Watch from anywhere

Publish to the Aircast cloud

First link the drone to your Aircast account: on the Device page, under Cloud account, press Connect. It shows a sign-in page and a code; sign in with Google, approve the drone, and it connects by itself.

Then open Cameras, pick the camera, and open Sharing & recording. Under Watch from anywhere, Connect to cloud publishes that camera. Its Watch page link appears there, and Watch in the cloud on the Cameras page opens the same page. It is a browser watch page at app.aircast.one/live/… that plays over WebRTC, with no Tailscale involved.

The drone only uploads while someone is watching. The section says so as it happens: idle, or how many viewers are watching from the cloud.

Or keep it on your tailnet

Use this when you want the app, telemetry and video on a private network you control, with no traffic through the Aircast cloud. The drone joins your tailnet from the Flasher or the setup wizard, and First flight covers getting your laptop or phone onto it. Tailscale has the per-platform detail.

Once both ends are on the tailnet, open the drone by its tailnet name. The Device home answers the questions worth asking before take-off: is the camera live, is telemetry flowing, and can the drone be reached away from this network. With Tailscale signed in, every link the drone hands out uses its tailnet name.

Ground station links offers the same feed in the forms the rest of your kit wants: an RTSP link for QGroundControl, Mission Planner or VLC, a WebRTC link for a browser or Aircast QGC, each with a QR code that opens it on a phone. The phone has to be signed in to the tailnet too, which is the trade this route makes: everyone who can watch is someone you have already let onto your network.

Hand out the picture, not the device

A share link is one camera and nothing else: no navigation, no settings, no addresses, and no way back into the drone. Someone holding the link can watch that camera and reach nothing else, which is what makes it safe to send to a command post or a commander who should not be inside the Device tab.

Create one under Share links in the camera's Sharing & recording. Fill Who is it for with the person or place receiving it rather than the camera: weeks later that label is the only way to tell which of six links belongs to whom, and therefore which one to revoke. Pick when it Stops working after (4 hours, 1 day, 1 week or 30 days) and press Create link. The page states when each link stops working.

Turn off stops a link opening immediately. It stays listed as spent instead of disappearing, because a link you cannot see is a link you cannot be sure you revoked.

A public link through your own Cloudflare

For a link anyone can open with no login and no VPN, without the Aircast cloud, host a small bridge in your own Cloudflare account. Under Video engine, Public viewer (Cloudflare) walks you through it: Set up public sharing, Deploy to Cloudflare, then paste the Worker URL it gives you. The camera has to publish to Cloudflare Realtime, set under Your own server in its Sharing & recording. Its links then include a Public share link that works for 24 hours.