# OpenDroneKit

> OpenDroneKit is an open-source, offline-first drone inspection and GIS toolkit for Windows. It plans missions, flies them over MAVLink to ArduPilot, reconstructs imagery with COLMAP into georeferenced products, detects defects with registered models, measures in metres and writes reports, without a cloud account.

Status and honesty notes:
- No Windows installer has been released yet; install from source (Python 3.11).
- Every model metric on the site names its split and its known weakness. No model has been measured on Indian sites.
- Not affiliated with DroneKit (dronekit.io) or OpenDroneMap.
- Facts were checked against the public repository at commit 1ef6351 (2026-09-01).

## Facts

- [Facts (Markdown)](https://opendronekit.com/facts.md): every product fact, one per line, each with its source
- [Facts page](https://opendronekit.com/facts): the same list as HTML
- [Full text for LLMs](https://opendronekit.com/llms-full.txt): the facts plus the mirrored repository docs

## Product

- [Download](https://opendronekit.com/download): Release status and the source install.
- [Facts](https://opendronekit.com/facts): Every product fact with its source.
- [India](https://opendronekit.com/india): India packs, their status and limits.

## Features

- [Features](https://opendronekit.com/features): The pipeline, capability by capability.
- [Mission planning](https://opendronekit.com/features/mission-planning): Plans laid out inside your geofence with real constraint geometry, exported to the apps you already fly with.
- [Flight over MAVLink](https://opendronekit.com/features/flight): Mission, geofence and rally upload with the capture commands intact, live telemetry, and a simulator that has caught real bugs.
- [Photogrammetry](https://opendronekit.com/features/photogrammetry): Georeferenced orthomosaics, elevation models, point clouds and meshes, solved on your machine in a real UTM zone.
- [AI defect detection](https://opendronekit.com/features/ai-defect-detection): Trained models for cracks, corrosion, structural damage and solar faults, each finding carrying the evidence that produced it.
- [Measurements](https://opendronekit.com/features/measurements): Areas, perimeters, volumes and change computed against the reconstructed surface, in metres.
- [Reports](https://opendronekit.com/features/reports): A client-readable report built from the reviewed project, in four formats from the same sections.
- [Offline and private](https://opendronekit.com/features/offline): Processing, detection, measurement and reporting run on your laptop. Nothing calls home.

## Templates

- [Mission templates](https://opendronekit.com/templates): All 22 planner templates.
- [Grid template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/grid): A nadir lawnmower survey of a drawn area, for orthomosaics and elevation models.
- [Double grid template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/double-grid): A cross-hatched survey: the grid flown twice at crossing bearings, for 3D reconstruction of an area.
- [Corridor template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/corridor): Parallel lanes along the long axis of a drawn strip, for roads, rails, pipelines and riverbanks.
- [Solar template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/solar-inspection): Row-aligned passes over a solar array, for RGB or thermal capture.
- [Magnetic template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/magnetic-mapping): Main survey lines plus perpendicular tie lines at constant altitude, for magnetometer surveys.
- [Smart adaptive template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/smart-adaptive): A uniform grid plus a finer, lower, cross-hatched pass over regions that warrant a closer look.
- [Roof inspection template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/roof-inspection): A stop-and-shoot grid over a roof: the aircraft halts at each point to photograph it.
- [Facade template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/facade): Columns and rows of photos across one wall, at stand-off, camera level and facing the wall.
- [Facade mapping template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/facade-mapping): A denser facade capture for photogrammetric 3D models of a wall.
- [Multi-facade template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/multi-facade): A facade pass on every wall of a building, each wall with its own stand-off, heights and spacing.
- [Box template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/box-inspection): A rectangular circuit around a building at stand-off, camera aimed at the building's centre.
- [Tower template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/tower-mapping): Stacked rings around a tower or mast, each ring photographing the section beside it.
- [Wind turbine template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/wind-turbine): Tower, nacelle and both faces of each blade of a parked wind turbine.
- [Dome template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/dome-inspection): Rings that follow a dome's curve, with the camera on the surface normal, for silo caps and domed roofs.
- [Orbit template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/orbit): Circles around a point of interest at one or more heights, camera aimed at the subject.
- [Closed loop template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/closed-loop): Continuous loops around a structure at one or more radii, without stopping at corners.
- [Linear template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/linear-inspection): Captures along a drawn route line, heading locked along it, for pipelines, rail, power lines and rivers.
- [Lateral template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/lateral-capture): Side-on photos of a linear asset from a parallel line at stand-off.
- [Waypoints template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/waypoints): A route through drawn waypoints, with a choice of heading behaviour.
- [Panorama template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/panorama): A hover at one point, rotating to photograph the horizon for a stitched panorama.
- [360 bubble template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/bubble-360): A hover at one point covering the whole sphere below the horizon, for a 360 photo sphere.
- [Linked mission template](https://opendronekit.com/templates/linked-mission): Two or more saved missions joined into one sortie, with planned transitions between them.

