sikw00fcot detects and tracks drones in the Team Awareness Kit
(TAK) ecosystem — ATAK, WinTAK, iTAK & TAK Server — from
their SiK radio telemetry links, building on
SiKW00F and
PyTAK.
It ships three daemons, each a PyTAK gateway:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
sikw00fsentinel |
Autonomous SCAN ⇄ INSPECT state machine on one SiK radio. Scans promiscuously, squawks a CoT alert on a new drone link, switches to INSPECT to decode MAVLink into a live track, and reverts to SCAN on timeout. Emits a status marker showing its current mode. The recommended, plug-in-a-radio daemon. |
sikw00fscan |
Promiscuous SiK NetID scanner. Emits a CoT detection alert (no position) whenever a drone telemetry link is detected near the sensor. |
sikw00fcot |
MAVLink → CoT gateway. Consumes drone MAVLink eavesdropped and fanned-out by SiKW00F over UDP and forwards full position/track CoT. |
sikw00fsentinel / sikw00fscan own the SiK radio directly over serial — no
SiKW00F process required:
drone SiK link ──RF──> SiK radio ──serial──> sikw00fsentinel ──CoT──> TAK Server
(SCAN ⇄ INSPECT)
sikw00fcot is a passive sink for SiKW00F's eavesdrop TUI. A serial port has
one reader, so we don't fight SiKW00F for it: patches/apply_fanout.py teaches
SiKW00F's eavesdrop loop to mirror every MAVLink frame to a local UDP socket,
which sikw00fcot reads:
SiK radio ──serial──> SiKW00F eavesdrop ──UDP fan-out──> sikw00fcot ──CoT──> TAK Server
(owns the serial port) (udp:127.0.0.1:14550)
Grab the .deb from Releases:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ./sikw00fcot_latest_all.debThis installs all three commands and enables the sikw00fcot gateway service.
To run the autonomous sikw00fsentinel instead, install its unit + config from
config/ (the two radio daemons aren't auto-enabled — they conflict
over the serial port).
python3 -m pip install sikw00fcot
# For wss:// (TAK Protocol websocket) delivery:
python3 -m pip install 'sikw00fcot[with_takproto]'Configuration is via an environment file (systemd EnvironmentFile) or an .ini
section. See config/ for fully-commented examples for each daemon.
Common keys (plus all PyTAK COT_URL / PYTAK_TLS_*
settings):
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
COT_URL |
— | TAK destination, e.g. tls://takserver.example.com:8089 |
DEVICE |
/dev/ttyUSB0 |
SiK radio serial device (scan/sentinel) |
BAUD |
57600 |
SiK radio baud |
SENSOR_LAT / SENSOR_LON |
0 |
Sensor location; detections/status are placed here |
SENSOR_NETID |
— | This sensor radio's own NetID (always excluded from detections) |
IGNORE_NETIDS |
— | NetIDs to never detect (comma/space separated) |
DETECT_MIN_HITS |
4 |
NetID: hits before a detection is confirmed |
INSPECT_TIMEOUT |
30 |
Seconds with no decoded MAVLink before INSPECT → SCAN |
MAV_URL |
udpin:127.0.0.1:14550 |
Where sikw00fcot reads the fan-out |
COT_TYPE |
a-u-A-M-H-Q |
Drone marker (air / unknown / multirotor UAS) |
COT_STALE |
120 |
CoT stale seconds |
Lat/lon are truncated to 4 decimals via pytak.truncate_float. Version 1.0.1
and later rebuild the PyTAK client in-process with bounded backoff when the CoT
destination is unavailable or local network policy is being replaced. Each
attempt gets new queues, workers, and transports. Local serial/configuration
faults still exit cleanly for systemd to handle.
wss:// note:
wss://...:8443/takproto/1works with enrolled PEM certs but needs thetakprotoextra (without it pytak sends raw XML and TAK drops it), and pytak's enrollment/403 paths have footguns — seeconfig/sikw00fsentinel.config.example.
git clone https://github.com/snstac/sikw00fcot
cd sikw00fcot
make editable # pip install -e .
make install_test_requirements
make test # pytest
make package # build .deb (needs debian/install_pkg_build_deps.sh)Copyright Sensors & Signals LLC https://www.snstac.com
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE.