02 — The ground station

Easy to use, focused on the mission, and built to reduce mistakes.

Controls sit where you expect them, the video carries nothing you did not ask for, and the planner checks the route against the ground before the aircraft ever leaves it.

Fly View: satellite map with the flight path on the left, live aerial video of a shoreline and field on the right showing vehicles and people on the ground, telemetry across the top. Fly View in full-map mode: an RTL return pattern looping over a river and airstrip, with the aircraft icon on its final approach and telemetry across the top.

Fly View — split map and live feed.

Fly View

Fly the aircraft and work the camera at the same time

  • Both halves are live at once — re-task the aircraft on the map while the payload keeps tracking, with no mode to switch between them.
  • Aircraft controls left, payload controls right, each fixed in place, so nothing has to be reached across.
  • Live position against the planned route, with detection running on the feed while it flies.
Plan View: an eight-waypoint mission drawn over satellite terrain with a VTOL transition marker, and an editable mission table below listing sequence, command, latitude, longitude, altitude and altitude frame for every item.

Plan View — mission and editable item table.

Plan View

A plan that tells you when it is wrong

  • Terrain collision checked for you — the station pulls real elevation for the route and compares every leg against the ground; the segment that collides is drawn in red, so it's obvious which one.
  • Errors shown against the item that caused them, so a bad altitude is obvious in the table instead of buried in a log.
  • Built by following the prompts — takeoff, waypoints, return, each step leading to the next, so nothing has to be remembered in order.
  • Per-item altitude frame — relative to launch, above sea level, or held above the terrain.
  • Every item editable as a table row, with distance, count and time totalled as the plan changes.

3D View — recorded in the station, plan reviewed against real terrain.

3D View

Understand the mission before you fly it

  • Height is what a flat map hides — in 3D a leg that clips a ridge is obvious at a glance instead of being a number in a column.
  • Walk the whole route — climb-out, cruise legs, loiter orbits and the return, drawn over real elevation data.
  • Brief from it — a crew can see the plan the way the aircraft will fly it, without reading coordinates.
  • Free camera to look around from any angle, with one click to snap back to the aircraft.
The station in full-screen video over a mountain road, cars and pack animals visible along the route, with only the telemetry bar and camera toolbar over the picture — no floating panels, no analytics overlay.

Video window — the feed, and nothing else.

Video window

Nothing sitting between the operator and the picture

  • The feed fills the screen — no floating panels, no docked widgets, nothing laid over the part of the frame being watched.
  • Telemetry stays on the bar, so going full-frame costs no aircraft state.
  • Detection boxes are the only overlay, and they switch off when the operator wants the raw picture.
  • Thermal alongside EO — picture-in-picture, full frame, or blended with adjustable opacity.
The ground station running detection on a flooded neighbourhood: twenty-three objects tracked, a cluster of people on a rooftop each boxed and numbered with confidences from 88 to 98 percent, a group ring drawn around a second cluster, and an amber SAR alert reading 'Priority Group Detected — Possible Evacuation Needed (95%)'. A status line reads 'Intelligence Processing: Critical group detection in Zone 4 (Floodplain)'. The ground station running detection at a rock quarry: a haul truck on its side boxed in red and labelled 'TRUCK DETECTED: #TRK1002, Confidence 99%', with an orange alert reading 'MINE SITE ALERT: Vehicle Rollover, Critical Event (100%)' and the zone's GPS coordinates shown. A status line reads 'Intelligence Processing: High-Priority event in Quarry Zone 7 (Mining Operations)'.

Two real incidents — a flood rescue, a quarry rollover — read and raised automatically.

Situational awareness

Not a detector. A model that reads the situation

  • Reads the situation, not just the object — a cluster of people becomes a priority group, an overturned truck becomes a rollover, named by the incident classifier rather than left as a plain box.
  • Severity is assigned, not left to the operator — graded and raised as an alert with a confidence score, ready to be triaged like an incoming report.
  • Position travels with the alert — the zone and coordinates are logged automatically, so a tasking arrives with a location already attached.
  • The same engine, any situation — no separate model per scenario; one detector and rule engine reads whatever the mission puts in front of it, on the live feed as it happens.
The Remote Video Terminal open in a plain browser: a control bar with Video, Map and Split views, EO and IR camera sources, Pause and an AI boxes toggle, a green Live indicator and the stream size, over sharp aerial video of a cargo ship on a wide estuary with a green detection box labelled boat 75 percent drawn around it.

Remote Video Terminal — the same feed in a browser, with nothing installed.

Remote Video Terminal

Everyone who needs the picture can have it

  • Nothing to install — the station serves a web page, so any phone, tablet or laptop with a browser can watch. On an incident ground that counts for more than a native client would.
  • Viewers join by QR code — the station can broadcast its own Wi-Fi, so people get on without a network to find or credentials to hand around.
  • The whole picture travels — live video, the AI boxes, the alerts and the telemetry, and the map with the aircraft on it. Not just a video stream.
  • The aircraft is not involved — the copy is taken inside the station, so the radio link, the aircraft and the operator's own display are untouched whether anyone is watching or not.

Everything in the station

Every module, not just the headline screens.

A ground station is judged on the bad days — a sensor that will not calibrate, a link that drops, a log that has to come off the aircraft after an incident.

Mission
  • Fly View — map and video
  • Plan View — waypoint planning
  • Editable mission table
  • 3D terrain mission review
  • Terrain / AMSL / relative frames
  • Vertical takeoff, loiter, return
  • Geofence and boundary limits
  • Pre-flight checklist
Vehicle setup
  • Airframe configuration
  • Radio / RC calibration
  • Flight mode assignment
  • Compass and accelerometer calibration
  • Level horizon alignment
  • Power and battery setup
  • Motor test and ordering
  • Safety and failsafe rules
  • Camera and gimbal setup
Video & payload
  • Network video — RTSP, UDP, TCP
  • Local file playback
  • Thermal picture-in-picture
  • Thermal full-frame
  • Thermal blended, adjustable opacity
  • Laser rangefinder distance
  • Photo and video recording
  • Zoom and click-to-track
Remote video terminal
  • Live video to any browser
  • Nothing to install to watch
  • Viewers join by QR code
  • Station can host its own Wi-Fi
  • Map and AI boxes travel with it
  • Alerts and telemetry on the page
  • Viewer limit and page port
AI analytics
  • GPU object detection
  • Multi-object tracking
  • Distinct-object counting
  • Model and confidence control
  • Model-free visual tracker
  • Situational-awareness review
  • Graded incident alerts
Comms
  • Serial telemetry
  • TCP and UDP links
  • Bluetooth
  • Multi-link with failover
  • Telemetry logging
  • Remote ID
  • ADS-B traffic display
Analysis
  • On-board log download
  • Flight log replay
  • MAVLink inspector
  • MAVLink console
  • Vibration analysis
  • Image geotagging
  • Spoken status callouts

Download

SkyShield GCS 2.0.2 for Windows.

One installer with everything the station needs, video and the 3D view included. Nothing else to set up. The AI detection features unlock with a licence key. From this version on SkyShield keeps itself up to date.

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. If Windows shows “Windows protected your PC”, choose More info then Run anyway.

SHA-256 536B20663DB3E7A3A11F86AE2A003F43F7CE97AC8AD0D81ED3E3F2E08399B5B5