The Blueye App, now on Windows
For years, controlling a Blueye drone meant reaching for a phone or tablet. With the Windows release, you can do it from the computer that is often already on the quay, in the survey van, or on the bridge. Install the Blueye App on a Windows laptop or desktop, connect to the drone's Wi-Fi, and you are diving — with the same live video, telemetry, and controls you know from iOS and Android.
This is the full Blueye App, not a cut-down companion. Everything you can do on a phone or tablet, you can do on Windows: stream and record live video, read live telemetry, plan and run semi-autonomous waypoint missions, view multibeam sonar, generate inspection reports, update your drone's Blunux software, and sync your dives to Blueye Cloud. And because it runs on a desktop operating system, it sits naturally alongside the other tools in your workflow — photo and video editing software, GIS applications such as QGIS, and your reporting tools, all on one machine. A desktop also makes it easier to manage the large media files an inspection produces and to upload footage, photos, and reports into the enterprise systems your organization already relies on.
From file transfer to a full desktop app
The desktop is not new territory for us. For years, customers who wanted to off-load and post-process data on a computer used the Blueye File Transfer app — a specialized app that did one job: copy photos and videos off the drone. When we launched the Blunux Web App earlier this year, it took over that job — browser-based access to media, files, dive logs, and drone diagnostics, with nothing to install — and the Blueye File Transfer app was retired.
The Blunux Web App handles data access beautifully, but some customers told us they missed having a dedicated desktop application — and, more to the point, they wanted to do more than move files around. They wanted to operate the drone from a computer. The Blueye App for Windows answers both needs: it brings back a true desktop experience and goes far beyond file transfer, putting the complete Blueye toolset on your PC.
Software on more platforms than ever
The Blueye App is the centerpiece, but it is part of a wider software ecosystem — the lightweight Blueye Observer app for shared viewing, the browser-based Blunux Web App for data access, and the Blueye SDK for research and custom integrations. Here is where each of them runs today:
| iOS | Android | macOS | Windows | Linux | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blueye App | |||||
| Blueye Observer App | |||||
| Blunux Web App | |||||
| Blueye SDK |
The same app also scales across form factors — from a phone in your pocket, to a rugged tablet in the field, to a large-screen laptop or desktop in the office, to a mixed-reality headset that becomes a virtual control center as large as you like:
Your choice of platform
Our decision to build on standard operating systems, rather than proprietary single-purpose hardware, has always been deliberate. It lets our customers choose the platform that best fits the job and the organization — Apple or Android, phone or tablet, headset or, now, a Windows PC — and take advantage of the latest hardware innovations as device makers ship them. It also means the Blueye App can be part of a complete digital workflow instead of a closed island.
Combined with continuous, free software updates to both the apps and the drone itself, this is how the value of a Blueye drone keeps growing over time. The Blueye App and software now run on more platforms and device types than at any point in our history — and Windows is the newest of them.
Try the Windows public beta
The Blueye App for Windows is available now as a public beta. We are putting it in our customers' hands early, because real-world feedback is what makes it better. We would love to hear how it performs on your machines and in your operations.
Download it from the Microsoft Store, and use support@blueye.no to tell us what works well, and what you would like to improve. Contact us if you would like to learn more or book a demo.
