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Docker Container

Disclaimer

AIS-catcher is intended for hobbyist and research projects only. It is NOT approved for use in navigation or safety-of-life applications. Read the full disclaimer.

Pre-built container images are available from the GitHub Container Registry, with latest (the latest release) and edge (the bleeding edge of the main branch) being the two main tags — see the package's page for all available tags. There are two ways to run your station:

  • Managed mode (recommended) — configure and control your station from the browser.
  • Manual mode — configure via command-line options.

Note

SDRplay devices are currently not supported in the Docker images.

Managed Mode

Pull the image
With Docker installed:

docker pull ghcr.io/jvde-github/ais-catcher:edge

Run it in managed mode

docker run --rm -it --network=host --device-cgroup-rule='c 189:* rmw' -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb -v ais-config:/config ghcr.io/jvde-github/ais-catcher:edge -E /config/config.json 127.0.0.1:8118

A quick tour of the options:

  • --device-cgroup-rule and -v /dev/bus/usb pass USB SDRs through to the container, and keep working when a device is re-plugged.
  • Using a dAISy-catcher or other serial receiver? Add --device /dev/ttyACM0 instead.
  • Your settings live in the ais-config volume (created automatically), so they persist across restarts.
  • To administer the station from another machine, replace 127.0.0.1 with 0.0.0.0 — a password is then required.

Complete the setup wizard
Open the dashboard in your browser at http://localhost:8118. On first use, the setup wizard walks you through configuring your input device and outputs, and starts the receiver:

Setup Wizard

That's it — your station is up and running. See Getting Around the Dashboard to monitor and fine-tune it.

Manual Mode

Run the container with any AIS-catcher command-line options:

docker run --rm -it --pull always --device /dev/bus/usb ghcr.io/jvde-github/ais-catcher:latest <ais-catcher command line options>

Notice that if you want to run a web viewer (-N 8100) you need to make that port available on the host system with -p 8100:8100, or use --network=host.

Command Line Run

docker-shipfeeder

For manual-mode setups focused on feeding aggregators, docker-shipfeeder by the sdr-enthusiasts community is a user-friendly alternative with excellent documentation and support. Note that it runs AIS-catcher in manual mode and does not offer the managed-mode dashboard.

Updating

To update to the latest image, simply pull it again:

docker pull ghcr.io/jvde-github/ais-catcher:edge