Alerts and watch rules

Alerts notify people outside the console when the rig sees or hears something. There are two kinds:

• Detection alerts fire when the camera pipeline confirms a tracked object of a type you chose, such as a drone.
• SIGINT watch rules fire when the radios hear something you care about, such as “mayday” on ATC or a drone’s Remote ID broadcast.

Both kinds go out through the same delivery channels. Both appear in the same audit trail.

Open Admin → Alerts. Admins can change everything on this page. Auditors can view it, but can’t edit it. The page reads “Read-only (auditor) — channel settings are visible but not editable.”

Master switch

The Master section has one switch. It reads Alerting enabled or Alerting disabled.

Alerting is off on a new install. Nothing is sent — not detection alerts, and not watch rules — until you turn it on.

Next to the switch, the page shows how channel secrets (passwords, tokens, webhook URLs) are stored:

• 🔒 channel secrets encrypted at rest: normal.
• ⚠ secrets stored plaintext — contact DroneTracker support to enable encryption: contact support before you store real credentials.

Delivery channels

Channels are grouped by type. Each one has its own card.

For Microsoft Teams, use a Power Automate “Workflows” URL. The card’s field asks for exactly that.

Configure a channel

1. Find the channel’s card.
2. Turn its switch to Enabled.
3. Under Fire on object types, tick the object types that should trigger it (see below).
4. Fill in the delivery settings.
5. Click Save. The card shows saved.

While you have changes that aren’t saved, the card shows unsaved changes.

Secret fields (passwords, tokens, webhook URLs) are password boxes. Once a secret is stored, the field shows dots, with the note “configured — leave the dots to keep it”.

• To keep the stored value, leave the dots.
• To replace it, type a new value.
• To remove it, clear the field.

A secret that has never been set reads “not set”.

Send a test

Click Send test on a card to check the channel end to end. The result appears under the buttons:

• ✓ followed by details: the message was delivered.
• ✕ followed by the reason: it was not delivered.

Send test uses the last saved settings. If you changed something, click Save first. The card reminds you: “Send test uses the last saved settings — save first to test new values.”

Which object types trigger a channel

Each channel has its own Fire on object types list. For example, you can send SMS only for drones, and email for everything.

A channel with no types ticked sends no detection alerts. It can still send watch-rule alerts (see below).

Limits on detection alerts

Detection alerts are limited so a busy sky can’t flood your channels:

• each tracked object alerts at most once;
• a detection must reach a minimum alert level (default 1, Tracking);
• there is a cap on how many detection alerts go out per minute (default 20).

The minimum level, the per-minute cap and the temperature thresholds are under Admin → System Settings. Open Advanced, then find the alerts settings. Changes there take effect after the next restart.

SIGINT watch rules

Watch rules alert you when the rig hears something, rather than sees it. They are in the SIGINT watch rules section of Admin → Alerts, and they were added in version 0.2.552.

A watch rule sends alerts only when:

• the master switch is on, and
• at least one delivery channel is enabled.

Add a rule from a preset

Choose a starting point from + Add a watch rule…. Every field stays editable.

Rule settings

Click Save rule to keep it, or Cancel to throw away your changes.

How phrases match

• Phrases match whole words, in any case. “7500” does not match inside “17500”.
• Punctuation counts as a space, so “pan pan” also matches “pan-pan”.
• A phrase matches when its words appear together, in order, anywhere in the transcript or message.

Transcripts can be imperfect. Speech-to-text on radio audio often gets numbers and callsigns wrong. List the spoken variants too: for example “squawk 7500” and “seven five hundred”. The presets already do this for the common emergency codes.

The altitude condition uses ADS-B altitude, and it fires only when the aircraft broadcasts no callsign. The rig re-checks live ADS-B and Remote ID every few seconds, so an aircraft that climbs past the threshold after it first appears still triggers the rule.

The emergency-squawk condition reads the transponder code the aircraft broadcasts, so it needs nothing from speech-to-text. The code shows in the SIGINT events table too, and an emergency code is flagged in red. Squawk codes come from the rig’s own ADS-B receiver or a forwarder; aircraft known only from the internet ADS-B feed have no code.

The rule list

Each saved rule shows its name and a one-line summary, for example:

ATC voice + Datalink (ACARS/VDL2) · 16 phrases · at most every 10 min per source · all enabled channels

Use the On switch to turn a rule on or off. Use Edit to change it, or Delete to remove it.

Limits

• At most 10 watch alerts a minute, across all rules. Matches beyond that are not sent, so set your cooldowns and phrase lists with that in mind.
• At most 100 watch rules per rig.

What a watch alert says

The headline reads Watch: rule name — emitter. The emitter is the callsign, tail number or drone ID. The body includes:

• the source and why the rule fired, for example heard “mayday” or at 52000 ft with no callsign;
• the frequency;
• up to 400 characters of the transcript or message;
• a map link, when the event has a position.

Audit trail

The Audit trail section is a record of every outbound alert: what fired, to which channel, and whether it was delivered. Click ⟲ Refresh to reload it.

Send test results show on the card itself. Before any real alert has fired, the section reads “No alerts have fired yet.”

By default, audit entries are kept for 90 days. You can change this under Admin → System Settings → Advanced.

Related

• The RF view: where operators see the SIGINT events that watch rules match.
• Radios: ADS-B, ATC and datalink: setting up the radios that feed watch rules.
• Accounts and security: roles, including the read-only auditor.