Drone software development
- Team extention
- Orthomosaic stitching
- Client and organization structure
- App for drone pilots
- Rebranding

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.

since february 2018 –
ongoing
USA
drone
real estate
- 4 full-stack developers
- 1 Java developer
- 4 UI/UX designers
- 2 manual QA
- 2 automation QA
-
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.

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:

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.

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

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.


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.
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.
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


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:



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.
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.

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

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.
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.

technology stack
Backend
Ruby on Rails Ruby AWS EC2 Elastic Search Sidekiq AWS S3 HerokuFrontend
Ajax Ember GeoJSON KRPano React.jsOther
Aasm (eventmachine) Exiftool Sendgrid Electron


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.
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Tools

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.

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.

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Pavel Nahorski VP of Business Development
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