Dead Reckoning Studio LLC · Highlands Ranch, Colorado
This is the hero section. Every website has one. We were told it's mandatory.We make apps.Some of them are even intentional.
Independent software.Questionable judgment.Surprisingly good results.
For iOS, Android, and the web.
- Trusted by
- the people who built it.
- Tolerated by
- a beta group that is still speaking to us.
- Featured in
- nothing yet. We'll wait.
Carefully designed. Obsessively tested. Released despite our better judgment.
Dead reckoning, plotted
How navigators found their way before GPS: start from your last known fix, hold a heading, and estimate the rest. It works right up until it doesn't.
The Apps
Our latest questionable decision
Public beta · iPhone · Android is "on the list"
AstroCompass
Point your phone at the sky and identify the stars, planets, constellations, and galaxies above you. Live, offline, and without pretending every bright object in the sky is the North Star.
Humanity spent thousands of years studying the night sky. We put it in your phone. On a clear night it can even check its own heading against the real stars, which is more than we can say for most compasses, or most people.
Works offline, because stars have notoriously poor cellular coverage.
astrocompass.app Built from genuine astronomical data, not vibes.
Support for this app: astrocompass.app/support
An app by Dead Reckoning Studio. We're as surprised as you are.
The Studio
The name
Dead reckoning is the oldest way to figure out where you are. Start from a position you trust. Hold a course, keep the time, and you can plot where you must be now. The plot is honest about itself: the longer you go without a fix, the wider the uncertainty grows, and when a new fix arrives you correct without argument.
Where the "dead" in the term comes from is disputed, but it's generally taken to mean working from something stationary, "dead in the water," as the basis for the calculation.
What we do
We build focused apps based on ideas that won't leave us alone. Usually because existing products are too complicated, too expensive, visually offensive, or somehow all three.
We don't have a sprawling campus, a Chief Synergy Officer, or an inspirational mural proclaiming that failure is merely success wearing sweatpants.
We make the app. We try to make it excellent. Then we release it into the wild and hope you don't find the one button we forgot to test.
Behind the questionable commentary is a straightforward philosophy: Software should be useful, understandable, respectful of its users, and enjoyable to use.
You don't really know where you are until you know where you've been.
House rules
- Rule 1
One job. Done properly.
Every app exists to do one thing well. If a feature doesn't serve that one thing, it doesn't get in, no matter how good it looked in the meeting we didn't have.
- Rule 2
Straightforward. On purpose.
No fake countdowns, no "are you sure you want to miss out," no cancel button hidden four screens deep. If we have to trick you into staying, we've already lost.
- Rule 3
The price is on the door
What an app costs is stated before you tap anything. Free means free. Paid means we tell you the number, once, in a normal font.
- Rule 4
You are not the product
We don't sell your information. Period.
We may have an ad here or there… because we have bills to pay. - Rule 5
Bugs regenerate. So do fixes.
Report a bug and a human reads it, usually the one who wrote it. The fix ships with a note that says what went wrong and what we fixed.
- Rule 6
Serious product. Unserious studio.
Each app gets its own personality, from profound to plain to whatever it needs to be. The studio is the one leaning into frame making the observation nobody asked for.
A cookie banner would go here. We don't have cookies.
Support, complaints, fan mail
- Studio
- Dead Reckoning Studio LLC
Highlands Ranch, Colorado, USA - hello@deadreckoningstudio.com
A human reads it. Probably the same human that caused the problem in the first place.
You read the whole thing. Nobody reads the whole thing. Email us. You're clearly our kind of person.