Your Guide To The Maritime Data World

Feb 2, 2022 | AIS Tracking, Live Vessel Tracking

Your guide to vessel tracking API
With vessel tracking API now anyone can track ships in any country. The data is available and accessible for anyone in real time and on a global scale. Likewise, since the spearheading of the web, numerous vessel global positioning providers have joined web networks to provide even better global data coverage. In this article we will discuss everything you should know about Vessel Tracking API. You will learn how to make an API call and how to get access to the data.  

What’s a Vessel Tracking API?

The Vessel API makes accessing data as easy as possible, and positions all data from every sensor, system, machine, and vessel, everywhere in the world that are picked up by Terrestrial AIS stations or Satellites.

Indeed, it allows you to receive real-time data on vessel name, MMSI, IMO, ENI, Country ISO, Type, Type-specific, latitude, longitude, speed, course, heading, navigation status, destination, last_position_epoch, last_position_UTC, Estimated Time of Arrival_European Parallel Operating System Based on Chorus, Estimated Time of Arrival_UTC.

vessel tracking

Datalastic has a large maritime database, we collect data from our own receiving towers and Datalastic has a vast partner network where it further receives data and checks the data quality with other sources.

Ship tracking API covers about :

  • 750000 Vessels
  • 21000 Ports 
  • Global Maritime Coverage
  • 306 Vessel types 

Datalastic owns its terrestrial stations where it receives the signal from the vessel in raw format and then transforms it with an ETL method. We store it in our vessel tracking database that can be accessed by anyone through a subscription package.

What Does Vessel Tracking API serve for?

Vessel tracking API serves for creating custom maps, applications, integrations, analyzing data, and unlocking the full power of machine learning. Indeed, the user can retrieve data instantly and transform it in ANY way that a user wants. 

Everything a user wants to know is found in the API. There’s a lot of data a user can collect. As a result, you can make queries and enhancements, all in a format that both humans and machines can understand and anyone with a little training can learn.

Our ship tracking interface provides access to near real-time vessel position and ship information data using powerful and secure application programming interfaces REST API which works with HTTP requests to perform standard data functions. It allows you to report on or build applications that utilize live vessel movement data, notifications, and alerts.

Vessel API Documentation

API  documentation contains guidelines that help you adequately utilize and incorporate the API in your vessel tracking project. In other words, it’s an instructional document containing insights and instructional exercises, and models.

To illustrate,real-time ships tracking API has 3 different endpoints:

  1. Basic: /vessel -extremely quick and give you different data like area, speed, course, objective, type, subtype. The normal API demand reaction time is 0.005 sec.
  2. Pro: /vessel_pro – Pro version gives Estimated Time of ArrivalTime of Arrival, Actual Time of Departure, current draft, standardized destination name. The normal API demand reaction time is 0.9 sec.
  3. Bulk: /vessel_bulk –  call up to 100 vessels in a single request.

Vessel Tracking API Request Example :

.
Example Pro Live Ship Tracking API Request
https://api.datalastic.com/api/v0/vessel_pro?api-key={YOUR_API_KEY}&{PARAMETER}={PARAMETER_NUMBER}
Request Parameters:
api-key– Your API Key sent to you via email upon your successful registration uuid– Vessel UUID number mmsi– Vessel MMSI number imo– Vessel IMO number

 API Response Example :

As you see below with one query you get data for your requested vessel. 

The parameters include vessel name, MMSI, IMO, ENI, Country ISO, Type, Type-specific, latitude, longitude, speed, course, heading, navigation status, destination, last_position_epoch, last_position_UTC, Estimated Time of Arrival_European Parallel Operating System Based on Chorus, Estimated Time of Arrival_UTC.

Response Example:

How to access vessel  Tracking API key?

  Datalastic provides a unique self-service subscription process. You can receive your key in under 5 minutes and 4 clicks!  As an illustration, you can watch this video to have an idea how simple the process is .
Moreover, we allow developers to access the vessel position and ship data themselves and manually. They have open access to global maritime information coverage that is updated almost every minute, of course, the great possibility of adding your custom parameters to withdraw organized and clean data from multiple endpoints. 

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