Connect real hardware · Sensors

What each sensor gives you

Reach is the number people compare. What a sensor measures matters more, because it decides whether the sensor can locate anything by itself.

DomeCommand takes in whatever you have. What it does with a detection depends on what that sensor actually measured, and there are only three answers.

Measures	Means	What fusion can do with one
A position	Range and bearing together	Track it on its own
A bearing	A direction, no range	Nothing alone. It needs a second source.
A zone	Something is within this area	Confirms presence. Localises nothing.

That table is the whole sensor-selection problem. A sensor that reports a bearing is not a worse sensor, it is a different one, and a site built only from bearing-only sensors has no track at all.

The sensor types

Figures are the defaults each type ships with. Your own hardware overrides them.

Sensor	Measures	Reach	Field of view	Notes
Ground radar	A position	5 km	360°	The workhorse. Localises alone. Struggles with small, low, slow targets and terrain clutter.
LIDAR	A position	1.5 km	360°	Very precise, short. Good as a final layer over a specific asset.
RF direction finder	A bearing	8 km	360°	Detects the control link, often before the aircraft is visible. Blind to anything not transmitting.
ELINT / ESM	A bearing	12 km	360°	The longest reach here, and no range at all. An early warning sensor.
Acoustic array	A bearing	700 m	360°	Hears rotors. Degrades badly in wind and traffic noise.
Acoustic node	A zone	300 m	omni	Cheap, deployable, says only something is here. Strong in numbers.
EO turret	A bearing	4 km	12°	Identity. Where a contact stops being a radar return and becomes a known type.
IR turret	A bearing	3 km	12°	Identity at night and through smoke.
Long-range IR turret	A bearing	6 km	25°	Same job, further, wider.

The consequence worth planning around

The sensors that see furthest cannot tell you where anything is. ELINT reaches 12 km and RF 8 km, and both report a direction. The sensor that localises on its own reaches 5 km.

So the shape of a workable site is usually:

1. Something long-range and bearing-only for warning. You know something is out there and roughly where to look.
2. Something that localises so a track can form and the planner has geometry to work with.
3. Something that identifies, cued onto the track once it exists.

That is also why two cheap bearing-only sensors are often worth more than one expensive sensor. Two direction finders at different points give you an intersection, which is a position. One gives you a line.

A turret is narrow, and that is the point

A 12° field of view sees almost nothing until it is told where to look. That is the intended arrangement: something else detects, and the turret is cued onto the bearing. A turret left staring at a fixed sector is a turret that will miss almost everything.

Every sensor needs to be somewhere

A sensor that is not placed contributes nothing, and this is the most common setup mistake. A 300 m acoustic node with no position is a coverage radius with no origin. Its detections constrain nothing, no track can form from them, and its row still reads as healthy.

Aircraft are exempt. A drone knows where it is and reports it, so a camera mounted on one resolves from the aircraft's current position on every tick.

See Sites for placing them, and Adding an asset for the flow.

Trying them before buying them

Every sensor type here exists in simulation with the same detection model. You can lay out a site, run a raid against it, and see whether the picture firms up in time to matter, before committing to hardware.

That is the intended way to choose a sensor mix. See Simulation.

Where to go next

• Integrations for the protocols a sensor can speak, and a page per protocol.
• Supported hardware for the specific products this build knows.
• Sensor fusion for what happens once several of these disagree.