Back to: Micro Drones
Potensic is a drone manufacturer that I have only recently heard of but they have been around since 2014. In December of 2022 I was able to get a good deal on their Atom SE drone so I ordered it. The specs seemed promising and at 245 grams it classifies as a micro drone in Canada. I was not disappointed at all. Despite the occasional challenges, this is a fantastic drone and it’s a lot of fun flying it.
The one thing that was missing for me was the ability to review my flight logs. The Potensic app on the mobile device keeps a log of all flights – despite on occasion I have seen some get lost. You can push those logs to the cloud if Potensic asks for them in case they are troubleshooting something for you, or you can email them to yourself. I have made a habit of keeping all those log files, however the files themselves are in a binary format, for which there are no specs or documentation available.
After spending some time analyzing those log files I was able to make some sense of them and discover some key metrics that were captured, despite there is still a lot of information in there that I haven’t been able to identify yet.
In order to read the data, visualize it, and save it into a CSV (Excel) format, I made a simple Flight Data Viewer program.
If you just want to download the binary for Windows or MacOS (x64), you can go straight to the Releases page, then under “Assets” pick the proper zip file for your platform, for instance extractFlightData_macos_x64_v0.3.0-alpha.zip for MacOS (x64) or extractFlightData_win64_v0.3.0-alpha.zip for Windows. Extract the zip file and then run the .exe (Windows) or .app (MacOS) by double clicking it.
As of v0.5.0-alpha, the Windows bundle comes with an installer so you would install the software as you would any other program.
On MacOS you can move the .app to the Applications, although this is entirely optional. Either you drag it in the Finder or in a terminal move it as follows:
mv extractFlightData.app /Applications/
Depending on your OS settings and version, you may see warnings because you downloaded an app from the Internet or it hasn’t been signed, etc. That is to be expected.
If you’re a developer or you want to run this app on a different platform, you can download Python and then run the source file directly, for instance:
python3 extractFlightData.py
Feel free to provide feedback or suggestions, or contribute in the github project.
Back to: Micro Drones
Hi – I was looking for this tool for the exact reason you developed it. After downloading, Windows (11) Defender reported:
extractFlightData_win64_v0.4.0-alpha.zipFailed – Virus detected
https://objects.githubusercontent.com/github-production-release-asset-2e65be/62810…
And I was unable to proceed.
This is a false positive detection and is a known issue that seems to come up often around Python programs that are bundled into one large executable file. I will have to look at some different ways to bundle the code so that Windows Defender stops being a pest. I could have the code signed by Microsoft but that comes at a cost that I’m not willing to spend.
Some references:
https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/issues/6754
https://medium.com/@markhank/how-to-stop-your-python-programs-being-seen-as-malware-bfd7eb407a7
A newer release is available. The Windows based binaries have been bundled differently and can now be installed through a more traditional “install.exe” process. Hopefully this will take care of the false virus detection that comes from the embedded Python bootloader.
Hello!
First I’d like to thank you for your amazing work here. I just recently got the new ATOM and have been trying to figure out how the F### do I view the flight logs that are conveniently saved after each flight each with an option to save the file? They must have thought the user would be able to utilize the logs since it’s save-able and share-able.
It’s kinda crazy that so far you seem to be the only person able to figure it out and it took building a whole program. Potensic should really get with you and help you with figuring out all the information and should back you as there personal flight log viewer. I mean they have to know that their new ATOM at a price of only 299 for a standard drone, battery, and controller pkg and 399 for 2extra batteries and some accessories, that there largest market and audience are new flyers, and if they ever plan to truly hold the spot as the best direct budget option to DJI they need to start making things like this easier for the consumers. Most individuals won’t be able to figure out how to get this running on their pc even though you have done an amazing job at making it actually fairly simple. The fact that you have to go through github and have some since of coding will deter anyone from even trying. Hell I only found this from using ChatGPT Plus to search the web for any way possible to view the Potensic ATOM Flight Logs, you were the first thing it listed and the only one I’ve gotten to work!
Not sure if you are still active in trying to decode the entire flight log files or not but if so I’d be happy to help and assist with anything I can, though i really don’t know what you even did to gather the information you have already but I have tons of logs, a bunch of which are Launched, flown, and landed from the same locations ( My back and front yard lol) if you need a bunch of similar logs. I can also try to do certain things differently for each flight to possibly show similarities or changes from others which could Identify the binary configuration that changes and matching to whatever it was that was purposely changed.
I do hope to hear back from you, If not I still appreciate your efforts and work which now lets me see a large portion of the logs.
Thanks for your feedback! It certainly is a bit annoying that there are no real apps or tools available to review the Atom log data, but at the same time I can understand. Based on the limited information I can find about Potensic, it is not a large company and while their Atom and Atom SE are definitely great products, they certainly are peanuts compared to the main player in the market, which is DJI. I am assuming that Potensic is mainly focused on perfecting and selling their Atom drones and providing customer support that they simply don’t have enough bandwidth to do much else, such as building fancy log viewers. I did reach out to them before, regarding their log files, but they never responded. I did once have a problem with my drone and they asked for my logs files and were able to respond to me with an answer. So I always wondered what kind of things are in those files, which is why I started looking at them myself. While I was only able to identify some major metrics, I know for a fact that there is a lot more in there but reverse engineering takes time, unless you’re the cool hacker in a TV show or blockbuster movie, then it only takes 10 seconds. I don’t always have much time to keep going back to this log format and for my own purposes I already identified most of the metrics I care about, although other things that I am guessing are in there are battery levels, power consumption, voltages, wind direction, drone orientation, wind speed, roll, pitch, yaw, speeds for each set of blades, etc. While all those metrics are certainly interesting, probably most people don’t care (too) much about those although I am still hopeful to identify those fields at some point, unless someone beats me to it, which is also why I am sharing my source code so everyone can see and perhaps feel compelled to explore for themselves. Part of reverse engineering these logs involves taking many very short flights with the drone where you do very specific manoeuvres or actions, then analyze the log files and look for patterns that sort of correlate with the things you just did during the flight. Visualizing the data certainly helps in looking for patterns, for which I used Excel where I would run a macro to create charts for each data point and then see if the shape of the chart made any sense. So far I have only mostly focused on logs for the Atom and Atom SE because that is what I have, but I have started a bit around the Dreamer logs as well. All I ever got was one single log file from someone’s Dreamer so I don’t really have much more to go on. That may be another area I could use help with; for someone to fly their Dreamer drone and send me the log files along with other details about the flight so I can cross-reference with potential data points.
