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Zeitview

Drone software development

  • Team extention
  • Orthomosaic stitching
  • Client and organization structure
  • App for drone pilots
  • Rebranding
Volvo screen
about

Zeitview, previously known as DroneBase, is a leading drone software development company with headquarters in California, USA.

The company uses operated aircraft (drones) and offers clients relevant inspection solutions with aerial images and videos for sustainable infrastructure (solar power plants, wind farms), commercial real estate, insurance, property management, and construction.

Rubyroid Labs helped the company develop its startup in 2018. Since then, we have been taking part in maintaining this ongoing project and helping with rebranding the company in 2023.

about DroneBase
duration

since february 2018 –
ongoing

location

USA

industry

drone

real estate

team
  • 4 full-stack developers
  • 1 Java developer
  • 4 UI/UX designers
  • 2 manual QA
  • 2 automation QA
results
  • 50%

    admin dashboard speed improvement

  • 2X

    development speed growth

  • 15%

    reduction of drone pilots’ manual work

keeping constant product growth

The client realized that they needed to implement new features quickly and regularly to be at the top of the industry.

Their main issue was the performance of the in-house development team since it was not large enough to complete the huge backlog of tasks that needed to be done. At this point, the founders of Drone Base came to Rubyroid Labs.

DroneBase product growth image
features

implementing new features and opening opportunity to serve more organizations

With the client’s team and their CTO, our developers were provided with many features in the product pipeline and started the drone control application development.

As a result of scrupulous work, the developers built the following solutions:

DroneBase features image
feature 1

orthomosaic stitching

We work with a system that passes images from drone pilots to the customers and offers their post-processing. We glue them into a panorama or compose them into an orthomosaic image. This allows for the superimposing of pictures on the map.

DroneBase features image
feature 2

client analytics page

We developed the customer’s personal page to view orders analytics: the total number of orders, mission completion time, statistics, etc.

DroneBase features image
feature 3

organization structure

Our team added the structure of organizations and corporate instances. Now, customers in one organization can access custom packages. An owner has access to all organization orders and statistics.

DroneBase features image DroneBase features image
feature 4

direct admin support

If one customer experiences problems, it’s possible to create a temporary private session with the admin. Admins are logged in via the current user and able to see the problem. This provides support in a much more effective way.

feature 5

app for drone pilots

We created an app for pilots that let them add photos to the system offline. Also, these photos are automatically categorized.

feature 6

esri integration

We created an integration of Zeitview with the ESRI company (the ArcGIbS system). Thanks to an independent layer on the customer's map, which shows the photos for the orders, a user receives an email with a direct link to the updated layers

DroneBase features image
DroneBase features image
rebranding

In 2022, the DroneBase team, along with our development team, started the rebranding process and the project’s system update to expand their inspection solutions across renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure services and keep the codebase secured.

On February 7, 2023, the company launched the new brand, Zeitview, in live production.

The work of our team included:

DroneBase rebranding image DroneBase rebranding image DroneBase rebranding image
stage 1

rebranding

Our UX/UI designers created a new design system that consisted of a different, unified corporate style and its components for the entire platform, such as buttons, inputs, and dropdowns.

stage 2

system upgrade

We advanced Rails from version 5 to version 7. To make the transition correctly, we needed to elevate the system from version 5 to version 6 first, and then upgrade from version 6 to version 7.

DroneBase rebranding image
stage 3

Stripe international accounts creation and support

Our developers created multiple legal entities for Stripe to provide the client with multi-country payment processing capabilities. Apart from the existing USA account, we added the Germany, UK, India, and Canada regions.

stage 4

Salesforce integration

We took part in Salesforce integration by transferring data to Salesforce, such as information about customers, leads, sales opportunities, and more

DroneBase rebranding image
stage 5

migration from Ember.js to React.js

The main web application was built with the Ember.js frontend framework, which had become old and difficult to maintain. Therefore, we decided to gradually rewrite it using the more popular React.js library. Our team is also participating in this process.

stage 6

cross-platform desktop app development

Our developers take part in creating and maintaining a cross-platform desktop app called Pilot Uploader, built with Electron. The app simplifies the process of uploading, inspecting, sorting, and synchronizing various images and videos with the company's backend system.

DroneBase rebranding image

technology stack

backend icon
Backend
Ruby on Rails Ruby AWS EC2 Elastic Search Sidekiq AWS S3 Heroku
frontend icon
Frontend
Ajax Ember GeoJSON KRPano React.js
other icon
Other
Aasm (eventmachine) Exiftool Sendgrid Electron
DroneBase technology stack DroneBase integration DroneBase technology stack

communication

  • Meetings

    The team has two-week sprints and daily stand-ups to discuss progress, plans, and questions. At the end of each sprint, they have a demo session. Also, there are quarterly meetings to estimate tasks in detail.

    Although the part of the team is based in California, our team operates from Poland. To facilitate effective communication, we have established overlapping hours of 4-5 hours each day. This ensures seamless collaboration between both teams.

  • Tools
    • Jira icon
    • Redmine icon
    • Google Hangouts icon
    • Slack icon
Volvo communication

result

Zeitview is an ongoing project where the Rubyroid Labs team has been actively involved for 6 years. Our developers are an integral part of the team, continuously working to enhance the product. Many of our developers have been with the project since its inception, which adds invaluable continuity and expertise. We consistently improve existing functionality, introduce new features, and maintain the legacy code.

Additionally, we hold clean-up sprints four times a year to address technical debt. This practice ensures that our client always benefits from clean, secure, and maintainable code.

DroneBase result

The most impressive factor about Rubyroid Labs has been how excited the team is to work with us. Their enthusiasm has been much appreciated as Rubyroid Labs has helped us build the company.

Dina Malik, Founder Yellow Store Tomas Becklin, CTO Drone Base, USA

estimate your project

Pavel Nahorski, VP of Business Development

Pavel Nahorski VP of Business Development

Rating of Rubyroid Labs 5.0
based on reviews of 47 customers