From AIS Receiver to Transceiver

Raymarine AIS350 Receiver to Vespermarine XB 8000 AIS Tranceiver

The AIS (Automatic Identification System) receiver was one of the most useful things we installed in the last few years on board. It's made our passages so much more comforting as we were able to see ships & tankers from miles away. Receiving data of their ship details such as their position, heading, destination, speed. We were able to see if we were on a collision course. A couple of times we radioed to ask them to change course to avoid us and they were happy to oblige.

We have thus decided to upgrade to a full AIS Transceiver which we installed here in Trinidad. Now, not only can we receive other ships data, but we can also broadcast to make ourselves "visible" if we wanted to. 

The Vesper Marine XB 8000 AIS Class B Transponder with Wifi model has quite a few cool features. I've copied and pasted below a few of them from Vesper Marine website.
 

• Anchor watch triggers an external alarm if you drift outside anchor zone
• AIS Man Overboard (MOB) alarm works with all AIS MOB devices
• You can switch this transponder into Silent Mode (receive-only) from your tablet, phone, PC, Mac or with a hard-wired switch
• View AIS and navigate from your computer, smart phone or tablet from anywhere on your boat over wireless connections for up to five devices

We've heard and read good reviews on this product and can't wait to test it out. Let's hope it lives up to it's expectations.

Check out some AIS products on ebay or Amazon.