I think it is a good idea to get AIS information on board in North Sea traffic lanes in the Netherlands. For all commercial vessels and vessels above 15 m in length the AIS class A transponder is obligatory in the Netherlands. Because I think it will be nice not just you to see the others, but also it would be useful that others see you I decided to go not just for receiver, but for transponder device. My boat is not extremely fast, and it can be very useful when crossing the big ships traffic lanes a front of Hoek van Holland, Rotterdam, or Westerschelde area in front of Antwerpen for example. I do not have marine plotter on board, and I considered mainly wi-fi options. Funnily there are not many of them:
Smartfind M10 / M10W AIS Class B Transponder
XB-8000 Class B AIS Transponder with Built-in WiFi and NMEA 2000 Gateway
EasyTRX²-S Klasse B AIS Transponder
Watcheye B Class AIS Transponder
I went for the cheapest and easier to install: Watcheye, it has integrated GPS antenna (so no need to drill extra holes in the hull), I got also the antenna splitter from Watcheye (no need to install second VHF antenna), and the Watcheye wifi device.
The installation is pretty simple and straight forward. I display the data with
iSailor software on my very old Android Samsung Tab. I normali use
Navionics, but iSailor was the cheapest software solution (other possibility would be
WinGPS Marine, but it was way too expensive for me) which would permit importing AIS and NMEA data via wifi direct on the nautical charts. The free Apps solution were like displaying on a radar like display.
