Flightradar24 for Ships(atlas.flexport.com)
251 points bychromy4 days ago |22 comments
ltrg4 days ago
This only covers container ships btw. For full coverage of all vessels, try the 'vessel presence' layer in Global Fishing Watch's interactive map, based on a feed from Spire: https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/
nehal3m4 days ago
https://www.marinetraffic.com has most AIS transponders, I use it to track friends on commercial and private vessels.
wolvoleo4 days ago
https://aprs.fi also shows AIS (as well as ham radio operators which is its primary function)
cess114 days ago
Thanks for the recommendation, looks interesting. I've used Vessel Finder due to something being a nuisance with Marine Traffic.

https://www.vesselfinder.com/

joezydeco4 days ago
https://aisvesseltracker.com/ is a good one too. Shows a LOT more, including cruise ships and pleasure craft.
villson3 days ago
Doesn't track all container ships. I'm looking out my office window at Eliot Bay (Seattle), I see two container ships not on the map.
landl0rd4 days ago
It's also a bit limited. The gold standard is still kpler.
dwedge4 days ago
Years ago I used to subscribe to a service that did this for oil tankers and tried to estimate oil to each route, they wrote a weekly summary. Eventually they decided they only wanted enterprise clients and not people like me who, working in devops, had no need for this service at all and only paid the $20 a month out of some weird fascination
throw0101c4 days ago
latexr4 days ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMfXVWFBrVo

I bet many of you can guess what scene from what show that points to.

victorbjorklund4 days ago
What is different from marinetraffic?
n2j34 days ago
Marinetraffic is a good example of enshittification. Started well, now it's heavy and ad-laden, practically useless without a paid account.
Noaidi4 days ago
I find Marinetraffic is fine without an account.

Here is a link to oil tankers anchored around the Strait of Hormuz. It has much better filters:

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:56.8/cente...

dzhiurgis4 days ago
Any of these provide satellite data without charge?

Also - is there any sites that publish parsed data from SAR sats?

dry_soup4 days ago
Sounds like Flightradar24
jen729w4 days ago
In case anyone isn't aware:

https://globe.adsbexchange.com

– is an alternative to FlightRadar24 with more data.

mike_d4 days ago
ADSBX used to be volunteer ran until JETNET paid the guy who controlled the domain name $20 million dollars to "sell" it to them and steal everyone else's source code and data. They now do selective filtering to appease their commercial clients.

Everyone has moved to https://globe.airplanes.live/ and https://app.airframes.io/flights now.

Here is the lawsuit from one former group of contributors: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23963235-golden-hamm...

wolvoleo4 days ago
Yeah that really sucked. It was a great volunteer platform and I was sad the guy sold out. It didn't filter anything. Not rich guys' jets, not military etc.

The community never really recovered. The airplanes.live one doesn't have as many feeders and the airframes.io is hidden behind a login.

I was hoping the community would simply move in unison to a new platform just like what happened when freenode got ruined. But it seems to have kinda fallen apart.

Especially the MLAT abilities (receiving traditional transponders pre-ADS-B) was really cool but it really needs a lot of feeders to be able to pinpoint them.

codethief3 days ago
How do airplanes.live and airframes.io compare to FlightRadar24? I've only ever used the latter.
oncallthrow4 days ago
Unfortunately adsbexchange does not allow you to see the source/destination of flights
esseph4 days ago
Untrue

Click on the aircraft, then click on Flight Activity.

