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Drone Unit Manager

A self-hosted drone fleet management platform for law enforcement, public safety, and enterprise drone programs. Track flights, pilots, certifications, equipment, maintenance, compliance, and more from a single application.

Overview

Drone Unit Manager replaces spreadsheets, AirData subscriptions, and scattered documentation with a unified platform that your organization owns and controls. Import flight data from Skydio's Cloud API, Airdata.com exports, DJI flight logs, Excel spreadsheets, and more. Manage pilot certifications and currency, track equipment maintenance, generate compliance reports, and monitor fleet health — all from a modern web interface accessible on desktop and mobile.

The application runs as a single Docker container with no external dependencies. Your data stays on your infrastructure.

Features

Fleet Management

  • Vehicle, battery, controller, sensor, and attachment tracking
  • Equipment check-in/check-out with chain of custody
  • Component-level tracking (propellers, gimbals, cameras) with flight hours and warranty
  • FAA registration tracking with 2-year renewal calculation and history
  • Equipment merge for deduplicating batteries, sensors, and attachments
  • Battery health trending with historical readings chart
  • Smart equipment dropdowns — type to search or auto-create new Fleet records

Flight Tracking and Telemetry

  • Import flights from Skydio Cloud API, Airdata.com (CSV/JSON/ZIP), DJI .txt, Litchi CSV, or Excel
  • Multi-file import with progress tracking and automatic deduplication
  • GPS flight path visualization on interactive maps
  • Altitude, speed, and battery telemetry charts
  • GPX and KML export for Google Earth and GPS devices
  • AGL altitude calculation from GPS data with bucket-averaged smoothing
  • Per-flight detail with equipment linkage (battery, sensor, attachments, carrier)
  • Automatic pilot matching via email cross-reference
  • Reverse geocoding for takeoff addresses
  • Telemetry sync toggle for supervisors
  • Smart auto-tagging (Night Flight, High Speed, Low Battery, etc.)

Pilot Management

  • Pilot profiles with contact info, badge numbers, photos
  • Certification matrix with customizable cert types and status labels
  • Pilot currency tracking (configurable hours-in-days rules)
  • Performance analytics (flights by month, purpose, training hours)
  • Document attachments per pilot

Pre-Flight Operations

  • Live weather briefing with GO/CAUTION/NO-GO advisory
  • METAR, TAF, and hyperlocal weather from GPS coordinates
  • Configurable weather thresholds per organization
  • Flight plan submission and supervisor approval workflow
  • Customizable pre-flight checklist templates

Compliance and Reporting

  • Compliance dashboard with 0-100 score
  • Expired certifications, registrations, and overdue maintenance tracking
  • PDF reports with organization logo and charts
  • Report types: Flight Summary, Pilot Hours, Equipment Utilization, Pilot Activity Summary, Annual Unit Report, Certifications, Battery Status, Maintenance History
  • CSV export on every page

Maintenance

  • Manual maintenance records with history
  • Recurring schedule system (monthly, quarterly, yearly)
  • Automatic alerts when maintenance is due
  • Linked to specific vehicles, batteries, controllers, or organization-wide

Activity Reports

  • Incident reporting (crashes, near-misses, equipment failures)
  • Success tracking (missing persons found, suspects located, evidence collected)
  • Severity levels, resolution workflow, corrective actions
  • Linked to flights, pilots, and vehicles

Photo Gallery and Document Storage

  • Photo uploads with date grouping and lightbox viewer
  • Batch upload support
  • Folder-based document storage with system folders
  • Documents auto-filed from certifications, maintenance, and profiles

Analytics

  • Interactive Power BI-style cross-filtering
  • Click any chart element to filter all other charts
  • Flights by pilot, year, purpose, and vehicle
  • Flight locations map

Live Airspace (ADS-B)

  • Real-time nearby aircraft map using airplanes.live ADS-B data
  • Click-to-set location with configurable search radius (25-200 miles)
  • Aircraft color-coded by altitude band with auto-refresh
  • Clickable aircraft markers showing callsign, altitude, speed, heading, squawk

Email Notifications

  • Daily/weekly email digest with actionable items
  • Configurable SMTP server with test email
  • Per-user notification preferences (categories, frequency, send time)
  • Digest includes: pending approvals, expiring certs, overdue maintenance, recent incidents

Cross-Reference Navigation

  • Every pilot, vehicle, battery, sensor, attachment, purpose code, and flight ID is a clickable link
  • Navigate between related records with a single click
  • Purpose codes link to filtered flight views
  • Consistent orange link styling throughout the app

API Integrations

  • Skydio Cloud API (flights, vehicles, batteries, controllers, telemetry, users)
  • Multi-platform provider architecture (provider_serial, data_source, extra_data)
  • Airdata.com import (CSV with 52 fields, JSON, bulk ZIP)
  • DJI Go 4, Litchi, and generic CSV flight log import
  • Drone-agnostic architecture for future integrations (DJI, BRINC, Parrot, Autel)
  • Automatic and manual sync with intelligent deduplication
  • Bulk telemetry fetching

Security and Access Control

  • Four roles: Admin, Supervisor, Pilot, Viewer
  • First-run setup wizard (no default credentials)
  • Login rate limiting
  • File upload size limits
  • Activity audit log tracking all changes
  • Path traversal prevention
  • JWT authentication with configurable secret key
  • Password policy enforcement (12+ characters, uppercase, number)
  • File type whitelist validation on all uploads
  • CORS restricted to specific methods and headers
  • Request ID tracking (X-Request-ID header)
  • Settings key whitelist to prevent configuration injection

Quick Start

Docker

docker run -d \
  --name drone-unit-manager \
  -p 3014:8000 \
  -v /path/to/data:/app/data \
  -e TZ=America/Chicago \
  ghcr.io/jongaydos/drone-unit-manager:latest

Open http://localhost:3014 and complete the setup wizard.

