Docks
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A dock is what turns a scouting service into an autonomous network. It is also the point where the regulatory work becomes larger than the engineering work.
Read Regulation before costing anything on this page.
What a dock has to do
| Function | The hard part |
|---|---|
| Open and close | A moving lid outdoors for years, in wind, ice and dust |
| Precision land | GNSS alone lands within a metre. A dock needs centimetres |
| Charge | Contact pads need alignment; wireless needs money |
| Condition | Dry and warm the aircraft, or the next dawn flight starts iced |
| Report weather | The go decision comes from the dock, not the forecast |
| Fail safe | A dock that cannot close must not launch |
| Connect | LTE, with enough local autonomy to survive a dropped link |
Buy or build
| Turnkey | DIY | |
|---|---|---|
| Example | DJI Dock 3 | Enclosure, actuator, charger, marker, compute |
| Supplier | Solectric and DJI Enterprise dealers (EU), Advexure (US) | See the parts list below |
| Cost | €15,000 to €40,000 with aircraft | €2,000 to €6,000 plus your own aircraft |
| Time to first flight | Weeks | Months |
| Environmental testing | Done | Yours |
| Payload choice | Their aircraft, their payloads | Anything you can build |
| Authorisation case | Manufacturer documentation supports it | You write the safety case from scratch |
Buy the first one. The capability's value is the schedule it keeps, and proving that on somebody else's hardware is far cheaper than discovering your lid mechanism seizes at -5 °C in February. Build docks afterwards, for payloads the turnkey systems do not carry, above all radiometric thermal and calibrated multispectral.
Other turnkey vendors worth quoting: Heisha (airframe-agnostic charging pads and enclosures), and the dock lines from the major enterprise UAS manufacturers.
DIY parts list
| Item | Choice | EU source | US source | Indicative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enclosure, IP66, 800 mm class | Steel or GRP cabinet | Rittal, Fibox via Reichelt | DigiKey | €300 to €900 |
| Lid actuators | Linear, IP65, with limit switches | Igus | ServoCity | €150 to €400 |
| Landing pad | Centring funnel or V-rails, plus contacts | fabricate | fabricate | €100 to €300 |
| Charging contacts | Spring-loaded pins, gold plated | Mouser EU | DigiKey | €50 to €150 |
| Wireless charging | If contact alignment defeats you | WiBotic | WiBotic | €2,000 to €4,000 |
| Battery charger | The aircraft's own, mounted and controlled | manufacturer | manufacturer | €200 to €500 |
| Precision landing marker | Printed AprilTag plus an IR beacon | print, IR-LOCK | IR-LOCK | €30 to €200 |
| Dock computer | Pi 5, or an industrial fanless PC | BerryBase | The Pi Hut | €90 to €500 |
| Weather station | Wind, rain, temperature, humidity | Davis Vantage Pro2, or an anemometer plus SHT45 | Davis | €80 to €1,200 |
| Router, dual SIM failover | Teltonika RUTX11 | Teltonika resellers | SparkFun | €200 to €300 |
| Heater and dehumidifier | Cabinet heater with a hygrostat | Reichelt | DigiKey | €60 to €200 |
| Solar and battery, off grid | 600 W panel, 200 Ah LiFePO4, MPPT | Victron via Antratek | RobotShop | €900 to €2,500 |
| UPS, on grid | Ride through a brownout mid-cycle | Reichelt | DigiKey | €150 to €400 |
| Camera, internal and external | See the aircraft, see the site | any IP camera | any | €80 to €300 |
Precision landing
The one part that must work every time. Layer it:
- RTK approach to about 1 m.
- Visual marker from 15 m down: an AprilTag or ArUco pattern read by a downward camera, driving ArduPilot's or PX4's precision landing mode.
- IR beacon as the low-light and wet-lens fallback.
- Mechanical centring for the last few centimetres: a funnel or V-rails that pull the aircraft into alignment as it settles.
Mechanical centring is what makes contact charging viable. Do not try to land on pads with software alone.
Siting
The single highest-value hour of a deployment.
| Consideration | Rule of thumb |
|---|---|
| Coverage | Every target block within half a battery, one way |
| Power | Grid beats solar by a wide margin. A yard, pump house or mast base is worth a detour |
| Data | Check the LTE signal at the exact spot, not at the gate |
| Airspace | Check the approach paths, not just the dock position |
| Access | You will visit it. Snow, mud, a locked gate |
| Sky view | Clear GNSS horizon, away from buildings and trees |
| Consent | Landowner agreement in writing, including for the flight paths |
One dock covering four blocks beats four docks. Spend the hour on a map with battery ranges drawn on it before you buy anything.
In-house software
| Component | What it does |
|---|---|
| Dock state machine | closed, opening, ready, launched, flying, returning, landing, charging, fault. Every transition logged |
| Go/no-go gate | Wind at altitude, precipitation, visibility, light, aircraft battery health, dock health |
| Mission dispatch | Which route, which payload, which battery, in which window |
| Fleet scheduler | Extends ScheduleCapabilityFlights with weather, daylight and battery constraints |
| Health telemetry | Dock cycles, lid current draw, charge cycles, internal humidity |
| Remote recovery | A supervisor can abort, recall or ground an aircraft at any time |
The lid actuator current draw is worth logging from day one: a lid that starts drawing more current is the earliest warning of a mechanism about to fail, and a failed lid on a wet night is an aircraft you replace.
The failure modes to design against
| Failure | Response |
|---|---|
| Lid will not open | No launch. Alert. The aircraft stays safe |
| Lid will not close after landing | Alert loudly. Heater on. A human goes out |
| Aircraft cannot dock | Divert to the next dock in range, else land at a pre-surveyed safe area |
| Link lost in flight | Continue the route and return. Never hold |
| Battery below reserve | Return now, drop the rest of the route, report the missed flight with its reason |
| Weather turns mid-flight | Return. Log the wind figure |
| Dock loses power | Do not launch. Report on the backup link |
Every one of those decisions goes into the missed flight report. "Weather cancelled, gust 12.4 m/s at 06:12" is a report a customer trusts. "Flight did not happen" is not.