Set up one shore station at the club once, and it records 24/7 on its own. No app to launch, no tracker to hand out, nothing for the race committee to switch on. After racing you just go back to the date and time — the whole fleet is already AIS-tracked and ready to replay. Miss the start? It's recorded. Protest? It's on the timeline.
One box on the clubhouse roof turns every race into a replay — automatically.
A single AIS receiver "sees" boats out to roughly 40 nm (line of sight). So the map is only as complete as the network of receivers behind it. Every new feeder lights up its patch of coast — and lets Telltale record races there automatically, not just in Wellington.
If you already feed AISHub, MarineTraffic or VesselFinder, you can feed Telltale too — receivers happily output to several networks at once. Point one more output at us:
AIS-catcher ...your existing options... -N 5 http telltaleracing.com/api/ais-ingest?key=YOUR_KEY(or POST the same AIS-catcher JSON to that URL from whatever you run).
Your feed stays yours. Because it comes straight from your receiver, it's clean, publishable data — not subject to another network's redistribution rules.
Turn a cheap ESP32 into a plug-and-play gateway that re-serves your boat's instruments over WiFi. Flash one of these and follow the guide:
Or a full shore station (Pi + RTL-SDR): provision.sh — one line installs everything.
If your boat already outputs NMEA 0183, you don't need to build anything. A cheap serial-to-WiFi server (an Elfin EW11, ~NZ$13, 9–36 VDC — an industrial-IoT part, not marine kit) puts your instruments on WiFi. Then one small always-on device (a Pi, an old phone, the nav laptop) runs our bridge and feeds Telltale:
Two wires, one command — sends your own track (GPS + wind/speed/heading/depth/heel), logs every fix locally, and buffers at sea to upload ashore. No Signal K, no Starlink needed.
📡 Not sure which to buy? Compare all the options & costs →
Feeding from a boat is easy and it won't chew your satellite/cellular data unless you want it to. Two ways to keep it cheap:
--defer — it records everything
to the device's SD card and sends nothing while you're out. Back on the marina/club WiFi, it flushes the whole
trip in one go. No live streaming over Starlink.--interval 30 sends a fix every 30 s (or higher) —
a tiny trickle instead of a firehose.Either way, your data stays yours — it's always logged locally and exportable. Live streaming is opt-in, not required.
See who's feeding and the coverage they light up on the 📡 feeder coverage board →
A Raspberry Pi + an RTL-SDR dongle + an antenna records every AIS-equipped boat in view, 24/7, for a few dollars of power a year. One box covers a club's whole harbour.
| Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W | ~$25 |
| RTL-SDR Blog V4 dongle | ~$15 |
| Marine AIS/VHF antenna (162 MHz) | ~$25–50 |
| microSD + USB power | ~$15 |
Software is all free (AIS-catcher / Signal K + our connector). Height and a clear view of the water = range. Ask the admin for the one-line installer and a station key to get going.
Your station credited on the map, the satisfaction of building a free, open, NZ-built marine commons — and every club race in your area recorded and archived automatically. Thank you. 🙏