How to Develop a Drone Control Application?

With the highly dynamic technology industry, there are a lot of smart devices created for business purposes as well as pure entertainment. One of many advances in science and technology that fall under both categories is drones.

Nowadays, people can buy an affordable toy drone for $50 or go for a multifunctional option to film high-quality video content for marketing purposes. Either way, to fully enjoy the benefits of such devices, companies can further digitize the user experience by offering an intuitive control app for their drones.

Plus, drones need to be connected to the app to start using it. You can set up automatic and manual connection processes. With an automatic connection, users get a pop-up notification with a suggestion to connect the drone (one of the most well-known examples is wireless earphones). Otherwise, users should be able to connect it using the in-app guidelines or follow the connection steps wherever you provide them.

As for the Profiles Screen, it’s a suitable place to implement gamification features. You can add customizable profile avatars, achievements (like “Fly 3 km in 1 week ✈️”), in-app coins, friend referring, Social Media integration, etc.

P. S. It’s essential not to overcomplicate things — customers who already feel a little overwhelmed in terms of flawlessly using the drone might feel even more restrained because of the complex authentication system. All in all, user-friendly & secure are your two words for the Sign-Up Screen.

# 2: Home Screen 📊

The Home Screen is a dashboard where users go to access other screens and features. Thus, it firstly should have quick access to all feature flows like account settings (to change the email address, username, or reset the password, for example), drone settings, map & navigator, weather forecast, and other features that we’ll cover in this article.

You can display basic drone metrics like charge and connectivity status. Plus, you might want to add the turn on/off, a connection button, the “Take Off” command, and an estimated flight time. It’s also reasonable to show the remaining storage so users are aware if they have enough space for filming.

It’s actually a good idea to make the contents of the Home Screen customizable: some might want to see a detailed weather description, while others might care about yesterday’s snaps.

If you have additional devices for your drones (like a controller or an amplifier), you can add them to the Home Screen as well.

# 3: Drone Settings 🔨

To change the configuration of the drone beforehand, you can implement the Drone Settings screen, which is practically a tool for users to set up an initial flight or drone parameters that shouldn’t be changed during the flight.

From here, users should be able to set up the initial PID controller parameters for rotation speed setup. However, it’s more useful for freestyle and racing drones since regular users aren’t likely to know what all of these parameters are.

If you have a physical controller, you can add settings for it as well. For example, changing the sticks’ set up — different users prefer different button layouts. For the digital version, you can also make the layout customizable.

It might be a useful idea to add different flight modes. These can be flying in the nighttime, rain, rather strong wind, regime for cloudy days, etc.

# 4: Digital Controller 🎮

Many users prefer controlling their drones using a physical controller and use their phones primarily for drone settings and camera connection. However, a digital controller (aka a touch screen one) still has its supporters, which is why it’s important to add it as well.

Practically, this feature is a way to navigate the drone while flying and change settings on the go. That can be:

• Up/down, right/left controllers.
• Speed.
• Tilt angle.
• Camera zooming functionality.
• Start/stop recording.
• Take snaps.
• Automatic landing & others.

# 5: Map & Navigator 🗺️

For navigating the neighborhood, you can implement a map and a navigator into your app. This can be done via an API (for example, MapBox. This feature might require more or less accuracy depending on your Target Audience, but generally, it’s needed for most drone control apps.

This flow might include features similar to the ones in Google Maps — simply looking for places, building routes, etc. It might be useful to allow pinning certain spots on the map in case users want to memorize the place for some reason. For entertainment or tracking purposes, you can additionally integrate the functionality to record the travel route and save it at the end of the flight in the Previous Flights tab or something like that.

Make sure to use a specialized API — regular Map & Navigator APIs wouldn’t be sufficient when flying the drone since you:

• aren’t on the ground;
• need to take hazardous zones where flying is risky into account;
• might be invading private properties, which can lead to law violations.

# 6: Video & Audio 📹

To enable content recording and taking pictures, you can implement camera functionality (audio recording is optional). Normally, developers use a certain API to connect the app to users’ phone cameras, but here it’s not the case. We have to look for options for connecting the drone camera and your app.

Basically, such a connection can be enabled using either the Wi-Fi connection or separate hardware with a receiver and a cable for connection. We’re not going to go into technical details, but here’s an example of a device that you can build/order.

