A custom instrument is a sensor definition your company creates itself — a drone, an aircraft campaign, or any imagery source that isn’t in YNSAT’s public catalog or the marketplace. Defining it once tells the platform what its imagery looks like (its bands and the metadata each image carries), so you can then upload your own georeferenced imagery to it and use it in Visuals like any other instrument.
Custom instruments are company-owned: everyone in your company works from the same set, and they can’t be ordered from the marketplace — you populate them with your own data.
Where to manage them #
Open the Instruments panel in the left rail (satellite icon). It lists your company’s custom instruments, with a search box and a New instrument button. Each row has an actions menu: Details, Edit, Upload image, and Delete. The same list, as a full table, is available under Manage → Instruments (columns: Name, Code, Type, Resolution, Bands, Imagery) with a Create new Instrument button.
Creating one #
The create form has four sections:
Instrument (identity)
- Name — the technical id, also used as the storage folder. It must be unique and cannot be changed after creation.
- Label — the friendly display name shown throughout the platform.
- Short code — a brief code (up to 20 characters).
- Description — optional free text.
Configuration
- Type — Multispectral, Hyperspectral, Atmospheric, Thematic or Radar.
- Product — which of the products you have with us this instrument belongs to.
- Resolution (m) — the ground sample distance of the imagery.
Bands — define the sensor’s bands with Add band: each has a Name (e.g. Red) and an optional Wavelength (µm). Insights run against these bands, so define them to match your data.
Image metadata — the schema every uploaded image must provide, added with Add field: each is a Key and a Type (Text, Decimal, Integer, Date / time, or List). A date key is required so images can be dated.
Click Create instrument to save.
Editing, and the structure lock #
You can rename the label, adjust the short code, description, type, product and resolution at any time. But once an instrument has imagery, its bands and metadata schema are locked — the form shows “Bands are locked because this instrument already has imagery” — because changing them would break the images already uploaded against them. Plan the bands and metadata keys before you start uploading.
Details & deleting #
Details opens a read-only view: an Overview (code, type, GSD, band count, whether it has imagery), the image metadata schema, the areas that hold imagery for this instrument with a scene count each, and a spectral coverage chart of the band centres.
Delete removes the instrument — but it’s blocked while anything still depends on it (uploaded imagery, monitors, or model runs). Remove those first.
Once a custom instrument exists, the next step is putting imagery into it — see Uploading Your Own Imagery.