Thanks to a meeting at Seawork, Norcom Technology Limited has been awarded a contract from King’s Lynn Conservancy Board to supply SeaTrak, a Windows based AIS Monitoring Package.
Captain Paul Bailey, the Deputy Harbour Master and member of King’s Lynn Conservancy Board, visited the Norcom stand at Seawork and contacted the company shortly afterwards.
Paul said, “We are a small harbour authority and a VTS (Vessel Traffic Services) system is too big and expensive for what we need. Using SeaTrak for AIS monitoring vessels in The Wash means we can view all the vessels in our working area and quickly find all the information we require. We can customise the menu so only the functions we need are available.”
SeaTrak runs on any standard PC and reads data from an AIS receiver either via a RS232 interface or an ethernet connection. Using the NMEA data strings it decodes the information and plots the AIS targets on to raster charts. These raster charts are derived from data supplied to Norcom by the UK Hydrographic office.
The user can modify the display to show range rings around the base station, enabling the user to quickly identify how far away the AIS targets are. The colour of the AIS Target can be adjusted to show either the type of AIS Target (Class A or Class B etc.) or the type of vessel (cargo vessel, tanker etc.) The cursor co-ordinates and range and bearing from the base station are always available in the task bar at the bottom of the application.
The system can be set up to log raw data and also create a logbook of data in CSV format. The recorded data can be played back if an incident needs to be investigated.
Phil Harris, Managing Director of Norcom said, “We have over 25 years of experience developing electronic charting systems. Our objective is to develop systems which are easy to use and also meet all the requirements of any organisation wanting to monitor vessel movements. We respond quickly to customer requests and we can offer remote support to help them set up the system and guide them through the operation of the application.”
