Settings Overview¶

AIS-catcher follows a modular architecture: one or more inputs feed a decoding model, which distributes the messages to any number of outputs. Every setting in this reference belongs to one of these three stages — click a stage to jump to its settings:

Input → Model → Output

Input — SDR devices (RTL-SDR, AirSpy, …), network streams, serial devices and files.
Model — message decoding and processing; AIS-catcher includes various decoder models for experimentation.
Output — community feed, UDP/TCP/HTTP/MQTT, web viewers, PostgreSQL and the screen.

Each setting is documented with its JSON key and command-line switch. In managed mode the most common settings appear as fields in the dashboard; this reference covers the complete set.

Key casing (CLI vs JSON)

In JSON configuration files, keys are case-sensitive and should be lowercase. On the command line, setting names passed after a device/output switch (e.g. -gr, -gm, -u, -H) are not case-sensitive. Tables in this documentation show setting names in lowercase to match JSON.

Usage Profiles¶

The same three stages scale from simple to complex setups:

Advanced Architecture¶

For more complex setups, AIS-catcher supports multiple inputs with input-specific models: multiple input sources operate independently, each input can use several specialized models for decoding, and each model can send its data to one or more outputs.