D.A.R.S. Drone Remote ID — Home Assistant integration
Bring live drone Remote ID detections from a D.A.R.S.
receiver into Home Assistant over Bluetooth. The receiver passively picks up the
Remote ID that nearby drones broadcast (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth) and
streams each detection to HA, where it becomes entities you can put on a
dashboard, a map, and into automations.
Local push, no cloud. The BLE link is entirely local; nothing leaves your
network.
What you get
Per receiver (one device in HA):
| Entity | Type | What it is |
|---|
| Drone detected | binary_sensor (occupancy) | On while ≥ 1 drone is being detected. Attribute: count. |
| Active drones | sensor | Number of drones right now. Attribute drones: full list (id, source, RSSI, lat/lon, altitude, height, speed, heading, operator lat/lon). |
| Nearest drone ID | sensor | Serial/ID of the strongest‑signal drone. Attributes: that drone's telemetry. |
| Nearest drone signal | sensor (dBm) | RSSI of the strongest drone. |
| Nearest drone | device_tracker | Map marker following the strongest drone (with operator location in attributes). |
| Receiver connected | binary_sensor (connectivity, diagnostic) | BLE link status. Attribute: licensed. |
Automation ideas: announce on a speaker when Drone detected turns on, flash a
light, push a phone notification with the nearest drone's ID and distance, or log
the drones attribute to history.
Integration icon
HA shows an integration's logo from the central home-assistant/brands repo (a
custom component can't ship its own brand icon). Ready-to-submit icons are in
brands/ — see that folder's README to add them via a brands PR.
Until merged, HA shows a generic placeholder; functionality is unaffected.
Requirements
- Home Assistant 2024.8 or newer with a working Bluetooth adapter in
range of the receiver — either a local adapter or an
ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy
(needs an active‑connection capable proxy).
- A genuine, activated D.A.R.S. receiver (M5Stack Unit C6L or XIAO ESP32‑C5)
running current firmware. Get at
getdars.com.
Install (HACS)
- HACS → ⋮ → Custom repositories → add this repo's URL, category
Integration.
- Install D.A.R.S. Drone Remote ID, then restart Home Assistant.
- The receiver is usually auto‑discovered (Settings → Devices & Services →
Discovered). Otherwise + Add Integration → D.A.R.S. Drone Remote ID and
pick your
DARS‑… device from the list.
Manual install: copy custom_components/dars_remote_id/ into your HA
config/custom_components/ and restart.
Map card — bundled, no separate install
The integration ships and auto-loads a D.A.R.S.-styled map card
(dars-map-card.js) that plots every detected drone (marker per drone + operator,
tether line, popups, and a detection list) from sensor.dars_active_drones. It's
a viewer — the integration is what connects to the receiver and supplies the
data.
Nothing to install for the card: after the integration is set up (HACS or manual)
and Home Assistant is restarted, just add it to a dashboard:
type: custom:dars-map-card
entity: sensor.dars_active_drones # optional (auto-detected if omitted)
title: Drone Map # optional
map_style: Fiord # optional: Fiord | Dark Matter | Positron | Liberty | Bright
units: metric # optional: metric (m, m/s) | imperial (ft, mph)
show_takeoff: true # optional
show_replay: true # optional: show the Live/Replay controls
Units. units sets the default; each viewer can also flip metric ⇄ imperial
with the m / ft button in the card header (their choice is remembered on that
device). Matches the D.A.R.S. app (m→ft, m/s→mph).
Map styles use free‑for‑commercial OpenFreeMap
vector tiles (same styles as the D.A.R.S. app). The on‑map switcher remembers the
viewer's choice. See ATTRIBUTIONS.md for data/library licences.
Live / Replay. The card has a Live and a Replay mode. Replay reads
this receiver's history straight from Home Assistant's Recorder (no extra
storage): pick a day (Today, Yesterday, or a specific date) and use the
timeline scrubber, play/pause and speed to watch that day's flights animate —
breadcrumb trails included. Replay depends on Recorder retention (default
~10 days) and needs the drones sensor to be recorded; a single history sample
whose attributes exceed 16 KiB (≈ 60+ simultaneous drones) is dropped by HA. Set
show_replay: false to hide the controls.
