Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a radio protocol used for marine traffic management. This talk introduces the basics of AIS and its obvious use: tracking ships! We will then nerd out on more obscure applications, technical details, and their security implications. The talk will end with a guide to low-cost tools and open source resources to kickstart your own shipspotting adventure.

This informal hands-on workshop is about turning my talk "Shipspotting - An Introduction to AIS" into action.

There will be two independent topics to explore:
1) Setting up your own AIS receiving station with an RTL-SDR or a specialized AIS receiver.
2) Decoding and processing live AIS data streams with Python

I will bring a few AIS receivers and antennas, and there will be a live AIS data stream of local ship traffic over wired or wireless network.

While anyone is welcome to shoulder-surf, hands-on participants should bring a laptop.

If you want to setup your own AIS receiving station, bring an RTL-SDR dongle (optional). I recommend to install AIS-catcher ahead of time to placate the internet gods:
https://jvde-github.github.io/AIS-catcher-docs/installation/overview/
I will bring binaries for Windows, but installation for Linux and MacOS requires an internet connection.

To hack on the live AIS data, only Python is required. I recommend to pip install the Python packages aiscat, pyais, matplotlib and sqlite3.