kingdom · Signal 787
- Vinaros AIS(Spain) · Spain · Signal 735
- kx1t trenton AIS (East-Boston, MA) · United States of America · Signal 726
- DogeRam1500 · United States of America · Signal 714
Where the network hears
Australia, Brazil, Germany, Kazakhstan, Spain, United Kingdom, United States of America.
Questions
How big is the ships network?
12 ships receivers in 7 countries. Together they heard 6,870 different ships in the last 30 days.
What is AIS?
A radio signal on 162 MHz that ships broadcast with their position, course, speed and name. A receiver near the coast or a river hears ships tens of kilometres away.
What hardware do I need?
An RTL-SDR stick and an antenna tuned for 162 MHz, or any AIS receiver that can put NMEA on the network. Height and a clear view of the water matter most. An ADS-B setup will not hear ships.
Can I keep feeding MarineTraffic, AISHub or aiscatcher.org?
Yes. AIS is a broadcast and Skydex is one more destination for it. Keep every feed you already have.
Does it cost anything?
No. Feeding is free and so is the game. Your receiver earns 30 Feathers for every day it stays up.
Is my location published?
No. A station page names its country and the nearest regional centre, and maps draw it on a square about 11 by 7 km. Private leisure boats reach the map as moving hulls and are never stored.
How do I know it works?
Use the address check on this page from the same network as your receiver, or open skydex.online/feed: it shows each of your receivers as online, quiet or offline.
Can I feed without an account?
Yes. Send NMEA over UDP to feed.skydex.online:10110 and the ships join the map anonymously. With a station ID in a tag block, the same traffic is credited to your own station page.
How do I stop?
Remove the line from your decoder config. Your station page stays and shows the station as quiet.
Hearing aircraft instead?
ADS-B is a different band, 1090 MHz, with its own antenna and decoder. The aircraft network has its own page.