OCENS Mail Vessel Tracking and GPS Repeater

OCENS Mail's vessel tracking allows vessels and managers to keep track of their assets easily with no need to purchase expensive third party hardware. Use existing GPS and communication equipment to send tracking reports back to the office. No additional hardware needs to be purchased, added or interfaced to track vessels.

The vessel tracking software consists of three software components: GPS repeater Tracking software Position reporter

You need an active OCENS Mail email account for this service. Activation $40 Plus Term: $35mo 3mo 6mo 12mo OCENS.Mail Address:

The GPS Repeater

The GPS repeater software built into OCENS Mail allows it to read the GPS NMEA data from a real COM port on your PC and then pass on the unmodified data to up to two virtual COM ports. This features allows the OCENS Mail software to coexist with existing navigation software without the need to add a second serial port or GPS to the system. After configuring the GPS repeater in OCENS Mail, navigational software such as The Captain, Nobeltec, MaxSea, etc can be configured to read the GPS data off one of the virtual COM ports created by OCENS Mail. As far as the navigation software is concerned the virtual COM port is indistinguishable from a the original physical port. Both OCENS Mail and 2 additional navigation applications can share the same GPS at the same time.

Tracking Software

OCENS Mail can report positions in one of 3 ways:

• E-Mail headers
• Reported to a central database with every e-mail session
• Automatically on a schedule

When enabled OCENS Mail's position reporting is done with every e-mail session. The user can configure OCENS Mail to read the GPS and send the vessel's position in the header of every sent e-mail. E-Mail recipients can examine the e-mail headers to know the vessel's exact position and the time when the e-mail was sent.

Additionally, a vessel's OCENS Mail can be configured as part of a fleet. In this configuration reports are sent to a central server which keeps track of vessel positions for all vessels configured for the fleet. Since position reports are sent with every e-mail session, the user can manually determine when to update his positions in the central database. The vessel's GPS time, position, course, speed and selected weather parameters are sent with every position report.

At any time the vessel or the office can request to view positions for all the vessels in a fleet. This operation is much like AIS on a global scale using satellite phones instead of VHF.

Finally, the user can configure OCENS Mail to send position reports on a schedule. Not only are positions sent on the schedule, but an entire e-mail session is also done during the session. In this mode vessel crew can send an e-mail and then walk away from the computer. OCENS Mail's automatic scheduler will send the e-mail and then receive any e-mails on the server which are pending. The crew can, at a later time, check their e-mail without having to do a manual connection. In this mode OCENS Mail works much like the older style 'always on' satellite systems such as Inmarsat-C.

Reporting

Vessels can request position reports for their vessel and any other vessel in their fleet on demand. Once the request is made the server processes the requested position report and sends it back to the vessel in a compact form. The report can then be viewed off line on the vessel using one of a number of different reporters. Unlike other vessel tracking systems, no expensive web browsing is needed to view the tracks. The tracks are viewed off line on the vessel without consuming valuable air time.

Following are screen shots taken from different reporting packages available with OCENS Mail. Users wanting to overlay weather charts over the tracks can use OCENS GRIB Explorer.

---