## Formats

- [Mission file formats](https://opendronekit.com/formats): The four flight-app formats OpenDroneKit writes.
- [QGroundControl .plan](https://opendronekit.com/formats/qgroundcontrol-plan): JSON mission, geofence and rally points for QGroundControl.
- [ArduPilot .waypoints (QGC WPL 110)](https://opendronekit.com/formats/ardupilot-waypoints): The tab-separated MAVLink mission text format ArduPilot tools read.
- [DJI WPML .kmz](https://opendronekit.com/formats/dji-wpml-kmz): DJI's waypoint markup: a zip holding template.kml and waylines.wpml.
- [Litchi CSV](https://opendronekit.com/formats/litchi-csv): One row per waypoint, 46 columns, imported through Litchi Mission Hub.

## Models

- [Model cards](https://opendronekit.com/models): The four registered defect models.
- [Crack segmentation](https://opendronekit.com/models/crack-segmentation): Binary segmentation: which pixels are crack. Locates crack extent for measurement; it is not a triage model.
- [Corrosion severity](https://opendronekit.com/models/corrosion-severity): Per-pixel ordinal grading of steel corrosion: good, fair, poor or severe. The answer is the argmax of a four-channel softmax, not a binary mask.
- [Solar cell defects (electroluminescence)](https://opendronekit.com/models/solar-cell-defects): Object detection of defects in electroluminescence (EL) images of individual solar cells. It is not an aerial or thermal model.
- [Solar thermal anomalies](https://opendronekit.com/models/solar-thermal-anomalies): Per-module classification of aerial infrared crops of single PV modules into 12 classes. It is not a localiser and cannot find modules in a survey image.

## Docs

- [Documentation](https://opendronekit.com/docs): Repository guides, mirrored.
- [Installation](https://opendronekit.com/docs/installation): Setup, and what each optional dependency costs you if it is missing. ([Markdown](https://opendronekit.com/docs/installation.md))
- [User guide](https://opendronekit.com/docs/user-guide): Plan, fly, process, measure. ([Markdown](https://opendronekit.com/docs/user-guide.md))
- [Pilot guide](https://opendronekit.com/docs/pilot-guide): What preflight checks, what it cannot, and what the software refuses. ([Markdown](https://opendronekit.com/docs/pilot-guide.md))
- [UI guide](https://opendronekit.com/docs/ui-guide): The workspace cockpit: workspaces, dockable panels, shared selection. ([Markdown](https://opendronekit.com/docs/ui-guide.md))
- [Architecture](https://opendronekit.com/docs/architecture): How the layers fit, and the refusal-over-fabrication rule that shapes them. ([Markdown](https://opendronekit.com/docs/architecture.md))
- [API guide](https://opendronekit.com/docs/api-guide): The desktop Api and the HTTP service. ([Markdown](https://opendronekit.com/docs/api-guide.md))
- [Plugin guide](https://opendronekit.com/docs/plugin-guide): Extending the toolkit without forking it. ([Markdown](https://opendronekit.com/docs/plugin-guide.md))
- [Deployment](https://opendronekit.com/docs/deployment): Compose, Helm, storage, and what PostGIS does not yet give you. ([Markdown](https://opendronekit.com/docs/deployment.md))

## Guides

- [DJI thermal R-JPEG to temperature](https://opendronekit.com/guides/dji-thermal-rjpeg-to-temperature): Getting temperatures out of thermal JPEGs.

## Tools

- [GSD calculator](https://opendronekit.com/tools/gsd-calculator): Ground sample distance, footprint and spacing.

## Optional

- [Source code](https://github.com/00PrabalK00/OpenDroneKit): GitHub repository