MAVsphere: browser-based shared access for ArduPilot rovers/boats — looking for early evaluators

ArduRover Miscellaneous
1

TL;DR: I’m looking for UK/Europe ArduPilot rover or boat owners to try MAVsphere and tell me whether it feels useful, fun, safe, and easy enough to use: browser-based video, telemetry, multiple viewers, and controlled handoff to one remote driver at a time — without VPN, remote desktop, or exposing your local network.

Hi all,

I’m Michael, the developer of MAVsphere. I’m building a managed browser-based access layer for ArduPilot rover and boat sessions, and I’m looking for early evaluators who can try it, challenge the assumptions, and tell me whether it feels useful, fun, safe, and practical.

The idea is to let an owner/operator experiment with controlled access to their own vehicle: live browser video, telemetry, multiple viewers, and the ability to let a trusted friend, local RC group member, or invited evaluator request control for a session.

This is not a VPN, remote desktop, or “open a port to your vehicle” approach. The longer-term aim is proper cloud-managed public or semi-public access: a vehicle owner brings a rover or boat online through a local agent, decides who can view or request control, and keeps authority over the session without exposing their local network. The platform manages identity, permissions, viewer/control separation, session ownership, and auditability.

The aim is not unrestricted remote control. The owner remains in primary control. Only one remote user can hold control at a time, while multiple viewers can watch the live session. Control can be revoked, and the owner can remain in control locally through their normal transmitter or GCS. Changing out of the expected control mode ends the remote control session.

At a high level, the system uses a lightweight local agent running alongside the ArduPilot setup — for example on a companion computer, local machine, or ground-station-side computer. The agent connects MAVLink, telemetry, and camera/video into a browser-based session. Authorised users can view the live stream and, where appropriate, request control.

For the evaluation, remote control is focused on rovers and boats only.

Aircraft/drone remote control is not open during this phase because of the regulatory and safety implications of aircraft operation. Video and telemetry-only viewing is possible, but control is restricted to rovers and boats for now.

For rover/boat control, I’m deliberately keeping the model conservative: one active remote controller at a time, owner/operator override via transmitter, GCS, or mode change, session termination if the vehicle leaves the expected control mode, and an edge-side dead-man failsafe if the remote session stops communicating.

The areas I’d particularly value feedback on are:

  • whether the setup feels clear enough for a rover/boat owner

  • whether the viewer/control handoff model feels useful

  • whether controlled sharing with friends, local RC groups, invited users, or eventually public-access participants feels useful and safe

  • whether the owner override model feels understandable and reassuring

  • latency expectations for browser-based video/control

  • useful hobby, education, inspection, research, remote driving, tourism, public-demo, or shared-experience opportunities I may not have considered

  • anything that would make you hesitate to try it

This is currently an early evaluation, not a polished product launch. Evaluation access is free, but currently limited to the UK and Europe while I work through insurance, jurisdiction, and operational constraints. Test users are given invite access that bypasses the payment flow entirely. The current evaluation infrastructure is hosted in London, so UK and western Europe feedback will be most useful for latency testing.

I’m a solo developer building this alongside full-time work, so I’m especially interested in honest feedback before widening access. I’m onboarding evaluators in small batches so I can give each setup proper attention.

If anyone here has an ArduPilot rover or boat and would be interested in trying it with their own vehicle, or would like to see a scheduled demo first, you can request an invite at:

https://mavsphere.com

You can also message me here if you would prefer to discuss the setup first.

If this is the wrong category, I’m happy to move the discussion. I’d also welcome any pointers on prior art, existing community expectations, or safety concerns around this kind of managed remote-access model.

Michael

1 Like
2

Hello,

This could be a good idea, but I won’t pay for something that could be done in a non obscure way using a blob agent.

Btw you are leaking your prompt and some of your fileq in your js code … it doesn’t bring trust on what you are building …

2 Likes
3

Thanks for flagging it — you were right to call that out.

The MapTiler key is a browser-side map tile key, so it is expected to appear in the frontend bundle, but it should have been domain-restricted from the start. I’ve now restricted it to mavsphere.com and will rotate it as well, so it can’t be used elsewhere. That was an oversight and I appreciate you spotting it.

On the “blob agent” point — fair challenge. MAVsphere is not meant to claim that remote rover access is impossible to build yourself. The value I’m trying to add is the managed layer around it: identity, session management, viewer/control separation, owner override, one active controller at a time, auditability, and access without the owner needing to expose their network, run VPNs, or manage infrastructure.

For someone technical who is happy self-hosting, MAVsphere may not be the right fit. For owners who want to safely share access with friends, clubs, students, customers, or the public without becoming infrastructure admins, I think there may be value.

I’m still at the early evaluation stage, so feedback like this is genuinely useful.

4

If you are going to develop this solely using AI and then feed every forum response into an AI agent and paste the response, I’m afraid this probably won’t go well. No one wants to talk with a robot about generated code.

3 Likes
5

Fair point Yuri, that’s on me.
I use AI a lot, for code and for wording things, and I pasted a cleaned up generated reply which I shouldn’t have. Sorry.
Since khancyr’s post I’ve checked a few things. The MapTiler key was in the bundle without domain restrictions which was an oversight, fixed and rotated. On Turnstile I can only see the public site key in the bundle, not the secret so hopefuly ok there.
Re the prompt/file thing I still need to properly check - some text is certainly there intentionally.
The agent being a blob is fair criticism too. I’m thinking about opening the source. I have some failsafe behaviour in the agent so I wanted to think through the implications of opening it. That said, signing builds is probably the right answer, then I’d at least know if a modified agent was being used

Started this as a home project after playing with ArduPilot. Not claiming anyone couldn’t build it themselves, just wondering if there’s a market for people who don’t want to deal with self hosting and VPNs. Allows access by the public without any setup just login to a UI.

My intention is certainly not to rub anyone up the wrong way and just explore the feasibility of idea.