The functionality of the camera can include:

• Buttons for taking pictures and recording videos.
• Quality settings.
• Changing recording regimes (for example, from daytime to nighttime mode).
• Camera angle settings & others.

So users don’t have to export the filmed content, you can add a video gallery to your app. Surely, the exporting and uploading functionality is a must, but it’s still useful to take a look at pictures and videos straight away.

# 7: Weather Forecasting ☀️

To improve user experience and provide users with everything needed for convenient drone flights, you can integrate weather forecasting. You can do it via various APIs like AccuWeather API, Xweather API, etc.

The functionality varies depending on the API you’ll be using but generally, there’s no need to go extra when implementing it. A simple forecasting feature with a detailed weather description and tips on flying the drone in specific weather should be sufficient.

# 8: Payment Gateway 💲

In case you have an in-app store, a subscription for additional services, or want to accept payments through an app for any other reason, you might need to add Payment Gateway.

Generally speaking, the payment gateway should have several qualities:

• Consistency with different Operating Systems (at least the most recent ones).
• Allowance of several payment methods (credit & debit card, Apple & Google Pay, PayPal).
• High performance with as few transaction delays as possible.
• High-level app security.

We have an article fully dedicated to integrating Payment Gateway for a mobile application if you’d like to learn more about it:

You can combine the following features:

• Complex password.
• Security tokens.
• One-time codes.
• Biometric verification (fingerprints, face ID, voice recognition, retina scans, etc.).
• Email or phone call verification.
• Security questions.

# 2: E2EE (End-to-End Encryption)

Surely, apart from securing access to the application and data storage, you can protect the data itself by encrypting. E2EE is one of the best encryption technologies since it doesn't allow any party, except for the sender and the recipient, to see what information is encrypted.

You probably don’t have to worry about encryption since most cloud storage providers take care of it themselves (unless you want to build your own server) — knowing that it exists is enough. But in case it’s something you’d like to take a closer look at, there’s a great explanatory video below:

We used E2EE as an example. Depending on your specific use case, you might benefit from other encryption types more. It’s something to discuss with your development team or Tech Partner. If you don’t have one yet, feel free to reach out to us. We’ll help you with your questions!

# 3: Device Fingerprinting & Behavioral Analysis

Device fingerprinting is a way of identifying the device that’s accessing the app or connecting to the drone. The technology analyzes a number of device indicators like IP address, operating system, and its version, screen size, etc.

Once any of the indicators changes, the system recognizes the device as unique and sends users an email informing them about a new connection with all the details. This way, they can see if somebody accesses the app or uses the drone without permission.

You can also enable notifications so that users get real-time alerts about any possible hazards, not only security matters. The notifications can practically include anything from “You just recorded a new video” to “Thanks for ordering a new drone via YourApp”. This way, if hackers somehow break the device fingerprinting system, users also can see if there’s any suspicious activity that they didn’t do.

Similar to the device fingerprinting concept, there’s also a way to analyze the user behavior while using your app. You implement it via dedicated software that uses login location, online activity, and touch heatmaps. Practically, the software notifies users about any suspicious activity (aka an action that was never done before and doesn’t match regular behavioral patterns).

# 4: Access Control

It might be useful to add access control features to your app so users can decide who can access the app, without worrying about giving passwords or answers to security sections.

The main idea is that the owner gets an administrator status and can give out access to other people. You can create different levels of access like administrator, co-user, guest, etc. Each level gets specific functions assigned to them.

There are several ways of enabling such a feature in terms of users experience. It can happen via an invitation link, via the Admin Panel where users add people with usage permission, etc. It might be convenient for users if you enable one-time access codes for, well, single-use drone/application control. Meaning that other users who don’t own the drone can download an app and access it for once.

It’s an advanced feature so you might give it a thought before deciding to spend your budget on it — there are much simpler ways for users to give their trusted people access to the app. But still, it’s a great way to stand out and improve the user experience.

Regulatory Compliance

There are quite a lot of rules and tips that **users **should follow to ensure that they’re not violating any data privacy laws or someone else’s privacy in general. However, data privacy regulations are applied when you process personal information in general. So, since you as a drone and/or app provider take part in the data processing flow, there are several regulations you should comply with.