The integration serves the card at /dars_remote_id/dars-map-card.js and
registers it as a frontend module automatically — no www/ copy, no Lovelace
resource entry needed. (Hard-refresh the browser once after updating so the new
card JS is fetched.)
Copy www/dars-map-card.js into config/www/, then Settings → Dashboards →
⋮ → Resources → + Add Resource → /local/dars-map-card.js, type JavaScript
Module.
The map uses Leaflet + OpenStreetMap loaded from a CDN, so the browser viewing
the dashboard needs internet; if it's offline the card falls back to the
detection list (which always works). Drones without a GPS fix are listed but not
placed on the map.
How it works
The receiver exposes a GATT service 0xFFF1 with a notify characteristic
0xFFF2 that streams fixed 34‑byte frames (mac, rssi, channel, 25‑byte
ASTM F3411 message). The integration keeps a long‑lived connection, decodes each
frame (decoder.py, a faithful port of the D.A.R.S. web viewer's decoder, unit
tested for parity), maintains a registry of drones (dropped 30 s after their last
frame), and pushes entity updates. On connect it reads the 0xFFF3 status to
check the licence flag.
Notes & limits
- Foreground live view. The Android app remains the full product (background
scanning, widget, EFB output, USB, PRO). This integration is the live feed for
a Home Assistant dashboard.
- One receiver drives one BLE connection. Keep it in good range of the HA adapter
or a Bluetooth proxy.
- The map tracker follows a single (nearest) drone by design; per‑drone trackers
may come later.
Dashboard & automation examples
Entity IDs are built from the device name you gave the receiver, e.g. a
device named DARS C6L yields sensor.dars_c6l_active_drones. The examples
below use the slug dars — replace it with yours (Developer Tools → States).
Map — nearest drone (Lovelace, add as a Manual card):
type: map
title: Drones
default_zoom: 12
hours_to_show: 0
entities:
- entity: device_tracker.dars_nearest_drone
Status panel:
type: entities
title: D.A.R.S.
entities:
- entity: binary_sensor.dars_drone_detected
- entity: sensor.dars_active_drones
- entity: sensor.dars_nearest_drone_id
- entity: sensor.dars_nearest_drone_signal
- entity: binary_sensor.dars_receiver_connected
Live drone table (renders the full drones attribute):
type: markdown
title: Detected drones
content: >
{% set drones = state_attr('sensor.dars_active_drones', 'drones') %}
{% if drones %}
| ID | Source | RSSI | Alt m | Speed m/s | Heading |
| --- | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: |
{% for d in drones -%}
| {{ d.id or d.mac }} | {{ d.source }} | {{ d.rssi }} | {{ d.altitude_m }} | {{ d.speed_mps }} | {{ d.heading }} |
{% endfor %}
{% else %}
_No drones detected._
{% endif %}
Automation — notify on a new drone (Settings → Automations → Edit in YAML):
alias: Drone detected alert
triggers:
- trigger: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.dars_drone_detected
from: "off"
to: "on"
actions:
- action: notify.notify
data:
title: Drone detected
message: >
{{ states('sensor.dars_active_drones') }} drone(s) nearby. Nearest:
{{ states('sensor.dars_nearest_drone_id') }}
({{ states('sensor.dars_nearest_drone_signal') }} dBm).
Swap notify.notify for your mobile app service (e.g. notify.mobile_app_phone)
to get a push notification, or add a light.turn_on / media_player action to
flash a light or announce on a speaker.
Development
decoder.py is Home Assistant independent and unit‑testable in isolation. The
byte layout and ODID math match the firmware and the web viewer exactly.
License & attributions
Licensed under the MIT License (© getdars.com). Third‑party map
data and libraries remain under their own licences — see
ATTRIBUTIONS.md (OpenStreetMap / OpenFreeMap / OpenMapTiles,
Leaflet, MapLibre GL JS, maplibre‑gl‑leaflet, and the FAA UAS Declaration of
Compliance data).
Not affiliated with Home Assistant or the Open Home Foundation. D.A.R.S. is
independent firmware; see getdars.com/terms.