Docker Compose

services:
  app:
    image: ghcr.io/jongaydos/drone-unit-manager:latest
    ports:
      - "3014:8000"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/data
    environment:
      - TZ=America/Chicago
    restart: unless-stopped
docker compose up -d

Unraid

  1. Add container from the Community Applications template, or manually:
    • Repository: ghcr.io/jongaydos/drone-unit-manager:latest
    • Port: 3014 -> 8000
    • Path: /mnt/user/appdata/drone-unit-manager -> /app/data
  2. Start the container
  3. Open the WebUI and complete setup

Configuration

Environment Variables

Variable Default Description
PORT 8000 Internal server port
SECRET_KEY Auto-generated JWT signing key. Set for persistent sessions across restarts.
TZ UTC Timezone
ADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD None Not used — setup wizard handles initial account creation

First-Run Setup

On first launch with an empty database, the application displays a setup wizard. Enter your organization name, your name, and create an admin account. No default credentials exist.

Recommended Getting Started Workflow

Follow these steps in order for the best experience:

  1. Initial Setup — Complete the setup wizard to create your admin account and organization
  2. Import Excel Data — If you have existing flight data in Excel spreadsheets, import them first via Settings > Integrations > Flight Log Import. This creates your pilots, vehicles, and flight history in one step. You can also import Airdata CSV/JSON/ZIP or DJI .txt files at this stage.
  3. Set Up Pilot Profiles — Go to the Pilots page and add email addresses to each pilot. This is critical for API sync matching — the system matches API pilots to local profiles by email address.
  4. Connect Skydio API — Now go to Settings > Integrations > Skydio, enter your API credentials, and sync. Because pilots already have email addresses, the sync will automatically match Skydio users to your pilots.
  5. Sync Telemetry — After the initial sync, click "Sync Telemetry (10)" repeatedly to backfill GPS/altitude data for your flights. Each click fetches data for 10 flights.
  6. Configure Settings — Set up weather thresholds, certification types, sidebar layout, email notifications, and any other preferences.

Skydio API Integration

  1. Log into Skydio Cloud at cloud.skydio.com
  2. Go to Settings > Integrations > API Tokens
  3. Create a token with read access to: Flights, Flight Telemetry, Vehicles, Batteries, Controllers, Users, Attachments, Sensor Packages
  4. In Drone Unit Manager, go to Settings > Integrations tab > Skydio
  5. Enter the API Token and Token ID
  6. Click Test Connection, then Sync Now

The sync buttons:

  • Sync Now — Fetches new flights since last sync, plus telemetry for up to 10 flights
  • Full Sync — Fetches all flights, cleans up empty records, plus telemetry
  • Sync Telemetry (10) — Fetches GPS/altitude telemetry data for 10 flights that don't have it yet. Click repeatedly to backfill all flights.

For automatic pilot matching, ensure each pilot's profile has their Skydio account email address before syncing.

Excel Import

The application imports flight data from Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx). Use the Flight Log Import section in Settings > Integrations with Auto-detect format selected.

A sheet named "Skydio" should contain these columns:

Flight ID, Vehicle, Pilot, Local Takeoff Time, Takeoff, Takeoff Address,
Takeoff Latitude, Takeoff Longitude, Land, Duration (seconds), Battery,
Sensor Package, Attachment (TOP), Attachment (BOTTOM), Attachment (LEFT),
Attachment (RIGHT), Carrier(s), Purpose

An optional "Pilot Info" sheet imports pilot profiles and certification data. The import automatically creates pilots and vehicles that don't exist yet.

Airdata Import

Import flights from Airdata.com in multiple formats:

  • Airdata CSV: Single-flight export with 52 data columns (altitude, gimbal, RC inputs, battery temperature, flight mode)
  • Airdata JSON: Single-flight JSON export with channel-based telemetry
  • Airdata ZIP: Bulk export of all flights (ZIP of JSON files)

Upload via Settings > Integrations tab > Flight Log Import. Select multiple files at once using Ctrl+click. Existing flights are automatically deduplicated by flight ID.

DJI and Litchi Import

Import flight logs from DJI Go 4 (.txt files) or Litchi (.csv files). The application auto-detects the format and extracts telemetry data including GPS path, altitude, speed, and battery.

Architecture

  • Backend: Python 3.12, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, SQLite
  • Frontend: React 19, Vite, Tailwind CSS v4, Recharts, Leaflet.js
  • Database: 37+ tables, 250+ API endpoints
  • Telemetry: Separate SQLite database for high-volume flight telemetry
  • Deployment: Single Docker container, multi-stage build

API Documentation

Interactive API documentation is available at /docs (Swagger UI) and /redoc (ReDoc) on your running instance.

Backup and Restore

Backup

# Stop the container first for a clean backup
docker stop drone-unit-manager
cp /path/to/data/drone_unit_manager.db /path/to/backup/
cp /path/to/data/telemetry.db /path/to/backup/
cp -r /path/to/data/uploads /path/to/backup/
docker start drone-unit-manager

Restore

docker stop drone-unit-manager
cp /path/to/backup/drone_unit_manager.db /path/to/data/
cp /path/to/backup/telemetry.db /path/to/data/
cp -r /path/to/backup/uploads /path/to/data/
docker start drone-unit-manager

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

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