Hey everyone,
I’m a Computer Science student (gotta fund the next drone somehow!) and I’ve been building a web-based flight management system called FlyingPlan, designed specifically for drone photography and inspection businesses. It’s completely free, open source, and I’m looking for people to test it and give feedback.
It handles the entire job workflow from customer request through to mission delivery. Here’s what it can do:
Your clients fill out a 5-step request form with their details, job brief, location on an interactive map where they can draw flight areas and drop points of interest, flight preferences like altitude, camera angle and resolution, and file attachments. They get a unique reference number when they submit.
You then plan the mission on a map by placing waypoints with individual settings for altitude, speed, heading and gimbal pitch. You can add points of interest for the drone to face during flight. Once the route is planned you can export it as a KMZ mission file that loads straight into the DJI Fly app on a DJI Mini 4 Pro, or preview it in Google Earth Pro.
You can register your pilots with their certifications, Flyer and Operator IDs, insurance documents and equipment details. Assign jobs to them, track their availability, and they can accept or decline orders from their own dashboard.
Before any flight the pilot has to complete a 28-point pre-flight risk assessment that covers site assessment, airspace, weather, equipment checks, pilot fitness using the IMSAFE checklist, permissions and emergency procedures. This is CAA compliant and the system actually blocks the flight from starting until it’s done. It also captures the pilot’s GPS location as proof the assessment was completed on site.
Every job moves through enforced statuses from pending through to closed, with a full activity log creating an audit trail of who did what and when. The system generates professional PDF flight reports with customer details, route maps, risk assessment results and the activity log. Pilots upload their deliverables like photos, videos and documents directly through the platform.
You can also customise it with your own business logo, colours and tagline, configure which job types you offer, and control what appears on the customer form. There are three user roles with proper permissions so pilots only see their own jobs while admins and managers have full access.
It runs on Python and Flask with SQLite so it’s lightweight and easy to set up locally. There’s a demo command that fills the system with realistic sample data so you can explore everything straight away.
You can find it here: https://github.com/AmigoUK/FlyingPlan
Would love to hear from anyone willing to give it a go, especially if you’re running a drone business and can tell me what’s missing or what could work better. All feedback welcome!
Cheers
Tom
