Overview
Drones have become very popular over the last few years and with that, the popularity of drone apps has grown tenfold.
Most manufacturers, like DJI and Autel, have their own flight apps but there are other applications on the market that can aid your drone flight and make the most of your experience.
These drone apps can help you with planning, safety, weather conditions, autonomous flight, and logging to name but a few.
In this short article, we will discuss some of the best drone apps on the market, their purpose, and how to use them efficiently in your workflow.
Drone Apps
We will be looking at six of the best drone apps on the market, these will include apps for:
Operations Planning
Dronedesk is a beautifully simple web application that saves you time and money by enabling you to manage your drone operations efficiently, securely, and compliantly in the cloud.
It's got everything from CRM to detailed flight planning including checklists, risk assessments, NOTAMs, hourly weather, air and ground hazard intelligence, flight logging, and reporting.
Dronedesk makes it simple for users to keep comprehensive records of every aspect of their drone operations, including mission plans, fleet and equipment inventories, and post-flight details.
And because Dronedesk is cloud-based you can access it from any device either in the office or while you're out in the field.
Dronedesk has a 30-day trial available when you sign up on their site:
Elevation and Site Context
The technology behind Google Earth was first developed in the late 1990s and since then it has gone on to be one of the most powerful mapping platforms available.
Google Earth, much like its sister product Google Maps, has a wealth of data embedded, this data can be very useful for planning when it comes to drone operations.
Google Earth enables you to check your planned flying environment before you visit the site and check the elevations of structures to give you guidance on the correct altitude to use.
For further information on how to check elevations using Google Earth please see the following:
From Google Earth, you can also create KML files that you can directly load into the Hammer Hub to help you with planning. For more guidance on KML files please see our post:
Flight Saftey and NFZ Planning
Altitude Angel is the home of unified aerial traffic management and integrate their leading drone safety management software with some of the leading brands on the market.
For drone operators, they have created a tailor-made drone app called Guardian for operators worldwide (they have also developed regional applications for countries including the UK, Netherlands, and Norway)
It provides an interactive map of the sky and is used by hundreds of thousands of drone pilots globally. It allows you to see areas to avoid or in which extreme caution should be exercised, as well as ground hazards that may pose safety, security, or privacy risks when flying your drone.
It also contains a ‘Fly Now’ feature which enables you to share your drone flight location with other app users and the wider drone community, allowing you to avoid other airspace traffic so you can have a safe and enjoyable flight.
Guardian is available on the App Store and Google Play
Weather
UAV Forcast
The app enables you to see an up-to-date weather forecast, GPS satellites, solar activity (Kp), No-Fly Zones, and flight restrictions, all in one convenient tool. Not only available on android and iOS you can also check the latest stats on their website:
The free version shows 24 hours of forecast, a full 7-day forecast requires a subscription.
Uav forecast is available on the App Store and Google Play
Flight Planning
Hammer Missions is a software platform that helps drone professionals and Enterprise UAS programmes collect & analyze high-quality drone data.
This data can then be analysed to detect faults, defects, and anomalies, helping organisations to better manage critical infrastructure assets and take pre-emptive decisions based on generated insights.
Having deployed our software globally, we're quickly moving into a number of different drone verticals with our latest being 3D Mapping with fully rendered 3D results.
Hammer Missions modules include:
Hammer Missions App is available on both iOS and Android with our Hammer Hub being available on any internet-enabled computer.
3D model generated with Hammer Missions
Logging
AirData is the go tool for all your flight logging needs. It's compatible with all the major drone brands and 3rd party drone apps and will effortlessly sync your flight data in the background while you perform your flights.
Included in the AirData package is:
Flight Logbook management
Battery Health Analysis
Sensor maps
Battery Efficiency
Alerts and Notifications
Asset Tracking
In Flight Winds
Control Response
Note some features are only available in the paid subscription. For a full breakdown of features please see:
AirData is available on both the app store and play store and can be accessed on any internet-enabled computer
Conclusion
We hope this guide helps you understand what drone apps are available and why we have chosen these as six of the best drone apps.
If you'd like to learn more about how to capture high-quality data using our drone app and get the most out of your drone flights using our cloud-based platform, please feel free to visit our learning resources.
If you haven't got a Hammer account and would like to try Hammer Missions you can get started on our free trial.
To learn more about our enterprise solutions, including mission collaboration, data processing, and AI solutions, please contact us at team@hammermissions.com.
We look forward to hearing from you.
— Team at Hammer Missions