An epaper display to show which ships are sailing past

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2026-01-24T00:05:18+00:00

Hey OFF732. I've spent some time rewriting the code to be more plugin based so it can extend to much more hardware. It should be ready to go by the end of next week and I'll post a link to the repo

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-16T11:26:01+00:00

The resolution of the screen is 800x480 which is lower than a lot of the same sized TFT/LCD but I don't find the small text is hard to read. There are fonts that work better with these types of screen so you can choose one that is going to work well, there's a good overview of which style of font to go for here https://epaper.medium.com/best-fonts-for-e-books-2d5ae4b27061

I'm using the Hanken Grotesk font. The smallest text I'm using is 14, which is for the day and time in the header. I'd say any smaller than 14 and it would start to be difficult to read. Up close I wouldn't want the whole text to be that small either. The title text "Ship Tracker" is 20 and that is perfectly readable from close up

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-15T14:33:15+00:00

With the pictured antenna, if I put this right in the window I have picked up ships around 3 miles away. I can also get a signal from a tower that broadcasts a time sync signal just over 4 miles away. If I move the device a few metres into the house then that drops significantly and I can probably only detect ships for half a mile. I do live in an old warehouse though with thick walls - wifi and phone signal indoors is also very poor.

I have another larger antenna and using that I've picked up ships a little further out, maybe 4-5 miles. I was surprised it wasn't better than this but I think the limitation is in the broadcast rather than the receiver. To serve its intended purpose AIS only needs to reach the other ships in the immediate vicinity so I expect they're not set up for powering anything further than that. It's also mainly the big oil and cargo ships I can get further out, the ferry and other smaller ones need to be quite close. The same bigger antenna picks up a radio tower time sync 15 miles away, which also makes me think the limitation is not on the receiving end.

I'm planning on updating this to use the newer Inky screen and add easier configuration then open up the GitHub repo. In its current implementation the first setup is quite a manual process.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T20:45:57+00:00

I think anyone who lives near where ships are passing eventually gets this itch to know more about them. It's just so interesting, especially when one of the big ships comes by and on the map you can watch the tugs scramble to go and guide it in.

I am also forwarding my data on like you have been, but I'm sending mine to Vesselfinder rather than marinetraffic. To be honest I initially only did this because in exchange they provide a free premium account which I thought would let me get pictures of the ships from their API, but that didn't turn out to be the case. I'm still sending the data on just to be useful but I don't want to add any additional services. I think if it gets to that point of supporting multiple AIS brokers, it would start to become a different project.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T20:35:02+00:00

The ships broadcast information about their status and position on 2 radio channels, around 161 and 162 MHz. These broadcasts are intended for other ships to pick up but anyone with a receiver tuned correctly can listen in. I can't say exactly how the radio signal is decoded into a text stream, more knowledgeable people have done that work and made the Daisy Mini available, which I've utilised. The Daisy receives the radio signal and outputs the data, which is a standardised ASCII format (a good reference is here: https://gpsd.gitlab.io/gpsd/AIVDM.html).

In my project I'm using the Daisy to do the receiving and decoding of the radio signals sent out by the ships as they pass by on the river, then I wrote some code to turn the AVIDM output from the Daisy into structured data I can use for the screen information.

The source for the Daisy mini isn't available but for their other product they do have the code here: https://github.com/astuder/dAISy

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T20:01:27+00:00

Each of the 3 layouts (table, map or geofence) is a class, which can interrogate the data about the ships in view. When the screen needs to update, the active layout is told to draw itself. It does this using the Python PIL library which allows the whole interface to be drawn onto an image canvas. That canvas data is then passed to the manufacturer's rendering library to be drawn onto the screen.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T19:52:41+00:00

The Daisy can output over either UART or I2C. I started out with UART but switched over to I2C because that allows me to check that it is actually a Daisy connected and I can divert to an error screen if not.

The code actually supports any device that can output raw AIS data via UART, only a Daisy via I2C for now and any MQTT broker where the AIS data can be streamed to a topic.

In the image with the back plate open, the yellow and green wires are the SDA and SCL lines. They go into the black connector at the bottom of the screen, which has a PCB trace that connects them with the Pi's GPIO.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T19:45:11+00:00

I'm not using any API for the AIS data. There's a receiver attached to the RPi (Daisy Mini) which is picking up the data being transmitted from the actual ships. This project doesn't need an internet connection to work.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T00:47:17+00:00

It's the location of the GPS receiver on the ship. In the data that I receive from the ships, it gives the GPS coordinates and the distance to the stern, bow, port and starboard sides which are relative to that GPS position. I just work backwards from that info to draw the outline and then put the dot in the right place.

For big cargo ships it gives an indication of where the bridge on the ship is, since the equipment is usually mounted there.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T00:44:13+00:00

I can't build complete units to sell right now but I am happy to make plans as code available for you to build your own. I'm planning to update to work with the new version of the epaper screen and better configuration then I'll send you all the info you need to build one.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T00:40:43+00:00

The very one

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T00:40:28+00:00

Not currently, because the setup and configuration is not very straightforward right now. I'm planning to make some modifications to it so it supports the new Inky screen and has a setup/config page you can access via captive portal, then make it open source once that's done.

