Hey guys,

Im pleased to announce my new app is now available to download on iOS!

Drone Start is an advanced flight check & planning tool that has some advanced features no other apps on the market currently have, that will help make your next flight safer. Some of these include:

Intelligent RTH
The app will automatically set your drones RTH height based on surrounding terrain.

Wind Maps
Fully animated wind maps, showing wind direction and speed. The colour of the wind arrows show if its safe to fly or not.

Intelligent VPS
If theres a lot of water in your flying area the app will automatically switch off your VPS or if theres no water and your VPS is off it will turn it on.

Solar Storm Alerts
Get a warning notification if theres high amounts of geo-magnetic interference caused by solar flares, a high KP index can cause a number of GPS issues when flying.

Daily FlyCast
Get a detailed outlook of flying conditions for the day ahead delivered to your iPhone/iPad every morning.

All these features are optional and can be turned off at any time. There is loads more features packed into this app so if you would like more info check out dronestart.io

Download: https://goo.gl/Gpg2ao

Well, after installing it I was surprised to find that your app said I was smack in the middle of a NFZ.  None of the other apps had previously told me that, however, I've just experienced my first 'emergency NFZ' event, which is, apparently, happening on the street behind me (Confirmed with Airmap).  The warning is legit!  It works as designed so far here in California.

Tombolian Posted at 2017-8-14 07:31
Well, after installing it I was surprised to find that your app said I was smack in the middle of a NFZ.  None of the other apps had previously told me that, however, I've just experienced my first 'emergency NFZ' event, which is, apparently, happening on the street behind me (Confirmed with Airmap).  The warning is legit!  It works as designed so far here in California.

Thats good to know! We are actually currently working on improving the no fly zone maps so theres more to come next week hopefully!

Thanks,

Neil

Downloaded it. While I have no problem paying for additional features, it would be nice to know which features you can use for free and which ones you have to pay for *before* you click on them.  I'm not saying it's deceptive at all, but as a new user, it was hard to figure out what the immediate value was with the free Standard "membership. It's also hard to see what's the difference between the Advanced and Professional Membership.  

IOS user here.

Great start though!

Yeah, now there are 'emergencies' all around me, unwarranted.  Will look forward to those NFZ map updates.

jamesw Posted at 2017-8-14 09:34
Downloaded it. While I have no problem paying for additional features, it would be nice to know which features you can use for free and which ones you have to pay for *before* you click on them.  I'm not saying it's deceptive at all, but as a new user, it was hard to figure out what the immediate value was with the free Standard "membership. It's also hard to see what's the difference between the Advanced and Professional Membership.  

IOS user here.

Hi James,

Thanks for your feedback! If you tap on 'Membership' you can then tap on 'Features' for each tier to see what each one offers. But you're right, I need to make it a bit more obvious.

Thanks,

Neil

Do you not think that taking things like setting your own heights and switching sensors off away from the user with Intelligent RTH and Intelligent VPS is a bit risky? It's something that should be checked and set before every flight and giving people an excuse not to bother with it seems reckless in the long term.

Your Intelligent RTH isn't going to be anywhere near as accurate as doing it visually and manually is it? Switching sensors on by default I think is a good thing but your Intelligent VPS could be irritating for those that fly at lakes, beaches etc but never fly over water.

calmari Posted at 2017-8-15 01:14
Do you not think that taking things like setting your own heights and switching sensors off away from the user with Intelligent RTH and Intelligent VPS is a bit risky? It's something that should be checked and set before every flight and giving people an excuse not to bother with it seems reckless in the long term.

Your Intelligent RTH isn't going to be anywhere near as accurate as doing it visually and manually is it? Switching sensors on by default I think is a good thing but your Intelligent VPS could be irritating for those that fly at lakes, beaches etc but never fly over water.

Hi Calmari,

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah you're right & I make sure I prompt the user to visually check the RTH height that has been set is accurate, saying that though it can be tricky to set the height correctly for say a hill 1km away, the app will know the highest terrain point in the area so it always sets it to above that. Both the Intelligent RTH & VPS are optional too, and are off by default. When they're off, the app will still inform the user their RTH height is not set high enough or if theres a lot of water in the area but the user has to manually set their RTH or VPS in the app instead.

Thanks

Neil

Hey Neil,

Does Drone Start have a Log Book feature?

Good to know about this app. Is better than drone buddy

Any chance that this might be compiled and released for Android?

Surely any useful planning app should also fetch and parse any NOTAMs for the desired area?  Can't see that listed but its pretty important.

Doesn't appear to support the overwhelmingly more popular OS platform (android) either.