What the company says about the product...

“AIT3000 is a class B AIS transponder with a built-in VHF splitter. It’s also been designed with the latest interfacing capability including NMEA 0183, NMEA 2000, USB and a WiFi server to allow tablets, smartphones and PCs to connect.”

Digital Yacht
​AIT3000 AIS Transponder

The AIS device, standing for Automatic Identification System, is probably the best new technology on the market in my opinion. There are 2 types of AIS systems. Class A and Class B. All commercial vessels are required to be fitted with a Class A transponder unit, where as a Class B is generally a pleasure craft system.

What is AIS? It is an automated tracking system that displays other vessels in the vicinity. It is a broadcast transponder system which operates in the VHF mobile maritime band. 

There are then two types of Class B AIS units that you can install. A transponder unit which sends your information to the surrounding vessels and then receives the other information from vessels in the area. The information that is sent and received consists of your vessel details such as, length, type of propulsion, vessel name, call sign, MMSI and the most important details includes the vessel movements. Such as speed, direction, Course over ground and distances apart from each vessel. With the transponder unit, you send your vessels information and receive this same information from other vessels around. This data is then laid over your chart plotter via NMEA connection, so you can see the other vessels and they can see you on their screens too.

The second type of Class B AIS unit is a receiver. This is the cheaper version and you only receive other vessel information so other vessels can not see your location.

The AIT3000 is a transponder unit from Digital Yacht. It creates a wireless interface so we can connect through a wifi network to our iPad to see the data received. It is also compatible with other digital yacht equipment and send data such as wind information through the same connection to your chart plotter. We have wired the wind sense unit into the AIT3000 and now receive wind information as well as AIS information into our iPad. 

Digital yacht have their own apps that can be used to see the data from these devices but we like to use the Transas iSailor app.