How it works

From your phone to the whole team.

Five steps. Two of them are yours; the rest happen on their own.

Phone screen: an area outlined on an aerial photo, with the planned flight lines and "1 battery, 3 min, 38 photos".

Step 01

Outline the area

Tap the corners on the map. TakVector plans the flight height, photo overlap and grid lines, and splits big areas across batteries. You see the battery count, flight time and photo count before you fly.

Phone screen: drone connected, 87% battery, 14 satellites, and a green "Fly battery 1" button.

Step 02

Hit Go

With the drone connected you get one button: fly battery 1. The pilot launches each sortie and keeps the drone in sight. That's the job. No sticks, no waypoint editing, no file juggling.

Phone screen mid-flight: "Flying: photo point 7" with Pause and Return home buttons.

Step 03

No stick time

The drone flies the grid on its own and the status line tells you where it is. Pause and Return home are one tap away. Stay on task; glance up.

Phone screen: the area shaded green as mapped, with "Map built, sent to ATAK".

Step 04

Mapped on the phone

When the drone lands, the photos come down to the phone and the map is stitched right there. No laptop, no cloud upload, no signal needed.

Illustration of ATAK on a phone showing the new drone map inside an orange outline.

Step 05

In everyone's ATAK

The finished map goes out to every connected ATAK as a map layer. Teammates use regular ATAK, which is free. One TakVector licence equips the whole squad.

Two ways in

Task it from the app or straight from ATAK.

The TakVector app

Draw, pick the mission type, set height, range or radius with a slider, hit Go. Teammates' positions and the pins they share show up on the same map, with a Fly button next to each.

Straight through ATAK

TakVector runs a "Vector" contact inside ATAK. Send it a shape: a polygon becomes a mapping grid, a line becomes a route scout, a marker becomes an orbit. Reply RGR in chat to fly, if you've turned that on.

Both drive the same engine. A mission started in one shows in the other, and results always land in ATAK.

Mission types

Six ways to task it.

Mission	Draw	What the drone does
Area	Polygon	Flies a mapping grid over the area and builds a stitched map on your phone, then pushes it to ATAK.
Perimeter	Area edge	Flies the outline of an area, inside or outside the line, with the camera looking down, ahead, in or out.
Route	Line	Scouts along a trail or road, following the bends, out to a distance limit, with an optional return the same way.
Look	Point	"Go look at that thing over there." A close photo and a wide photo, straight down, attached to the point.
Orbit	Point or circle	Circles a point of interest and attaches the photos to the marker in ATAK.
Pin	Marker	Drop rally points and markers that every teammate sees, then task the drone on any of them.

Phone screen: an orbit around a point with a radius slider. — Orbit: radius slider, photos attach to the point.

Phone screen: a route scout along a track. — Route: follows the bends, out to a distance limit.

Built for the field

No popups. No nag screens.

Problems get fixed automatically and shown in one status line: too big for one battery gets split, too high gets capped.
Planning and map building run on the phone. Works with no cell signal.
The pilot stays in command: DJI's own preview, and every flight starts with you.
Runs on Android phone, DJI Mini 4 Pro and the DJI RC-N3. Nothing else to carry.

Screens are from the TakVector beta, captured from the app on a PC with a simulated flight; the background is our own drone imagery. The ATAK screen is an illustration.

Beta

Get on the tester list.

10 to 20 testers before we charge anyone. Free through the beta, a discounted first year, and your name in the credits.

You'll need: Android phone, DJI Mini 4 Pro with the DJI RC-N3 controller (or plans to get one), and some time in ATAK.

Join the beta