AIS VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) looks like yet more of the same AIS frustration

If you are going to get a new higher bandwidth set of channels to pass marine data around, choosing AIS encoding (binary as over the VDL [VHF Data Link] or NMEA VDM/VDO) is just a terrible idea.  We have so many better serialization formats (Protobuf, MessagePack, https://github.com/grpc, etc.).

240 kbps or 307.2 kbps at what freq?  Details are very thin.

http://www.rtcm.org/mej.pdf
http://blog.canpan.info/oprf_en/img/VDES-Data20Exchange20System20Overview.pdf
http://blog.canpan.info/oprf_en/img/Development20of20VDES20in20IALA.pdf
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/rtcm_tf.pdf
http://www.iala-aism.org/files/conference/18th_iala_conference_2014_report_final.pdf

From the RTCM comes this fairly empty statement:

SC-123 Chairman Norsworthy is very familiar with both programs.
“I believe that AIS opensthe door for efficient communication, navigation
and operation in the maritime services,” he says. “AIS is the essential core
for e-navigation, the harmonized collection, integration, exchange, presentation
and analysis of marine information onboard and ashore by electronic
means to enhance berth to berth navigation and related services
for safety and security at sea and protection of the marine environment.
“The next development is the VDES, which contains integral AIS,
and is ‘AIS on steroids.’ VDES will be to AIS as 4G is to cellphones. VDES
is designed to support all the apps needed for e-navigation and GMDSS
(Global Maritime Distress and Safety System) modernization. VDES provides
all the functionality, bandwidth and linkages for the efficient exchange
of information with ships, shore stations and satellites.”

William D. Kautz, USCG says:

VDES uses Recommendation ITU-RM.1842-1 techniques to solve the limitation of AIS data exchange

I've got little hope for anything other than an endless need for grunt coding contracts to come out of the e-Navigation world.

Oh the acronyms and buzz phrases...

E-Navigation Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP)

elog feature requests

elog is pretty cool and is used on the US Coast Guard ice breaker Healy.  My feature requests...

• The ability to track the location of the server and/or user for mobile usage.  e.g.  the U.S. Coast Guard ice breaker Healy uses elog.  The ability to export with gdal to KML/Shapefiles/etc would allow logs to be on maps.  e.g. Be able to use gpsd NMEA GPS location on servers.
• Ability to submit from Android devices with Open Data Kit (ODK).
• Simile Timeline view of logs
• Export to msgpack and/or protobuf 3 for ease of writing add ons
• Integration with flowdock
• Integration with github for issue tracking and travis-ci for software build/test status
• Ability to sync multiple servers that are not always connected

Weather stations

This looks like fun!  http://www.instructables.com/id/Weather-Station/