Develop AIS ShipXplorer Driver

[BillBrown341]

Develop a driver that connects to a UDP stream and parses incoming NMEA AIS messages.
A typical AIS NMEA sentence is formatted as follows:

!AIVDM,1,1,,B,15NfK=PP11qm2apCau@kwwwL28K9,0*7F

Field	Example Value	Description
Sentence Type	!AIVDM	AIS VHF Data-link Message
Fragment Count	1	Total number of fragments in the message
Fragment Number	1	Current fragment number
Sequential ID	(blank)	Identifier used to associate multipart messages
Channel	B	AIS radio channel
Payload	15NfK=PP11qm2apCau@kwwwL28K9	Encoded AIS payload
Fill Bits	0	Number of padding bits added to the payload
Checksum	7F	NMEA checksum value

The driver shall:

Connect to a configurable UDP address/port
Read and validate incoming NMEA AIS sentences
Support reassembly of multipart AIS messages when required
Decode and parse AIS payloads
Determine the AIS Message ID from the decoded payload
Produce the appropriate report/output structure based on the AIS Message ID

Reference documentation for AIS message types and report structures can be found here:

USCG AIS Message Reference

[BillBrown341]

2026-05-21 Update:

Base of the driver has been created. Current state of the driver allows user to connect to a local UDP stream, parse through NMEA AIS Messages, and then output Class A and Class B Position Reports.

[BillBrown341]

2026-05-26 Update:
Driver has been completed and is read for user testing. I have spoken with Jim Bennett to test.

[BillBrown341]

OpenSensorHub PR 215 has been requested to close this issue