Areas

A) Areas

Areas can be defined on the map for tracking purposes. For example, they can alert you if you are entering a different zone. 

Click on the Areas menu item from the main menu. 

All the area names belonging to your network are displayed on the left side grid view. 

A new area can be created on the portal in 2 ways –

• Create a new area using the “Create Area” tool provided on the portal on the map.
• Create a new area by uploading a .csv document to the portal

B) Creating a New Area

A new area can be created by 

1. importing a .csv file and storing it on the portal. 
2. drawing an area on the map and storing it on the portal

This area can then be assigned to the respective slots. 

To import a .csv file to create a tracking area: 

Step 1: Create and save the .csv file

Step 2: In Pista Terrain, open the Areas’ screen. Click on the “Create Area” button displayed on the top right side. Create area form is displayed

Step 3: In the form section 2, click on the “Upload your file” button.

Step 4: An “Upload area” form appears

Step 5: Fill in the name (as you would want it to appear in the list) in section 1 and upload the file using the “Upload a file” button. 

Step 6: Click on “Save” to upload the file and save it on the portal. 

To draw an area on the map: 

Step 1: Select the “Create Area” option on the Areas’ screen 

Step 2: A Create Area form shows up in 3 sections.

1. Enter the Name.
2. Click on the top right of the map and then select desired starting coordinate on the map. Continue drawing coordinates one by one till the time desired area (with at least 3 coordinates) is drawn. 
3. Click on save to save the created area.

Creating an Area file for import

The file should be created and saved in CSV format – the Area name can be entered while importing the file.

You can create and edit these in a spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel, or in a plain-text tool like notepad. The file should have two columns and up to 500 rows.  

The first row should be the header (latitude, longitude). 

Each row represents a corner of the boundary of the area to be defined on the terminal. These should be sequentially ordered, so Point 00 is joined to point 01, point 01 to point 02 etc. 

The last geo point is joined to the first geo point to draw an enclosed shape. 

Important notes: 

1. If you open the file in a spreadsheet software like excel, the leading zeroes will be removed (i.e., it will become 1.54675,23.52134 instead of 01.54675,023.52134), which will cause the file to error when uploading onto the portal. 

You can fix this by either changing the cell to a “text” format in the spreadsheet or opening the file in a plain text tool to ensure the leading zeroes are not removed. 

1. Only areas with less than or equal to 25 coordinates can be assigned to “Radio Silence” and “Restricted Zones”. 
2. Areas with more than 25 coordinates can be assigned to “Portal tracking areas” only. 

Tips: 

1. If the points are not sequentially ordered, it will error out and the area will not be loaded onto the portal.
2. The latitude should always be 2 digits (02, 25, etc) and the longitude should always be 3 digits (005, 012, 123, etc) before the decimal point. 
3. If the precision for Latitude/Longitude is less than or more than 5 digits after the decimal, it will error out and the area will not be loaded onto the portal.

Sample file:

latitude,longitude

52.17176,-001.93881

50.60889,-002.01022

50.85228,001.18129

52.31639,001.24721