Quickstart: your first automated response

In this guide you build a complete automated response: when a radar detects an unknown drone, one of your drones takes off, flies to it and points its camera at it. You use simulated devices, so you need no hardware, and nothing you do here can move a real aircraft. It takes about 20 minutes.

What you'll build

Piece	What it does
Simulated radar and drones	The radar reports made-up drones around it; your drones fly the response.
A Skill	The response itself: take off, fly to a position, point the camera at it.
An Application	Packages the Skill so it can be started automatically.
An event trigger	Starts the Application whenever the radar reports a drone.

Add simulated devices

1. Load the radar

   Open Manage›Simulation›Simulators and select Load preset.

   12

   Add Object protection ①. It places a radar (SIM-RADAR-01) and two jammers around the simulator's home. It also adds a drone, unless one with the same serial number already exists on your platform. You add a drone of your own in the next step either way.

2. Add your drone next to the radar

   Select New simulated device ②, keep Drone, and give it a serial number and a name. Set its home position right next to the radar: click the map there, or type the coordinates.

   

   Keep Start right away on and select Add.

   Place the drone close to the radar. The radar sees up to 3 km in every direction, and the platform refuses a flight beyond what the drone's battery allows. A drone far from the radar gets goTo rejected: … beyond the … range for intruders on the far side.

3. Check that everything runs

   Every device appears in the list. The drones show Running, the jammers Standby and the radar Search.

   

See what your drone can do

Open Build›Capabilities. It lists every command your devices offer right now: these are the building blocks of a Skill. Select one to see its parameters. Your Skill uses three of them: flight.takeoff, navigation.go_to and gimbal.look_at.

Build the Skill

1. Create the Skill

   Open Build›Skills, select New Skill, then click the title and name it, for example Respond to intruder.

2. Add its inputs

   The Skill needs to know where to fly. Select Inputs and add two fields: latitude and longitude, both of type number and required.

   

   Use exactly these names. A command picks up the Skill inputs with the same name as its own parameters, so navigation.go_to and gimbal.look_at both take the position from them without any further setup.

3. Draw the response

   Drag flight.takeoff, navigation.go_to and gimbal.look_at from the palette onto the canvas. Connect them in that order: drag from the right dot of one node to the left dot of the next. The first node is marked START.

   Leave the position of navigation.go_to empty: it comes from the inputs you just added.

4. Save it

   Type a short note in What changed?, for example First version, and select Save. The Skill is saved as version 1.0.0.

   

Put it into an Application

Open Build›Applications and select New Application. Name it, for example Intruder response, and drag your Skill from the Skills section of the palette onto the canvas. Add a note and select Save.

The Application takes over the Skill's two inputs. It does not name a drone: the platform chooses one each time it runs.

Start it when the radar sees a drone

Open Manage›Access & Integrations›Event Triggers and select Add Event Trigger.

Field	Value	Why
Name	Intruder drone detected
Event type	Detection	Fires on what a sensor reports.
Object type	UAV	Unknown drones. The radar reports your own drones as FRIENDLY_UAV, so they don't set off the alarm.
Asset	Perimeter radar	Only this radar's detections count.
Who responds	Chosen by Dispatch Rules	The platform picks a suitable drone and passes the detection's position as latitude and longitude.
Application / Skill	Intruder response	What to start.

Keep the default Priority (75): an alarm outranks routine work. Select Create. The trigger is listed as Active.

Watch it run

The simulated radar reports a new object every minute or so, about half of them drones. When it reports one, the trigger starts your Application, and the platform's Dispatch Rules pick a suitable drone, for example the one nearest to the intruder.

Open Operate. The map shows the run: the drone taking off and its route to the intruder.

Select Open run, or open Build›Executions and select the run, to follow it step by step: each node turns green when the drone has finished it.

Troubleshooting

• Nothing starts. The simulated radar reports a new object every minute or so, about half of them drones, and the trigger waits out its 5-minute cooldown after each run. Check that the trigger is Active and the radar shows Search.
• The run fails with goTo rejected: … beyond the … range. The intruder is farther away than the drone can fly. Place a drone closer to the radar.

Next steps