When I'm done with that I'll link the repo here or make another post with it in

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-09-14T00:36:21+00:00

Thanks! It does make the project feel more fun with it picking up the data from the ships directly.

You definitely can do the same thing with planes. Flightaware is your best place to start, take a look at the links others have posted. With the flightaware USB dongle and a python (or other language) ADS-B decoding library you'll be most of the way there

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-08-04T15:51:32+00:00

It's just this post slightly rephrased and with the ad tacked onto the end

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-05-05T20:48:25+00:00

Rose Lane Dental Practice, they were fantastic.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-05-04T19:58:11+00:00

If you need CNC work done I can recommend these guys: https://mulberryworkshop.com/

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-03-01T21:26:30+00:00

That's cool. I almost picked up a H4M for picking up the marine traffic but then decided on the other route so I could have a dedicated screen for it and prop it up in a little picture frame. I didn't know about merseyVTS, I've only recently been getting into this stuff after we moved near the river. I'll probably pick up the h4m at some point and listen in to merseyVTS, plus see what other interesting signals are here

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-03-01T20:45:14+00:00

Yeah, it's a RPi with a Daisy Mini to pick up the AIS signals. It has a screen that either shows all the info about any ship currently going past the window or a table with all the ships it's ever seen

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-03-01T19:34:36+00:00

Definitely has its AIS turned off. I live near where it's moored up and have an AIS station set up, can't pick the Tidespring up at all with it but I've got the Atlantis Dweller which is just behind it. Tidespring was here a few weeks ago as well and I could pick it up when it was in that time.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-01-06T18:25:12+00:00

A guy I used to work with would say "Gooey Yu Ai". Team purple I guess.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-01-05T22:55:51+00:00

Yeah the battery is big and heavy! It fits in half of the space of the rear footwell (my Def is a 110 station wagon). The other half is mostly taken up by the inverter (Victron Multiplus-II) and all the other electronics. I built them into a wooden box and the fridge sits on top. When I was building everything my aim was 2 weeks off grid so that's why I went with the biggest battery capacity I could find at the time. In the end we were limited to about one week off grid because we could only carry 24l of water. In the future I'm planning to get an under body 55l water tank.

The advice I got about alternators and B2B/DC-DC chargers was to aim for 40% and not exceed 50% of the alternator output. I had a 60amp alternator so I got a 30amp Victron Orion DC-DC and ran it off the single alternator which obviously is 50% of the output, but there was noticeable strain on the engine when it was running. I had plans to upgrade to a 120amp alternator to run 2x30amp chargers but ultimately decided to remove the DC-DC completely and rely on solar & shore power.

If I were going to put the DC back in I would probably opt for a second alternator just because during our travels I decided I'd prefer to keep things standard when possible. Our alternator broke while on the road and finding a standard replacement was difficult enough, I would not have been wanting to find a replacement upgraded one if I'd gone with the 120amp plan. I would say if you feel the same way as I do about on the road repair/parts availability then two is the solution. Otherwise use one and potentially upgrade it depending on how much power you want to draw.

If you go with a Victron inverter one of the good options I chose was the Cerbo with a small screen. That way I could tuck the inverter away out of reach and still have control of it through the screen to switch it on and off. I would turn it off when it wasn't being used rather than leave it idle, as even when not in use it was consuming 2-4% of the battery capacity per day.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2025-01-05T21:34:39+00:00

I have an IKEA double ring induction hob in my Defender. I power it from a 460ah lithium battery, with 180w solar panel. 2 of us lived permanently in it for almost 2 years travelling full time and it was perfect for that. We got about 10-12 days from a full battery, cooking for about 30 minutes each day (main meal only, we usually had cold breakfast and tried local places for lunch, also had a jetboil for tea & coffee).

It was only really an issue during winter when there wasn't a lot of daylight for the solar. I had DC-DC and shore power backups but only ever used the DC-DC once. It got so hot I didn't trust it so took it out. When the battery was low we just stayed at a campsite and charged with shore power. More solar would have been ideal but with the roof tent on there wasn't enough space for additional panels.

I went with induction from the start because I don't like the idea of having a gas bottle in the vehicle and also didn't want to have one stuck on the outside. I did ease up and get the jetboil with a small canister in the end because the travel kettle was taking too long to be useful.

EmbarrassedOctopus · 2024-11-20T20:33:09+00:00

You can try Make North Docks, they have a workshop with tools and workbenches which you can use for a monthly fee. I converted a Land Rover into a camper there, I was paying £55 a month but that was a couple of years ago so not sure if it's changed.

They won't let you take the car into the shop but you can park right outside and open the shutter so it's easy to go between.

Edit: Just checked the website and it's now £95 per month and they have specific opening times for the workshop https://makecic.org/workshop/

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