Introduction

This small PHP project is designed to aid those in need of interacting with boat HIN (hull identification numbers). See below for the usage section.

Hull Identification Number (HIN) Format

The following table demonstrates the expected structuring to a valid hull ID number.

Format

Current Format (As of Aug 1, 1984)
BMA	45678	H4	85
Manufacturer Identification Code (MIC)	Serial Number	Production Date	Model Year

Production Month

The first character in the production date (i.e. H in H4) is the production month.

Character	Month
A	January
B	February
C	March
D	April
E	May
F	June
G	July
H	August
I	September
J	October
K	November
L	December

Production Year

The production year is the second character in the production date (i.e. 4 in H4). This alone does not tell you the decade, and must be used with the last two digits in the HIN to determine which decade the vessel was produced.

Examples

• YDV19777A808; this gives January (A) of 2008 (8). We can determine that by the last two digits of the HIN (08), where 08 represents 2008 and not 1908.

• STN34945E787; this gives May (E) of 1987 (7). We can determine that by the last two digits (87) which obviously represents 1987, not 2087.

Usage

Setup

All functions except the constructor are unprompted error safe. That is, unless you provide an invalid argument (i.e. it's expecting an int and you pass a string).

// Include required files
require("classes/HIN.class.php");

try {
  // Instantiate HIN decoder
  $HIN = new amattu\HIN("BMA45678H485");
} catch(Exception $e) { // Optional: Catch each exception individually
  echo $e->getMessage();
}

__toString()

This class implements the __toString magic method.

echo $HIN;

Example output:

BMA45678H485 [MY: 1985]

manufacturer_code

Pull the first 3 digits of a HIN, which represent the manufacturer code.

echo $HIN->manufacturer_code();

Example output:

BMA

serial_number

Pull the serial number from the HIN.

echo $HIN->serial_number();

Example output:

45678

raw_production_date

Pull the raw production date from the HIN. This two-digit production date is not in a human readable format; and consist of a alphabetical character (i.e. A) and a digit (i.e. 3). The first character represents the month, where A is January, and L is December. The digit represents the last digit of the production year, and needs to be used in conjunction with the last two digits of the HIN.

echo $HIN->raw_production_date();

Example output:

B4

production_month

This pulls and parses the production month from raw_production_date.

echo $HIN->production_month();

Example output:

02 (february)

production_year

This parses the production year from raw_production_date.

echo $HIN->production_year();

Example output:

1984

model_year

This parses the MODEL YEAR (Not production year) from the HIN.

echo $HIN->model_year();

Example output:

1985

manufacturer

TBD

Information Sources

A list of valuable HIN information sources is below.

• https://www.boatus.com/expert-advice/expert-advice-archive/2017/february/hull-identification-numbers
• https://drive.ky.gov/motor-vehicle-licensing/Pages/HIN.aspx#hin-location
• https://www.dol.wa.gov/forms/420739.pdf
• https://uscgboating.org/content/manufacturers-identification.php
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_number

Requirements & Dependencies

• PHP7+