kortilla4 days ago
The inscrutable buttons in their UI are terrible for mobile/tablet access. I wish the discoverability was better
rustyhancock4 days ago
At least for FR24 you get a "Gold" account (no longer business) simply for running a feed.
tappaseater4 days ago
Nitpick: It's called Contributor and supposedly has the same features of the previous subscription. It still feels like a setup for future degradation by some marketing genius.
amatecha4 days ago
Yup, nothing changes now, but I'd pretty confidently place bets that the tier will have reduced features compared to the "Business" tier (or whatever it's called now)
joewhale3 days ago
Kpler acquired them and it's not consumer friendly anymore. They are focused on enterprise accounts only now.
wodenokoto4 days ago
And what’s the similarity to flight radar?
notahacker4 days ago
A real time visualization using AIS instead of ADS-B feeds, presumably
wodenokoto4 days ago
as opposed to the dozens of other flight tracker sites?
esseph4 days ago
This is ships not aircraft
sgt4 days ago
Seems to only have a tiny amount of ships compared to marinetraffic.com ?
jameshart4 days ago
Seems regionally biased. This map makes it look like the Americas barely see any ship traffic, while the South China Sea is paved with ships from shore to shore.
moffkalast4 days ago
The way I understand marinetraffic works is by having AIS receivers near shores and sending any received contacts to an API. If this works the same way then there's probably a lot fewer receivers so far.
TrackerFF4 days ago
One massive problem with AIS is that it is open. This opens it up for spoofing, intentional or not. The global map is littered with garbage AIS positions, but mostly in areas that do not have strong AIS coverage to begin.

To combat this, some countries have started to enforce their countries to use VMS (vessel monitoring system). I say some, but mostly the more resource rich countries - Norway being one of them. VMS also comes with the benefit of much more data capabilities, like fishing vessels sending catch data.

Sensor fusion to detect dark vessels is also a big growing thing. We use around 5 different sensors outside the usual AIS, VMS, LRIT to build vessel tracks. Some are experimental sensors, while others are seeing more mainstream use - like navigation radar sensing.

Maybe a challenge for private entities that want to create these sorts of apps, is data - buying even just AIS data can be expensive at scale. Countries that deal with this often engage in data exchange...some data provider receives data from you, you get some in return for them.

urba_4 days ago
I once worked on a problem: GPS tracking shipping containers, since one company had almost 1% lost/stolen each year. I had an idea of using AIS with Si4362 to get positioning data from the container ship itself, but it was nearly impossible to get access to reefer monitoring systems. We ended up just using 4G NB-IoT for coastal tracking and it did solve the problem
general_reveal4 days ago
It almost seems like I could have lived life as a trader and traveled the seas. Don’t know the type of money involved, and I guess I wouldn’t even know where to begin doing that in real life. So much easier in video games.

I’d just be a simple TEMU hauler, no fuss, simple life. Travel the world, catch some fish.

Levitating4 days ago
Seems like it's just cargo ships? And presumably not even all of them.

I'll prefer vesselfinder for marinetraffic.

kaliszad3 days ago
I hope they expand it in such a way that anybody could uncover the ships of the Russian "shadow fleet" and put more pressure on politicians and officials. Suspicious draught or erratic position changes or incorrect data upon leaving/ entering a port would be key to detecting possible circumvention of sanctions.
sublinear4 days ago
Off topic, but I hope the UX improves. It's almost unusable.

Clicking on anything is an error-prone mess and then it hijacks the back button by changing the URL. That would be better off as a simple "share" link somewhere in the popup.

gehsty4 days ago
Interesting, a cool resource for an API endpoint for AIS data so aisstream.io. Seems quite solid. Any one any idea of a good resource for satellite AIS data - I feel like the EU probably funded it and I can’t find anything on capricious etc.
nodesocket4 days ago
This seems useful speculating on short term oil prices. I believe the straight of hormuz may be closed or rumor of closing. Every expert seems to think that will spike oil prices.
cckolon4 days ago
How does this differ from something like MarineTraffic?
dmarinus4 days ago
I tried posting ais-catcher.org but it got ignored
gerry_shaw4 days ago
Doman needs to be www.ais-catcher.org
0dayman4 days ago
I don't see any of the American destroyers in Hormoz
enraged_camel4 days ago
This is only for container ships.
amelius4 days ago
Did anyone spot the USS Abraham Lincoln?
appointment4 days ago
Military ships don't run their radio beacons in combat zones. (There was an incident last year where the USS Theodore Roosevelt collided with a civilian cargo ship at night at least partially because it tried to approach the Suez canal with it's beacon off.)
newzino4 days ago
These tools went mainstream when the Houthis started hitting container ships. Watching AIS transponders go dark or vessels suddenly diverting around the Cape was something you just couldn't get from news coverage. And with Hormuz tensions right now, the real-time value is even higher.
vldszn4 days ago
Looking good! Thanks for sharing
vldszn3 days ago
After reading the comments I must say that https://aisvesseltracker.com/ is much, much better =)