Thanks for the good advice, following which I spent a few hours today trying
the "trial" versions of different software packages that support AIS.

For my taste, the winner - hands down - was the Coastal Explorer from Rose
Point. I was able to see the AIS feature in action using a link posted on
the web to a live stream from an SR162 receiver located in Elliott Bay (my
home port) in Seattle telnet://boat.milltechmarine.com:20175

Very impressive. Now all I have to do is figure out if I really should spend
$499 for the Coastal Eaxplorer and SR161 bundle plus an additional $119. for
the Smart Radio VHF Antenna Splitter - wifey does not seem to be totally
convinced about the neccessity for the upgrade :-()

Cheers!




"Peter Bennett" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:18:45 -0700, "claus"
wrote:

I am thinking of adding the Smart Radio SR161 AIS receiver to the
electronics on the boat. I would use the unit to connect via a serial
cable
to a PC with the appropriate charting software, e.g. SeaClear II or Rose
Point.

It would interface with the NMEA output from the Raymarine 300 SDGPS. Has
anyone tried this? does it work reliably? (it is manufactured in China so
it
is probably not the greatest)

The product description on the U.S. dealer's website
http://www.milltechmarine.com/ makes this statement "Can an be used to
consolidate incoming NMEA positional data from a GPS into a combined
high-speed data stream on a single serial port." - I wonder how is this
accomplished. Can the single RS232 serial port be "split" with one cable
going to the Raymarine and one to the PC??

The SR161 outputs AIS data at 38,400 baud. It accepts NMEA-0183 data
from GPS and other sources at the normal 4800 baud, and will output
that data at 38,400, mixed with the AIS data. No need to split any
cables, but the AIS receiver must be left on whenever you are using
Raymarine-AIS-computer connection.








--
Peter Bennett VE7CEI
email: peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca
GPS and NMEA info and programs:
http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter/index.html
Newsgroup new user info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/nnq