MBARItracking "project"

 The MBARItracking project is a collection of software that has been written to process and make available various real-time position data feeds. These feeds include:

• MBARI ship positions - via our own VHF radio transmission
• MBARI mooring positions - via Iridium modem
• MBARI mooring positions - via OASIS or MOOS radio transmission
• MBARI AUV positions - via iridium modem
• All large ship positions that are visible from Mount Toro - via AIR VHF receiver

The collection of software has its origins from the "Where are the Ships?" page on MBARI's external web site. In 2009 a subversion project was created to host the various scripts and configurations that previously were spread across multiple systems. This provided an opportunity to create a better foundation for the "Where are the Ships?" service.  The new architecture includes a relational database table for holding all the position data and a CGI script for extracting these data directly into GoogleEarth.

Get the software from subversion:

svn co svn+ssh://<login>@kahuna.shore.mbari.org/svn/repos/MBARItracking/trunk MBARItracking

where <login> is your account name on kahuna.

This package has be checked out to the following accounts on pismo.shore.mbari.org into the ~/dev directory (the password is the same for all these accounts - ask Mike McCann or Pat Allen for it):

• m1track
• m2track
• shiptrack
• aistrack
• auvtrack 

Please refer to the README files in the package for further details on the implementation.  For example here is the current version of the README file in the scripts directory:

scripts folder of the MBARItracking project
===========================================

$Id: README 5246 2009-07-08 18:14:29Z mccann $

The scripts here populate the MBARItracking database with position data.
The various scripts are implemented in various ways from various accounts
as indicated below:

Script                  Account         Implementation
------                  -------         --------------

grabShipPosition.py     shiptrack       Connect to socket, parse $GPRMC, insert to DB, write to log file
shipWatchdog.py         shiptrack       Check log file like: 0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * <path>/shipWatchdog.py

grabAISposition.py      aistrack        Connect to socket, parse AIS, insert to DB, write to log file
aisWatchdog.py          aistrack        Check log file like: 0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * <path>/aisWatchdog.py

grabOasisTrackers.pl    m1track         Symlinked by grabM{1,2}tracker.pl, in .forward file, parse MIME
                        m2track         messages from email sent from Iridium modems, insert to DB.

To monitor the successful operation of this system open this link in Google Earth: http://elvis.shore.mbari.org/tracking/viewTracking.kml (This link is on our public web site on the "Today in the Bay" web page: http://www.mbari.org/cruises/all/plot/all700.html).

If you can see data for the last hour then the real-time feeds and database are operating.

--
Mike McCann
23 July 2009