Ship Plotter is a chart-plotting utility which decodes the digital AIS messages using the sound card of your PC. You need a suitable VHF band radio-receiver (or an AIS receiver) to be able to pick-up such signals (tuned in one of the two available AIS channels - 161.975 Mhz or 162.025 Mhz / VHF 87 or 88 old channels). The incoming information is decoded by Ship Plotter and can also be displayed on your computer's screen.
If you own an AIS receiver with serial data output or a VHF radio with a discriminator output already available, you may use Ship Plotter to forwarding AIS-data to MarineTraffic.
Download Ship Plotter (trialware-requires registration fees, .exe, about 3.5 MB)
Download the Ship Plotter manual (pdf)
Visit the developer's website for more info and updates