One of the most important and large-scale ones is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Practically, it applies to any individual or vendor that collects or processes data of EU citizens. In the presentation below, you can see 6 GDPR data privacy pillars:

GDPR doesn’t have any specific abstracts or rules for drones, so you simply should follow the general narrative. For example, anything that allows identifying a person or any information about their privacy is considered personal data.

There’s an article on our website where we review GDPR and 2 other regulations (HIPAA and PIPEDA) in detail if you’d like to learn more about it:

They have a physical controller that gets connected to users’ mobiles devices or tablets via a USB cable. Once it happens, the app opens automatically. The app includes a map where users see their current locations and tips on finding runways for drones. You can also check zones that are restricted from flying or those where you require authorization.

There are a lot of in-app tutorials on how to fly, set up the drone, and safety information. Additionally, there’s a gallery where users manage the filmed content, and a user profile screen to access & moderate personal info.

The camera screen allows users to change camera settings, overview the parameters like battery level, GPS signal, photo & video options, gimbal distance to the “Home” tag on the map, etc. Several flying modes that change drones’ maximum speed or how sensitive it is to the controllers can also be changed via this screen.

The settings of their cameras are something that DJI professional drone users and content creators really appreciate. There are multiple modes for shooting and advanced camera parameters (gridlines, histograms, anti-flicker, etc.) accessible for managing in the app directly.

DJI also has something that allows them to stand out — the dedicated social media SkyPixel application. It’s basically an app that unites drone photographers and fans. They can communicate there and post content to create a supportive environment and meet like-minded people.

Generally, it’s a well-developed app with a lot of fascinating functions. But keep in mind that DJI’s products are quite pricey, meaning that users have fairly high expectations. Depending on your target audience, this might not be the case. So, let’s review a completely opposite product that targets people who are just starting to use drones and want to try it out without spending thousands on equipment.

Ryze: Tello App

The application is called Tello App by Ryze Tech and is powered by DJI, which means that the companies are partnered and Tello drones use the same technology as drones of the DJI series. It’s a significantly more affordable drone but a great product that a lot of beginners love to start their drone control journey with.

Affordability lowers the expectations of users, however, it’s still important to provide a functional application that greatly works with the drones and doesn’t have performance troubles. So, let’s take a look at what Tello App offers and if it meets such qualifications.

In fact, the market offers a lot of fascinating apps that can be useful as an addition to your drone control apps. For example, Tesla Field Recorder (not from THE Tesla, unfortunately) helps to detect electromagnetic fields that might make the drone stop receiving control signals. Such an app can help significantly reduce the risk of users getting their drones crashed.

Google Earth is another useful application that has an extremely detailed satellite overview of the whole planet, including train lines, roads, stadiums, etc. Your customers can use it to plan their flights, pin places they want to fly to/at, and save maps as photos for sharing purposes.

By the way, it’s better to install the app than use the browser version — because of how bandwidth-consuming it is, the app lags when using a browser sometimes.

❓ FAQs on Drone Software Development

When building an app, each specific use case and background differences make it almost impossible to find answers to all of the questions without personal communication and a deep analysis of the case. However, in this section, we’ll try to answer a couple of generic questions that you might already have in mind.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions regarding your specific case, we’ll be more than happy to help!

I already Have an App: Does it Make any Difference?

In case you already have an app with decent performance (maybe, it’s a PoC or MVP), it is possible to make use of it. There are several ways how having an app before starting the development benefits you.

First of all, it highly depends on the framework you used to build the app and what the new app will be based on. If they’re different, the chances of the codebase being suitable for reuse are lower. However, there are cross-platform frameworks like React Native that allow building web & mobile applications at the same time by reusing big chunks of the code.

But honestly, it’s oftentimes better to rewrite the app from scratch. The thing is that normally people spend more time and budget on trying to fix something than on making it anew. Finding problems in a code might be extremely time-consuming, especially if you change development teams and/or don’t have well-structured development documentation.

But even if you won’t directly reuse the code, it’s still a useful thing to have since you better understand your needs and maybe, what your customers expect to see in your app. It can reduce development time and save you costs that you might potentially spend on fixing the technical debt.

Surely, it’s always up to you to decide! The best decision is to talk about your wishes to your technical partners or development team and find a solution that satisfies both your personal preferences and development requirements.

Where to Store the Data from the App?

Another question is where to store data that users generate while using the drone (for example, created content). There are 2 main options for how you can structure the data storage flow.