March 20, 2026
When the ship hits the net
Show HN: Baltic shadow fleet tracker – live AIS, cable proximity alerts
Open ship tracker drops—fans want dashboards, others say it's down and demand screenshots
TLDR: A free local app tracks suspected “shadow fleet” ships in the Baltic and warns about cable proximity and Russia–West handoffs. Commenters split between “this would look great on my home dashboard” and “it’s broken—show screenshots,” with some blaming launch-day overload, turning a spy-map drop into drama everyone’s watching.
The internet loves a DIY spy tool, and Former Lab just lobbed a spicy one into the feed: a free, open-source map that tracks “shadow fleet” ships in the Baltic using live ship signals (AIS), flags when vessels drift near undersea cables, and spots Russia↔West cargo handoffs. It runs locally, no cloud, and asks only for a free AIS key—plus a side of “Always support Ukraine.” Fans swooned at the idea of a living-room command center: one reader immediately pitched slapping it into a Home Assistant dashboard like a cold-war movie prop. Indie, privacy-first vibes earned serious cred, and the GitHub repo got passed around like contraband.
Then the drama sailed in. A tester reported an empty map and looping errors, blaming the classic “Hacker News hug of death”—too many curious clicks capsizing the demo. Another chimed in with the internet’s eternal challenge: “Screenshot or bust.” Cue the split-screen: believers dreaming of home “war rooms” vs. skeptics demanding proof and uptime. Between the cable-proximity alerts and transshipment detection, the comments turned this launch into a mini-thriller—half open-source heroism, half “is it even up?” suspense. Whether this becomes the next cool dashboard toy or sinks under traffic, the crowd’s already writing the script, one spicy take at a time.
Key Points
- •Shadow Fleet Tracker Light monitors 1,200+ watchlisted vessels in the Baltic Sea using live AIS data from AISStream.
- •The tool runs locally, is free and open source, and only requires a free AISStream API key.
- •It maps vessel positions and trails, alerts on undersea cable proximity, detects loitering (20+ minutes), and flags Russia↔West transshipment patterns within 21 days.
- •All AIS positions are logged to SQLite, enabling warm restarts and offline analysis; a FastAPI dashboard supports analysis and GPX export.
- •Setup uses Python and Uvicorn with provided OS-specific launchers; the map updates every three minutes with popups linking to MarineTraffic, VesselFinder, and War&Sanctions, with optional OpenSanctions integration.