Live Marine Traffic for Charlottetown

When I was crafting up the Is there a cruise ship in Charlottetown? site I inevitably came across MarineTraffic.com, a website that aggregates together ship’s position information from receiving stations around the world and displays them on a map. There wasn’t any data for the Port of Charlottetown because there was nobody in Charlottetown sending the data; but over in the left corner of the site I spotted a call to action:

MarineTraffic.com Call to Action

I followed the link, and then followed the instructions to request a VHF receiver and antenna. And, to my surprise and delight, while I was away in Europe last month they both arrived in the mail. This morning I got things set up — really just a matter of attaching the antenna and power supply to the Ship Location Received (a SLR200N) and connecting the received to our office Internet router. And then, blamo, data started to flow to MarineTraffic.com showing all the yachts moored down at the Charlottetown Yacht Club.

Here’s what the gear looks like:

SLR200N Ship Location Receiver at The Reinventorium

VHF Antenna at The Reinventorium

I’m Station No. 1218 at MarineTraffic.com and we’re on the air now streaming ship’s position information 24/7 for the curious.

Comments

Keith Burgoyne's picture
Keith Burgoyne on August 2, 2012 - 14:22 Permalink

I think you’ve delighted my inner nerd with this.

Ton Zijlstra's picture
Ton Zijlstra on August 2, 2012 - 23:00 Permalink

So now you’re an open data source! :) Cool!

Brody's picture
Brody on August 5, 2012 - 11:26 Permalink

Very cool! Thank you for sharing :)