If you want to connect your AIS receiver directly to the computer, this is usually done via a USB port, which is then presented as a serial port in the operating system. Finding this port on different operating systems can be challenging. Here we try to describe it as simply as possible.

If you know how it is relatively easy to identify the port in Windows. The name of the COM ports is formatted as "COMX," where "X" is a number that identifies the specific port. For example, the first serial port in Windows is COM1. Note that if you connect the AIS receiver to a different USB port, it is possible that the COM port will be a different one.

To identify the COM port, you need to do the following:

The serial port on a Mac is very similar in format to Linux, but the method to identify it can be quite different. Open the terminal with CMD+Space and search for "Terminal" and start the application. Enter the following to search for the serial ports.

ls -la /dev/tty.usbserial*

If you do this once without the device and once with the device connected, you can easily compare which is the correct path. In some rare cases, it is possible to identify the device by name, but usually, this is not clear.

Finding the serial port under Linux can be extensive due to the many different distributions and versions. Here, we will describe the most common method.

A simple way to identify the correct serial port is to search for available serial devices before and after connecting the AIS receiver. By comparing these results, you can identify the newly added device as the port you are looking for.

Follow these steps:

Compare the outputs of the two terminal windows. The newly added device in the output of the second window is the serial port you are looking for.

This method helps you quickly and easily identify the correct serial device.