Kurt's Weblog http://schwehr.org/blog/rss.xml electronic work log en-us Kurt 2010-03-09T14:27:18-05:00 http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-03.html#e2010-03-09T13_57_15.txt ABE lost over the weekend 2010-03-09T13:57:15-05:00 Kurt ABE will be missed. But with all AUVs, the risk of loss is a part of the process. If you don't use them, then you will not loose `em. News Release : Pioneering Deep-Sea Robot Lost at Sea [WHOI.edu] 
The Autonomous Benthic Explorer, ABE, was lost at sea over the weekend,
during a research cruise off the coast of Chile.  ABE was a pioneering
deep-sea exploration robot—one of the first successful submersible
vehicles that was both unmanned and untethered to surface ships.
...
It's rough loosing an underwater vehicle, but we get over it and move on to the next great project with many lessons learned.]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-03.html#e2010-03-09T09_48_56.txt Unknown vessels are a pain 2010-03-09T09:48:56-05:00 Kurt MMSIspace. However, this vessel still has no name, IMO or callsign.

MMSIIMOnumcallsignnameshiptypedimAdimBdimCdimDdraughtdestcg_rcg_timestamp
3380784470@@@@@@@@@@3063330@@@@r0036699462008-10-15 01:41:39
]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-03.html#e2010-03-05T17_16_18.txt Panoram display on the cheap 2010-03-05T17:16:18-05:00 Kurt FlightGear.





Being that flight gear is based on open source toolkits, there is a good chance that we can hook our AIS feed to this and drive the ships around to match actual traffic.

]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-03.html#e2010-03-05T09_37_29.txt Flash back to MER 2010-03-05T09:37:29-05:00 Kurt Scott Maxwell who has posted about his experiences work on the Mars Exploration Rovers. Extra bonus that I appear in at least one of his posts. I was working so many hours during MER, that I barely remember any of it. 12-16 hour days were typical. Being able to read Scott's adventure through MER is a real treat for people who just like planetary exploration or robots and for those working on research for robots and planetary exploration.

Spirit Sol 13 
...
Just as I arrive, I meet Kurt Schwehr, who asks if RSVP can produce
animations. Boy, do I have great timing. It turns out that Kurt
intends to record RSVP simulating the pre-egress turn, so that they
can show it at the press conference. At the moment, he doesn't need
our new feature where we write our animation to a file -- he's under
time pressure and just wants to use the existing animation features,
and just needs a little help figuring them out -- but he's interested
in the new stuff and wants to hear more about it. Score!
...
I spent a lot of time with RSVP on MER and even more on Phoenix.]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-03.html#e2010-03-01T21_41_35.txt IODP Expedition 318 - Antarctica week 5 2010-03-01T21:41:35-05:00 Kurt ]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-02.html#e2010-02-22T08_51_40.txt AMQP messaging in fink 2010-02-22T08:51:40-05:00 Kurt Pyro, and a few others in the past. I want something simple, but that buys me more than just managing TCP or UDP myself. I looked at Jabber/XMPP a bit, but then started reading about AMQP, which sounds attractive, especially with the option to allow for keeping messages through a system crash.

I spent some time with various implementations of AMQP with not much success. I avoided RabbitMQ because it is based on Erlang which is not something I am used to. I tried these two, but got frustrated with the code bases. I don't have time to get them to build reasonably on the Mac with fink. I ended up packaging these into fink: I did some simple tests and have the basics working. I now need to figure out how to use carrot and celery.

For general background, I read Rabbits and Warrens and watched this video, but is not the best for seeing the figures, but it does give a kickstart. The slides get better about 20 minutes in.

]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-02.html#e2010-02-18T09_54_14.txt Automatically updating charts in ECDIS 2010-02-18T09:54:14-05:00 Kurt
From Digital Ship, Mar 2010: 
...
IMO's push for e-Navigation and the introduction of a mandatory
carriage requirement for ECDIS (electronic chart display and
information system) from 2012 could help to reduce the possibility of
vessels sailing with charts that do not represent the most accurate
and up-to- date representation of their navigational environment.

The transmission of digital chart data, whether by satellite or using
other broad- cast systems, is quite obviously the fastest way of
getting the latest corrections on to a vessel bridge. 
...
]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-02.html#e2010-02-17T16_21_06.txt ais-areanotice-py 0.2 2010-02-17T16:21:06-05:00 Kurt ais-areanotice-py reference implementation of the NAV55 proposed AIS Binary Message for Area Notices. Version 0.1 was seriously buggy. Thanks to Brad for being the first to submit bug reports. He pointed out all sorts of unpleasant things. I bit the bullet and started dog fooding what I produce. I've implemented decoders for everything but the polylines and polygons that span more than one sub-area. There are lots of changes and at this point, I think this is the beginnings of a reasonable test data set. Please try this! I really need testing and feedback.

Software is available under downloads and the test data under samples.

]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-02.html#e2010-02-16T17_41_54.txt NAIS data release RFC 2010-02-16T17:41:54-05:00 Kurt
ESR: Comment to USCG on NAIS policy

Let me know if there are others. I've put mine up in a place that has comments. Feel free to agree, disagree, etc. This topic is really worthy of a whole series of papers, but this is all I can muster right now.

USCG Request For Comment on NAIS data release

The summary: 
My overall opinion is that the only increased risk from releasing raw
AIS data comes from the economic impact to those who are trying to
sell AIS feeds. Outside of the 3 or 4 groups doing Satellite based
AIS, I don't think these companies should get protection. There is
already stiff competition, e.g. AIS Hub will give you AIS data for
free if you contribute back at least a little bit of data. AIS
receivers start from about $190. The real value comes from
interpretation - analysis and display of these feeds. More access to
AIS data means to me that we will get more people involved in analysis
and it will speed the uptake of AIS binary messages. As for security,
if the USCG needs to keep this data restricted as sensitive, then it
should not have been broadcast in the clear to start with. Hiding
addressed messages is strange when anyone with a receiver and gpsd can
see most of these addressed messages anyway.
]]> http://schwehr.org/blog/archives/2010-02.html#e2010-02-16T08_07_18.txt Open Street Map (OSM) Haiti edits 2010-02-16T08:07:18-05:00 Kurt

OpenStreetMap - Project Haiti from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

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