Kite Ground Control — Public Beta 1 (v1.0.0-b1)

[b14ckyy]

The first public beta of Kite Ground Control — a modern, cross-platform ground control station for
INAV, ArduPilot and PX4 aircraft: planes, flying wings, VTOL, multirotors, helicopters,
rovers and boats.

Important

This is a beta release. Kite is feature-complete and usable day to day, but you may encounter rough
edges. Please do not rely on it as your only ground station for safety-critical flights yet, and report
anything you find (see Feedback below) — your reports will shape the 1.0 release.

Highlights

One ground station for three flight stacks — INAV (MSP), ArduPilot and PX4 (MAVLink) — plus a passive,
listen-only telemetry mode and a relay that re-broadcasts to other ground stations.

• 3D flight view — a CesiumJS globe with real terrain, your track and mission in 3D, an FPV cockpit
  camera and live day/night lighting, with seamless 2D/3D switching.
• Live telemetry and HUD — attitude, altitude, speed (including airspeed), a compass with wind and
  ground-track indicators, sensor and EKF health, and link statistics, in a customisable, dockable
  widget dashboard.
• Mission planning — for INAV and ArduPilot/PX4, with map-based editing, multi-mission (INAV), a
  survey-pattern generator, AGL/terrain-following waypoints, and full undo/redo.
• Flight logbook — automatic recording with replay, plus import of INAV Blackbox, ArduPilot
  DataFlash, MAVLink .tlog and raw-MSP logs into one searchable history.
• Fleet, battery and mission managers — reusable libraries, all linked to the flight log.
• Safety suite — geozones (INAV), geofence (ArduPilot/PX4), safe-home and fixed-wing autoland,
  airspace overlays, and foreign-vehicle radar with ADS-B proximity and conflict alerts.
• Additional tools — GCS vehicle control (MAVLink), RC control via HID gamepad/joystick, low-latency
  RTSP video, telemetry relay, and RF link analysis.
• Cross-platform — Windows and Linux; interface in English, German and French.

Installation

Download the build for your platform from the Assets below.

• Windows: ..._x64-setup.exe (the NSIS installer). WebView2 is included with Windows 10 and 11.
• Linux (x86-64): .deb, .rpm, or the portable .AppImage. For Blackbox import, INAV's
  blackbox_decode must be available on PATH or alongside the binary (optional — all other features
  work without it).
• Portable (Windows & Linux): the standalone executable (kite-gc.exe / kite-gc) can run from any
  folder without installing. Place an empty file named .portable next to it, and Kite keeps all of its
  data — database, settings, logs and terrain cache — in a data/ folder beside the executable instead
  of the system user-data location. Ideal for a USB stick or a self-contained setup.

Known issues

This is an early public beta; the following are known and being worked on:

• 3D models are a work in progress. The 3D models for aircraft and ADS-B contacts are due for an
  overhaul — some may render as unclear or incorrect shapes.
• PX4 support is largely untested. The PX4 path is implemented but has had little real-world testing.
  Use it with caution and please report any issues you run into.
• RC control has only been bench-tested. GCS RC control has been verified via HITL/SITL on INAV and
  ArduPilot without issues, but not in flight on real hardware. Be very careful and read the
  RC control documentation before using it.
• RF link analysis is preliminary. The radio-link / line-of-sight analysis is functional, but its
  map representation is still rough and due for a rework.

Documentation

Guides, getting started and reference material: https://b14ckyy.github.io/Kite-GC/

Feedback

Please report bugs and ideas at https://github.com/b14ckyy/Kite-GC/issues. The in-app diagnostics log
(Settings → Diagnostics) and your operating system, autopilot and firmware versions are very helpful.

Support

Kite Ground Control is free, open-source software developed in my spare time. If you find it useful, a
donation toward its continued development is greatly appreciated: https://paypal.me/b14ckyy

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GPL-3.0-or-later · © 2026 Marc Hoffmann (b14ckyy)

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This discussion was created from the release Kite Ground Control — Public Beta 1 (v1.0.0-b1).