Getting Started

Welcome to the Dronelink Tutorial

These tutorials are intended to be a starting point for learning about Dronelink. They are comprehensive but not exhaustive. There are many other sources of knowledge about Dronelink, including in-app tours, videos, frequently asked questions, forums, and direct support. We highly recommend that you take advantage of these resources to get the most out of Dronelink. Also, be sure to check out Dronelink 101, a five-part video training series:

Core Concepts

It is vital to embrace the core concepts that make Dronelink uniquely powerful, including: Components, Organization, Commands, Collaboration, Debugging, and Exception Handling.

Mission Plans as Code

If you are familiar with software development methodology, these core concepts may sound familiar. In fact, Dronelink borrows many time-tested principles from distributed, open-source software development and platforms like GitHub. The key idea behind this metaphor is that mission plans are like code for drones. Creating quality code is hard, just like creating quality mission plans, and the best ideas are likely to come from outside your local sphere of relationships. Your tooling should embrace this fact and make idea-flow as easy and natural as possible.

At the same time, ideas need a medium of expression, and entire mission plans are often too context-specific to be easily adapted to new environments or use-cases. The context-independent portions of mission plans inevitably get trapped, requiring complex surgery by the original author if there is any hope of reuse. Instead, mission plans should be composed of reusable components right from the start, allowing the components to become the preferred medium of expression.

Entire plans can still be shared, but primarily to serve as examples rather than starting points. This makes understanding components the first and most important lesson in getting started with Dronelink.

Continue to Understanding Components