Building from Source¶
License & Important Disclaimer¶
AIS-catcher is provided for research and educational purposes. It has not been designed, tested, or certified for reliability, accuracy, or safety. Do not rely on AIS-catcher for navigation or any safety-critical applications. Users bear full responsibility for ensuring compliance with local laws and regulations regarding the reception, decoding, and use of AIS signals. AIS-catcher is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind, and must not be used for illegal or unauthorized activities. Operate AIS-catcher only where such use is permitted by local authorities.
Copyright (C) 2021–2025 jvde.github at gmail.com. Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0
Building¶
The steps to compile AIS-catcher for RTL-SDR dongles are fairly straightforward on most systems. There are various options including a standard Makefile, a solution file for MSVC (see next section) and you can use cmake, as we will detail now.
The first step is to ensure you have the necessary dependencies and build tools installed for your device(s). For example, the following installs the minimum build tools for Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install git make gcc g++ cmake pkg-config libsqlite3-dev -y
brew installed:
brew update
brew upgrade
brew install git make gcc cmake pkg-config sqlite3
AIS-catcher requires libraries for the particular hardware you want to use. The following table summarizes the installation instructions for all supported hardware:
| System | Linux/Raspberry | macOS | MSVC/vcpkg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Command | sudo apt install ... | brew install ... | vcpkg install ... |
| RTL-SDR | librtlsdr-dev | librtlsdr | rtlsdr rtlsdr:x64-windows |
| Airspy | libairspy-dev | airspy | - |
| Airspy HF+ | libairspyhf-dev | airspyhf | - |
| HackRF | libhackrf-dev | hackrf | - |
| SDRplay 1A | API 3.x | - | API 3.x |
| SoapySDR | libsoapysdr-dev | - | - |
| ZeroMQ | libzmq3-dev | zeromq | ZeroMQ ZeroMQ:x64-windows |
| HTTP secure | libssl-dev | - | openssl openssl:x64-windows |
| ZIP | zlib1g-dev | - | zlib zlib:x64-windows |
Once the dependencies are in place, the process of installing AIS-catcher on Linux-based systems becomes:
git clone https://github.com/jvde-github/AIS-catcher.git --depth 1
cd AIS-catcher
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
Microsoft Visual Studio 2019+¶
Ensure that you have vcpkg installed and integrated into Visual Studio via vcpkg integrate install (as Administrator). Then install the rtl-sdr drivers as follows:
vcpkg install rtlsdr rtlsdr:x64-windows ZeroMQ ZeroMQ:x64-windows soxr soxr:x64-windows