UAV Overhead

What it is

A pilot plugs a Betaflight quad into a USB port, opens the site in Chrome or Edge, and gets told in plain English why it won't arm. The check reads arming flags, pack voltage, cell count, and level straight from the flight controller in the browser. Nothing is uploaded unless the pilot saves it, and nothing on the drone is ever written.

Around that sits the community: a map of flight spots, forums and a laws Q&A, a "Can I fly here now?" pre-flight card that checks TFRs, LAANC, controlled airspace, wind, Kp and daylight for a place and an hour, and a marketplace for commercial services. The fleet side imports Betaflight backups and EdgeTX logs, audits every drone against one switch layout, and tracks battery packs by cycle count and sag.

Underneath: Next.js 16 on Postgres with hand-written SQL, Auth.js credentials login with two-factor, a numbered migration ledger that refuses to run if an applied file's checksum changed, and a test suite that stands up a throwaway Postgres 17 from node_modules so no run can ever touch real data.

“Never write to the drone. No save, no set, no MSP set/calibrate commands. Only an allowlist of read commands can be sent. That is enforced in code and covered by tests.”Drone Health Check design spec

The parts that were hard

• Talking MSP and the Betaflight CLI over Web Serial from a browser tab, with a read-only command allowlist enforced in code and covered by tests — the one side effect is a restart, and the pilot is told before it happens
• All protocol code is pure TypeScript over a serial-link interface, so it is unit-tested against a fake link with no drone and no browser
• Signed race results from RGB Rings timing Pis — Ed25519 request signing, pilot link codes, and venue approval before anything is published
• A migration runner that records each file's sha256 and stops before applying anything if history has been edited
• Parsing Betaflight config dumps and EdgeTX flight logs into an audit catalogue that can say what is wrong and link the fix