Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.altnautica.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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Setup and Pairing

First-time setup takes under two minutes if you have done it before, and under five minutes the first time. You pair the ground station with your drone, optionally join a WiFi network, and you are ready to fly.

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Before you start

Make sure you have:

• A ground station with the ADOS Drone Agent installed (see Installation)
• A drone with the ADOS Drone Agent installed and powered on
• The drone’s pairing key (printed on the drone case or shown on the drone’s OLED)

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The setup webapp

The setup webapp is a lightweight HTML page hosted on the ground station itself. It loads instantly, works on any device, and does not need internet access. You can reach it from:

• Phone: Join the ADOS-GS-XXXX WiFi, and your phone’s captive portal should open it automatically. If not, navigate to http://setup.ados.local/
• Laptop over WiFi: Join the AP and open http://setup.ados.local/ or http://192.168.4.1/
• Laptop over USB tether: Open http://192.168.7.1/ or http://ground-station.local/

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First-time walkthrough

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Pairing details

Pairing exchanges WFB-ng encryption keys between the drone and ground station. After pairing:

• The ground station only receives video from the paired drone
• Other ground stations cannot intercept the video stream
• The pairing persists across reboots and power cycles
• You only need to pair once unless you factory-reset either side

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QR code pairing (future)

A future update will add QR code scanning. The drone’s OLED shows a QR code, and you scan it with the setup webapp camera. Not available in the current release.

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Re-pairing

To pair with a different drone:

1. Open the setup webapp, OLED menu, or Mission Control Hardware tab
2. Unpair the current drone
3. Start “Pair with drone”
4. Enter the new drone’s pairing key
5. Confirm that the new pairing is shown on the Link screen

The current agent rejects a second pairing while a drone is already paired. Mission Control handles this by asking you to unpair first, then retrying the new pair request.

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Captive portal behavior

When your phone joins the ground station WiFi, the operating system’s captive portal detection kicks in:

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Setup from the OLED

If you do not have a phone or laptop, you can do everything from the OLED and buttons:

1. Press B3 (Select) to open the main menu
2. Navigate to “Pair with drone” to enter the pairing key character by character using B1 (up), B2 (down), and B3 (confirm)
3. Navigate to “Network” to scan and join WiFi
4. Navigate to “Display” to set HDMI resolution

This path is slower than the webapp but works with nothing except the ground station itself.

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Setup from Mission Control

Once you have a browser connected (WiFi or USB tether), Mission Control’s Hardware tab provides the full setup interface:

• Overview: pair with drone, inspect link status, inspect current PIC
• Network sub-view: WiFi AP config, WiFi client, Ethernet, 4G modem, uplink priority
• Physical UI sub-view: OLED brightness, display settings, factory reset
• Controllers and Peripherals sub-views: gamepads, Bluetooth devices, and connected accessories
• Distributed RX and Mesh sub-views: role, relay, receiver, and mesh state on mesh-capable nodes

The Hardware tab is the most feature-rich setup interface. The setup webapp and OLED cover the basics.

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After setup

Once paired and configured:

• Power on both the drone and the ground station
• Video and telemetry appear automatically within 5-10 seconds of both sides being powered
• No setup steps needed on subsequent flights
• The OLED shows link status, drone state, and connected clients

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Resetting to factory defaults

If you need to start over, factory reset clears the pairing keys, network config, and all settings:

• OLED: Hold B4 for 10 seconds, then confirm by holding B4 again for 3 seconds
• Setup webapp: Advanced page > Factory Reset
• Mission Control: Hardware tab > Physical UI > Factory Reset (requires typed confirmation)
• CLI: sudo ados factory-reset

After reset, the ground station reboots and returns to the first-boot state. On a mesh-capable node the reset additionally clears the mesh identity (mesh_id, psk.key, receiver hint, revocation list) and transitions the role back to direct so the box can be paired into a different deployment.

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Mesh field pairing

The pairing flow above is for the drone-to-Ground-Agent pair (the WFB-ng key). If you are setting up a multi-node deployment with relay and receiver roles, there is a separate field pairing flow that runs entirely on the OLED, with no laptop or webapp. The receiver opens a 60 second Accept window, each relay sends a join request over the local mesh, and the receiver returns an encrypted invite bundle that the relay writes to disk. Read the Field Tap-to-Pair walkthrough and protocol.

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What is next

• WiFi AP to connect your laptop
• HDMI Kiosk for standalone flight
• Uplink Matrix for cloud and internet connectivity options
• Mesh & Distributed Receive when one Ground Agent is not enough