shipalert

shipalert reports whether a vessel is in currently within a specified geographical bounding box.

shipalert obtains vessel positions by scraping the HTML from VesselFinder, which limits its reliability. VesselFinder offers a subscription API for more serious applications.

Installation

From the parent directory of the repository:

python -m pip install shipalert/

A conda environment file is supplied. It can optionally be used to install dependencies with conda. From the repository root directory:

conda env create
conda activate shipalert

Usage

usage: shipalert [-h] [--cronmode] Vessel-ID Bounding-box

positional arguments:
  Vessel-ID     As it appears in the vesselfinder.com URL
  Bounding-box  decimal degrees. Format: <min-lon>,<min-lat>,<max-lon>,<max-
                lat>

optional arguments:
  -h, --help    show this help message and exit
  --cronmode    Only write output if vessel is in bbox.

The vessel ID corresponds to the last part of the URL in the vessel’s page at https://www.vesselfinder.com. (It is composed of the vessel name, IMO number, and Maritime Mobile Service Identity.)

Example

To check whether the Viking Grace is currently in the Archipelago Sea:

shipalert VIKING-GRACE-IMO-9606900-MMSI-230629000 19.7,59.8,23.0,60.9

Copyright

shipalert is copyright 2022 by Pontus Lurcock (pont at talvi dot net) and released under the MIT license. See the file LICENSE.txt for details.