Free tools
Free Tools for Drone Pilots
Less time in the office. More time in the air. Our flight team kept writing the same throwaway scripts for the tedious half of commercial drone work, so we built them properly and put them somewhere anyone can use them.
tools.acrewatch.com
No account, no upload, no email wall. Whoever you fly for.
The toolbox
Five jobs that used to eat an evening
Each one runs in the browser and hands the file straight back to you.
KML to FlightHub 2 Route
Turn field boundaries, corridor lines, or points from one KML or KMZ, or a whole batch at once, into DJI WPML route files you import straight into FlightHub 2 or Pilot 2. Set overlap, altitude, and aircraft before you export.
Instead of rebuilding a mission by hand for every field.
Open KML to FlightHub 2 RouteKML to Shapefile
Convert one KML or KMZ, or many at once, into zipped ESRI shapefiles (.shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj) ready for John Deere Operations Center, Climate FieldView, QGIS, or ArcGIS. Holes, attributes, and acreage all survive the trip.
Instead of opening QGIS to convert one file.
Open KML to ShapefilePhoto Coverage Check
Drop a mapping flight's photos in before you pack up and see where every shot was taken, the front and side overlap you actually flew, the ALT range, and red boxes anywhere the data may be thin. Download the concerns as KML to plan a re-flight.
Instead of finding the hole in the orthomosaic back at the office.
Open Photo Coverage CheckSpray Prescription Maps
Load the ortho you flew, draw a zone around each patch of weeds, then set a rate for every zone and for the rest of the field. Downloads in each platform's own layout for John Deere, DJI Agras, XAG, EAVision, Hylio, and Ceres Air, as a spot-spray or a variable-rate job.
Instead of spraying a whole field to deal with a few patches.
Open Spray Prescription MapsDraw a Field Boundary
Draw a boundary straight onto satellite imagery or your own drone ortho, cut out the holes, name each field, and watch the acreage total as you go. Download it as KML, KMZ, or a shapefile.
Instead of walking the field with a GPS or guessing from a plat map.
Open Draw a Field BoundaryWhy they are free
A pilot who can hand over clean files is a pilot growers keep hiring
Every one of these started as something we needed on our own missions. Giving them away costs us nothing and raises the floor for everybody flying commercially.
Nothing leaves your computer
Files are read and converted in your browser. There is no upload, no account, and no copy kept anywhere, including by us. The one exception is the coverage check's AGL lookup, which sends photo positions rounded to about 30 metres to a public elevation service to find the ground height; nothing else, and no photo, goes anywhere.
Built from real jobs
Every tool started as something an AcreWatch pilot needed on a mission. If it saves us time in the field, it goes on the site.
Free, no strings
No trial, no watermark, no email wall. Use it as often as you like, on as many jobs as you like, whoever you fly for.
Your flight data is your business
These run in the browser, so your files never reach a server of ours. Your photos do not either: the coverage check reads the first 256 KB of each one, where the metadata sits, and leaves the rest alone. The same holds on asapplied.acrewatch.com, where uploads are processed in memory and deleted after 30 minutes. That applies whether or not you have ever flown a job with us, including if you compete with us.
Also free: as-applied maps
Spray, seeding, and spreader flight data turned into as-applied maps for John Deere Operations Center. DJI Agras, XAG, Hylio, or any drone that exports a flight track.
As-Applied MapsMissing a tool?
If some file format or mission-prep chore eats your evenings, tell us what it is. Enough of these started as one pilot's complaint that it is worth asking.
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