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The "standard" radio on boats is the marine VHF, which is voice-only except for Digital Selective Calling (DSC). DSC is present on "newer" / more expensive rad
by emilecantin 4y ago
The "standard" radio on boats is the marine VHF, which is voice-only except for Digital Selective Calling (DSC).
DSC is present on "newer" / more expensive radios so it's not a guarantee that a given boat has it. It has a few message types:
- Distress calls
- "Routine call" (basically rings the other boat and asks them to switch to a chosen channel so you can then talk over voice)
- Position request
There's very poor integration between these DSC messages and the rest of marine electronics.
The other radio-based protocol is Automatic Identification System (AIS), which requires dedicated hardware (or a very expensive radio). It transmits your position, heading and speed regularly, and some biographic info (name & dimensions of the boat) from time to time. It's basically ADS-B for boats.
This is very well integrated with all marine electronics and apps. It's also what powers sites like MarineTraffic.
Main issue with both of these is that they aren't really extensible, so you can't send whatever you want over them.
Other radio tech used on boats would be Single-Sideband (SSB), but that's more in the amateur radio realm. Some boats do have a full HAM setup, but it's not that common.
- pabs3 4y agoI remember SSB being fairly useful for Weatherfax some years ago, where you plug the radio audio jack into your computer, which had some software to decode the faxes from audio and you get a map of all the bad weather. I feel like what you describes leaves some large holes in what could be done with radio. Automatic exchange of intended route info for eg could be useful in areas of high traffic. Maybe something LoRa shaped could some of fit them, given its fairly large range.