Introducing Dronelink

[dronelink]

Hey everyone,

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’ve been heads-down working on my next project called Dronelink.

Dronelink is an entirely new approach to flight automation, and we are looking for beta testers on iOS, Android, and the web. This is a great opportunity for you to influence our product roadmap, and we would love your feedback. You can join the beta now, and our public launch is scheduled for later this year.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jim McAndrew and I am a software architect and drone enthusiast from Austin, Texas. My passion for creating drone software started in 2014 with Autopilot, the first app for DJI drones in the iOS App Store. After Autopilot I cofounded Hangar and served as CTO until mid 2018. Since then I have been working hard to create Dronelink - the culmination of five years of experience and lessons learned. To those of you who have supported me along the way, thank you.

I look forward to creating the future of flight automation with you.

-Jim

 

[dronelink]

For those that want a more in-depth walk through of the solution, please check out this initial how-to video for Beta Users. We've already enhanced feature functionality since the video was released on Sunday.. More to come!

Sign up now for the Beta at www.dronelink.com.

 

[Big Al65]

Watched the video and signed up. Looks very interesting and usable.

 

[GFields]

Excellent tutorial. I do have one question (for now ). I currently use Litchi for waypoint missions. When I create a mission, Litchi will state how long (in minutes) the flight will be. This is important to know if you need to modify due to battery time. Does this app do that?

 

[dronelink]

Excellent tutorial. I do have one question (for now ). I currently use Litchi for waypoint missions. When I create a mission, Litchi will state how long (in minutes) the flight will be. This is important to know if you need to modify due to battery time. Does this app do that?

Not only does it tell you, but you can preview the mission and see exactly how long each part will take.
In addition, if the mission extends over 2,3,5 batteries, you can stop and restart the mission (it will kick into auto return if battery is low),

 

[drvrbobob]

Will this work with the P4P PRO PLUS?

 

[dronelink]

It should, but we need verification.

 

[Artic photography]

I signed up last night. Thank you for the opportunity to assist.

 

[dronelink]

Here is the current roadmap. We enabled voting so get to it!

 

[dronelink]

We will be presenting at the Austin Drone Meetup at 6p CT for those of you who can make it!
Event Details | Live Stream

 

[GFields]

I'm going to try to be there. I've been a bit under the weather so if I can't attend, I'll watch the live stream. I think DroneLink will become one of the most used apps for professional drone pilots. I shared the "meet-up" with my FaceBook group.

Hoping you great success!

PS: If there will be an Affiliate program available, I'd be interested.

 

[Big Al65]

Looking forward to the live stream. The early look at the program is exciting. Thanks.

 

[dronelink]

Thank you to everyone who participated in the beta test! The beta is now complete and we have announced our pricing here.

Also, check out our new launch video:

 

[GFields]

Is the app available for downloading?

 

[dronelink]

Is the app available for downloading?

Dronelink is a web app and a native app, both of which are currently available. The iOS app is in the app store review process, in terms of making it to the production app store, but the release candidate can be accessed freely through TestFlight still. Will post an update when the app store review finishes.

 

[dronelink]

Did a quick video showing the new export to Google Earth option:

 

[dronelink]

We just updated the Explore plan to include the ability to create repositories (public and private), and create mission plans and components. You still need to upgrade to a paid account to actually fly missions with your plans, but we added a 30-day money back guarantee to the pricing page to take a step in the direction of offering a trial. More to come soon.

 

[dronelink]

Dronelink is a web app and a native app, both of which are currently available. The iOS app is in the app store review process, in terms of making it to the production app store, but the release candidate can be accessed freely through TestFlight still. Will post an update when the app store review finishes.

Just got iOS App Store approval. Enjoy:

‎Dronelink Flight

‎Dronelink is an innovative flight app delivering the perfect shot every time. Cross Platform Use your preferred hardware: Dronelink works on the web, mobile devices, and DJI monitors including the Smart Controller, CrystalSky, and P4P+. Install it on as many platforms as you want without...

apps.apple.com

The Android app is still available via direct download due to the DJI SDK issue

 

[dronelink]

We thought it was worth reposting this comment from Commercial Drone Pilots in case you all had similar questions:

------------

limburgdrone said:
For $100 / year the app has to be pretty perfect.

No app will ever be perfect, but we are certainly committed to listening to your feedback and making it better over time. In the end there are many different types of users and use cases and the requirements across these use cases can vary drastically.

For example, some people are more focused on manual control and looking for a DJI GO replacement. Others are in search and rescue and prioritize things like offline access, security, and collaboration. Still others are doing advanced inspections such as cell towers and building facades.

Just like in the Autopilot days, our mindset has always been to prioritize the features and functionality that make our product unique as we feel doing so provides the most value for early adopters. For example, we spent a great deal of time on the component-based architecture of mission plans as components enable a level of reuse and scalability not previously possible with DJI drones. We also spent a large amount of effort on the pre-mission workflows (mission preview, verifications missions etc) as we believe the goal should be to control for as many variables as possible before the flight to reduce the chance of error (saving time on re-work in the field) and increase the overall safety of the mission to protect people and property.

limburgdrone said:
HDR bracketing

It's interesting that you bring up this particular point as this was one of the bugs that most DJI cameras currently suffer from: the number of bracketed photos does not save across drone restarts. One of our users pointed this out to us during the beta and we responded by creating the Camera AEB Count command component the next week.

With Dronelink mission plans, you can simply include your standard camera settings list component in each of your plans, and put the AEB Count command in that list to be sure that you never forget to set that setting manually because Dronelink will do it for you every time. Need to make a change to your standard camera settings component? If you designed it as a separate component and included it in your mission plans, Dronelink will automatically prompt you to update your mission plans to use the latest version of your settings component, and managing the versioning process of your mission plan for you!

If you are interested in seeing the complete list of commands and UI options, you can download the native app for free and open the flight dashboard (airplane icon, top right). You can also sign up for a free explore account on the web app to access the command component list in the mission planner.

limburgdrone said:
I hate to replug USB and start another app

We agree, this is a drag and our goal is to minimize this over time (hopefully to zero). The continued development effort to make this happen is part of the reason for the subscription-based revenue model (trying to avoid another fate like Autopilot), but this is only part of what your subscription is for.

Dronelink is also a growing network of drone professionals that are looking to enhance their craft by sharing ideas. We are taking the lead by continuing to create innovative components in our public repositories, and we hopeful that the rest of the community will actively participate in helping us iterate to make these components better, or even start creating brand new components as we have already seen happening (users have already created Gigapano and Hyperlapse components for example). When it becomes too difficult to implement a component with the existing component types, we are committed to rolling out new component types that drastically reduce the time and energy required to plan innovative missions. Many of the ideas for new component types are already represented on our public product roadmap, which allows up-voting. Is there any other company in this space that takes feedback so seriously that it publishes its product roadmap and allow you to vote on it?

 

[dronelink]

Here is a sneak peek of our facade scan testing. We are using existing component types (Path and Orbit) to prove it out, and then we will release a Facade component type when feel like the requirements are locked down. Click here to see the mission plan for this preview: