Alpha 33 is about the work that happens before the waypoints: drawing the area you actually want to cover. It adds a dedicated Area Editor, a forecast wind layer, and Quick Launch for multi-monitor setups.
Highlights
- Area Editor - a dedicated full-window map for laying out survey areas and corridors. Polygon / rectangle / circle areas, centerline-and-swath corridors, multi-area support, no-fly holes, split, and
grow/shrink by a margin in meters. Objects list to name, recolor, hide, and reorder. - KML / KMZ / GeoJSON import and export - bring in a boundary from a survey or GIS export, edit it, export it back out.
- Live flight briefing - covered area, flight distance and time, batteries needed, GSD, photo count, and approximate data size, using your active vehicle profile. One-tap hectares/acres and meters/feet toggle
that sticks across sessions. - Send to mission - sends every area and corridor to the planner as survey groups, carrying the editor's own survey settings across so what you briefed is what you get.
- Forecast wind overlay - animated wind particles across the map with altitude pills (10/80/120/180 m), a forecast scrubber, and a unit toggle (m/s, kn, mph, km/h). Click any point for a wind rose. Data from
Open-Meteo, no key needed. Available on the telemetry map, mission map, and in the Area Editor. - Quick Launch + windowed tools - pop the Area Editor, MAVLink Inspector, and Telemetry Dashboard into their own windows and drag them to a second monitor.
- Welcome screen - cards that jump straight into the tools that work without a vehicle: mission planning, Area Editor, SITL, flight log analysis, firmware flashing, and the mission library.
Links
- Full write-up: https://ardudeck.com/blog/ardudeck-alpha-33-area-editor/
- Area Editor guide: https://ardudeck.com/docs/Area-Editor/
- Download (Mac, Windows, Linux): https://ardudeck.com
ArduDeck is a free, open-source ArduPilot ground control station that also supports iNav and Betaflight, running natively on macOS, Windows, and Linux.