Recently I got the first AIS message implemented in NemaStudio. So far I have only AIS message type 1 implemented, but others will follow soon.
It took more time than expected for various reasons.
Firstly there were of course the Christmas holidays. I took a week off and actually did not write any line of code in that week, but I really had a great time!
Then I spent much time in mastering the listview control provided in the .Net framework. I wanted this control for opening AIS targets. The control is relatively simple to use if you do not need grouping, but I wanted to group the different AIS object types together. So a group for all Class A vessels in the database, a group for all Class B vessels in the database etc.
I had much fun in designing the user interface. As always it was a challenge to get all necessary controls grouped in a logical and user friendly way, but I believe I succeeded in that quite well.
Assembling the binary 6-bit per character message as embedded part of the NMEA !AIVDM message was another challenge. I found the ITU-R M.1371-3 document I purchased useful, but there are many typo’s in that document, making some elements hard to understand.
Finally I tested the generated !AIVDM sentences in a parser I found in the public domain on internet, with good results.
Next in turn will be Message type 5. If anybody knows of a simple parser for that message type please let me know!
Ger Rietman's blog 
I am in the process of writing an AIS parser. I have a working version written in C++ and a beta Java version. Both parse message types 1-3,4,5,18 & 19. others are being added as and when I get the time. If you would like the parser details let me know
By: AJ on March 6, 2009
at 10:57 pm
Are you pubblishing your parsers? I would be interested to feed your parsers with the NemaStudio generated AIS sentences!
By: Ger Rietman on March 8, 2009
at 12:59 pm