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[droneos]

New Survey - We Would Like Your Input

Hello again from DroneOS.  We are working on some awesome new mapping stuff that is going to make the tracking and visualization of multiple drones in one user interface really simple.  

In addition, we continue to ask our community where to go next with the product.  We would love it if you would take 30 seconds to answer a one-question survey to help us out.

Take the survey here, and thanks in advance!

[droneos]

DroneOS Starting to Take Off

We are really excited about the amount of initial interest that has been shown in DroneOS and we are pushing forward with building out more features and functionality. Things have been crazy for us the last four or five months, but are starting to settle back down and we wanted to take a few minutes and ask you a handful of questions about DroneOS.

Why were you initially interested in DroneOS?

What features and functionality are the most important to you?

We have an iPhone app and an API. Would you be interested in testing either or both of these for us in a live flight environment?

As DroneOS continues to take shape, we want to give you lots of opportunity to help direct the development of this project and we look forward to hearing from you. To contact us with your answers or additional questions, email Tyler at Tyler@DroneOS.com or post on our wall. For the latest news and updates on DroneOS, follow us on Twitter @DroneOS. 

[droneos]

How to Get Involved in the Beta

We are interested in having users test our two primary applications.  

We currently have an iPhone application that allows you to track any device you attach it to using our API and a real-time Google Maps integration.

We are also interested in having application developers code to our API to help us figure out what we are missing, what we could do better, or to point out areas we might want to consider for future enhancements.  We are currently working with the Mavlink application and are getting close to having an integration for that application.  We are interested in other ideas as well.

Contact us on Twitter or Facebook if you are interested in either part of the beta program.  You can also keep up to date with progress on either of these two networks.

The DroneOS Team.

[droneos]

Integration to MAVLink underway

We are currently wrapping up the first cut of our integration to MAVLink.  With this integration, users of MAVLink will be able to show their flights in real time using the DroneOS API.

We hope to be able to announce the release within the next week or so.  If you are interested in being a part of the initial testing, drop us a note on Twitter (@droneos) or on Facebook.

If there are other systems like MAVLink that we should be integrating with sooner rather than later, please get in touch with us.

Thanks 

[droneos]

Thanks for the interest!

To all who have registered for our private beta, thanks a lot for your interest.  We have already started working with some of the community on building integrations to the DroneOS API, and have had several interested in using our iPhone app to track drone activity.  The response has been fantastic to our initial concept launch, and we are excited about the next couple of months.

We hope to be announcing a full public beta in the next 2-3 weeks, depending on what we find with our early adopters.  Please stay tuned, and follow us on our social media channels to stay up to date.

We also plan to be at SparkFun in April in Boulder, and hope to meet some of you there.  Please contact us on Facebook or Twitter with any further feedback or ideas.

Thanks again.

Scott Barstow Co-Founder, DroneOS 

[droneos]

What is Drone OS about?

About nine months ago we were sitting and talking about big ideas.  The one idea we kept coming back to was how the use of machines was going to change the world in radical ways in our lifetime.  We felt that machines would eventually outnumber humans, and started to think about what that might mean.

We started thinking about drones in particular, and the changing landscape.  Drones were becoming mainstream.  Sites like DIYDrones.com had vibrant maker communities that were pushing new ideas and building great new technology.  In addition, the labs at Penn, Stanford and other top-tier engineering schools were turning out amazing videos of using drones to do things like build and assemble structures, stick themselves to walls, and ignore the boundaries of impossible.

Our hypotheses continued to be validated as the Christmas season rolled around.  The AR Parrot Drone was in the top 10 selling new toys of last Christmas.  It was both amazing, easy ( fly it with your phone ), and relatively cheap.  For $300, a consumer now had a legitimate quad-copter toy with two cameras and amazing technology.

We decided that rather an try to build the devices, we wanted to be a place where the community embracing these new devices could share information.  We have spent the last few months building out the backend services that we think will support the first wave of applications.  We have also built an iPhone application that represents the first implementation on top of our infrastructure.

We are excited about what the future holds for the concept we have developed.  Being at SXSW has validated that this is an idea worth pursuing.  We are looking for passionate early adopters to help us fill in the gaps and give us honest feedback about where we go from here.

If you are interested in joining the discussion, please contact us on Twitter at @droneos or on Facebook.  

Scott