Airnest’s Flight Logging Makes it a Complete (and free) Drone App

Airnest has long been a go-to application for DJI pilots. Its intuitive interface and easy-to-use tools have made flight planning straightforward for plenty of aerial photography enthusiasts. But now the application is taking a step towards commercial flyers, with a flight logging platform designed to help new and existing pilots capture and store a range of data for compliance and analysis purposes.

What’s the deal with flight logging?

There are probably two reasons that drone pilots will be keen to use a cloud-based flight logging platform. The first is for those businesses that have recently been liberated by the Part 107 Rule. New and existing commercial flyers will benefit from being able to look back at flight data via an intuitive dashboard, observing flight metrics such as altitude, speed, location, battery performance and GPS status moment by moment.

Being able to look back at flights you have controlled and check performance at any given time will be appealing to both commercial pilots and enthusiasts, but there’s another unique tool Airnest is introducing with its latest update: Flight sharing. The very same flight logs that are automatically uploaded to the cloud for analysis can be shared with friends or colleagues. A flight player with your chosen mission can even be embedded directly into a website or support forum, just like you would with a Youtube video.

It allows for quicker diagnosis of potential issues and provides a method to share flight data that has never been seen before. In the event of an issue, users can view the flight in real time seeing moment-by-moment flight data for easy diagnosis” – Ben Brautigam, Airnest co-founder.

Speaking exclusively to DroneLife about the benefits of the new update was Ben Brautigam, Airnest co-founder. “Clearly commercial pilots need an easy method for tracking their activity, but all pilots can benefit from Airnest Logging,” he said. “Not only can commercial pilots remain compliant, but future features will allow them to organize their data and flying activities easier than ever before.”

With a big enough sample of flight data, Brautigam anticipates that pilots will soon have access to a range of insights on drone performance. “As we continue to collect logs we will be able to tell both hobbyist and commercial pilots things about their drones; the state of their battery and drone, how their GPS is performing compared to other pilots, how specific firmware versions can affect performance,” he said.

Pilots can sync flights automatically when using the Airnest app or upload logs from other services such as DroneDeploy. Soon, Airnest will offer the ability to upload flights from DJI GO and other providers too. On top of the new flight logging, metrics and sharing capabilities, the Airnest application still includes full flight planning with the ‘Plan’ tool. Dubbed the ‘Photoshop of Flight Planning‘, Plan allows users to draw on a range of photoshop-inspired tools to intuitively plan autonomous flights with a few swipes of the finger.

All this for free?

Previously Airnest, minus the new flight logging technology, was a popular paid application among DJI pilots. But now you get more for less. In fact, you can get more for nothing at all. The Airnest app is now available for free in the Apple Store. 

“We’ve always been focused on simple, accessible ways to fly drones. Our hope is that with our mobile tools available for free we can provide an easier path for new and existing pilots to capture a wider range of imagery and data,” said co-founder Ben Brautigam. Thanks Ben!