I think that the overall idea of the well known "NASA AIS Radar" is
very good. If it have an internal gps (very cheap ) and better
construction (Weather Proof, Color screen) I already have bough one..
It even does not need to have eletronic charts/ploter, because the
simulated radar screen is praticaly what we need to make it a very
usefull device. Other thing is that it could have a NMEA out port to
send the decoded AIVDM message to other equipment like the "NASA
BalckBox Engine", and this pratically would double the value of the
equipament, Why no other company offer this too until now?

Another question is: why the big radio manufactures (Icom, Standard
Horizon, JRC etc) does not have yet launched an AIS transceiver (a
class B AIS) inbed in theirs marine VHF/DSC radios? I think this would
be very ease and simple as all the VHF radios already have chanels
87/88 and almost all have NMEA IN/OUT. And including a cheap gps chip
like a SIRF woul not increase too much the final price. I would buy one
if it exist just now.