[ gpsdrive ] marine or aviation specific package

[Hamish]

Doug Robinson wrote:
> > But wait there is more:
> > And instead of tracking your friends, this feature would be upgraded
> > to integrate the AIS traffic.  All this would then be loaded on your
> > smb stick and you would then have a portable solution that would
> > turn your laptop (or in my case the XO machine) into real competition
> > against the $4k marine gadget.
Chris: 
> Ya nice thought...just kidding. You still need an AIS receiver and
> transponder and they ain't cheap. I'm not sold on AIS in NA yet
> as there are still some issues with it from my reading of various
> sailing rags.
> Seems the Ausies and Brits have worked this out whereas in NA (Canada
> and the States) there still seems to be some wrangling going on. Could
> be wrong however. 
> 
> The big stumbling block however would be to put this hardware in the
> hands of developers dedicated to the task.

by definition those with the hardware would be the driving force of the
development. So I wouldn't worry about that aspect -- support without
users is an academic exercise in window-shopping.

And, FWIW, some of us happen to work for research institutions that
operate their own ships.

> As said, this stuff aint cheap. From a technical side, once the
> standards are stabilized, the programming would not be that difficult
> and could be done by talented hands and minds. Count me out, not a
> programmer but any stretch of the imagination.

I would guess that gpsd would be the place to code this, not directly
into gpsdrive. Or at least a standalone AIS daemon.

On the fly rendering of S-57 ENC data via GDAL/OGR + OpenEV's libS52 is a
much higher priority to me than AIS or radar/weather overlay.

(I had forgotten about the weather overlay task, must have a look at that
again)


Hamish