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Comment by juskrey | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of startups popping up in this industry again. Gathering and processing AIS data is a lot of fun. I was first and, for some time, lead coder for one of them, Weft, until acquisition.

Drop me a note if you are seeking for help in this area, I'd be pleased to get my hands on that again.

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Know of an API where I am able to collect AIS data without having to pay $hundreds/month?

Some hams listen and post it to APRS, but that'd only cover area where it's done, not globally.

It's pretty costly to collect globally in the first place, so I'd be surprised if there was a good API for that.

The good news is that it's relatively cheap to start collecting yourself, get a dAISy[0] and a VHF antenna and you can collect the data directly from any ships in range.

Marinetraffic.com also has a program where they'll send you a receiver for free if you're in a low-coverage area. I got one at home.

[0]: https://www.tindie.com/products/astuder/daisy-ais-receiver/

I've thought about it - the Puget Sound is ever-so-slightly within line of sight (about half mile to the shore and about 3-4 miles from the ship lane). I figured this was not quite clear enough. May be wrong though.

Go for it. Right now I'm receiving a ship on the river 12.5 miles upstream from my house, through trees and buildings, and my antenna isn't even mounted properly. I'll probably receive from much farther out if I mount it on the roof like I've been meaning to.

If you can see the ships, you'll definitely receive them. 3-4 miles is nothing.

Would you mind linking to a few of the startups you've come across?

Also, do you know of any databases of MMSI ship registration numbers or similar? Presuming this should be open access, even if very static.

I am not aware of any to any extent exhaustive open databases of MMSI or AIS data. Sea register MMSI data is fragmented and generally not open enough.

Only commercial data providers can load you up with good historical AIS data and registers, so you can create MMSI table or whatever.

This again depends of what do you want to achieve. Something like 3 months of amateur worldwide AIS feed can give you a pretty good snapshot with MMSIs, names etc.

A few of the interesting US companies:

* https://shone.com [SF] - $4.5M raised - watch assistance and navigation

* https://nautiluslabs.co [NYC] - $13M raised - commercial optimization

* https://cargometrics.com [Boston] - $22M raised - fleet management

All are hiring if I'm not mistaken. If you're interested in Nautilus you can shoot me a message. (disclaimer: I'm an engineer there, great company)

Startupwharf.com has quite a neat categorised list of maritime startups if you don't mind filling in their lead capture form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdc08245Cy8oAhWxJTK...)

[no affiliation - we're not even on the list yet!]

Tooting of own horn, so take with (sea) salt:

https://floathub.com

We've processed about 40 million AIS sentences so far (and really just getting going). More details on that here:

https://support.floathub.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001334348-...

(edited because I always forget the indent = code convention on HN).

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