Really happy to find this app! Love my Atom and feel the same about their dev team!
I’ve installed your ‘Flight Log Viewer’ (PC) and have sent myself the log file via email. Saved the zip file to a local folder. looks like a 2kb file (a short 2-3 min flight).
When I try to open the Zip file, I’m getting the message “Nothing to import”.
thoughts?
Great app, thanks for developing!
When I try to open my log file (zip file; 17kb), I keep getting the message “Nothing to import”.
Suggestions?
I was a bit shocked that Potensic didn’t supply this kind of tool. Just gave looked in Github, your code looks really clean, and Dude, … clearly you’ve put some hours and passion into this, great job.
It would be really nice if someone familar with QGIS (that can handle the QT programming pain threshold) forked this into a QGIS plugin.
Just as an idea, a GPX export would be kind of cool.
Koen,
I came across your log viewer mentioned in a Facebook post… made me giddy as I’ve wanted to make use of those log files. Your program installed fine (Windows 11; got v2.4.0), but when I import the .zip log files, I always get “Nothing to import”. Wondering if Potensic broke your utility with a firmware / version update?
I’m an iOS user for the Potensic Pro app; I’m using “Save to files” from the app, and have my iOS files app mapped to a shared drive on my Windows computer (same process I used for my iOS screen recordings). In the .zip files, I see the individual .bin files, so presumably the file transfer process isn’t the issue.
Koen,
You can disregard my earlier post – I got it working (and learned a couple of things). The .zip files that I was testing against with .bin files in them were the “Atom-Drone.zip” files. My “Atom_V2-Drone” files on my phone had no data in them. A new flight of the drone produced the “Atom_V2-Drone” files which contains data and that opens fine in your program. It seems that files older than 3 days on my phone are all empty (bummer).
Appreciate your work on this useful tool!
Just a note to say this app is awesome!
I just got an Atom SE with the intention of making mixed reality videos, that combine video footage with computer renders from the camera location. Your tool is amazing, nice work figuring out the log data format.
Would be awesome to see this show stick inputs and attitude, as well as drone mode (sat, opti, att). But that is not to say this app is fantastic! I recently had my drone go down doing a simple flight and I thought maybe I wasn’t paying attention to the GPS signal, but sure enough, it had 20+ sats locked when it flew out of control.
The drone mode is partially handled and you can see it when you export the data into a CSV file. Column “positionmode” in the file, right between “rth” and “gps”. I was a bit unsure of the different values of this field so it may not be 100% correct, but I think it’s pretty close. For that reason I did not include it anywhere on the screen but I made it available in the CSV export.
Hello Koen;
Thank you for this great little app. I had the Potensic Atom SE for couple of months and was frustrated that its log files format was not compatible with any flight log book software. Quick question for you for a situation that I have ran into on my Mac. My Potensic zip files typically contain multiple flights and when I open the display summary window, all the flight in that Zip file displays. At this point, I would like do a CSV save. But when I hit the Excel button, Open File Window opens as opposed to Save File Window. Is this an issue of having multiple flights in a single ZIP file?
Thanks again, and keep up the great work.
The File Dialog Window on the Mac version of the Viewer seems a bit confusing, indeed. While the button does say “Open” the dialog does save a CSV in the directory that you select in the dialog.
Thank you very much!
Hi Koen,
I’m looking for a drone for my firestation and maybe it would be a Potensic. My question is about the OTG data. On the drone, it seems you plug the smarphone on the controler and you get some data on the smartphone. But in my case, we have some tacticals tools, communication tools for forest fire. So what I’m looking for is the way to developpe my “own” app on the smartphone in order to get the image and the data from the potentic, in order to get (eg) the GPS of a team and send the GPS to another team to join the first one and so on. So the question is: are the data you’re able to extract from the data file are the same coming in real time throught the OTG?
Thanks very much
PL
Hi,
The data from the log files is NOT the same as the data that the app received via the controller for the drone, camera, and controller itself. The video comes in via a streaming channel, whereas the flight and status data via various other messages. Your best option here is to copy the apk file of the app to your computer, then de-compile it. There are a few tools out there that can do that, none of them are perfect and you may need to try a few different ones to get more details out of the app. You will find a ton of information this way that will answer your questions. But even if you then figure out how the streaming and messaging works, you would still need to find a way to intercept it somehow, without affecting the app itself. I am sure this is possible, but I have not really gone down that road. I suspect it may probably also involve rooting your device to gain access to the app’s private folders and space. Another option is to rebuild a modified version of the decompiled apk and then add additional functionality. That would be a lot of work, but theoretically not impossible. You may have to decide on effort vs benefit here. You’re almost better off finding a different drone that can get you this functionality out of the box, or, decide if it is acceptable to use the log data after the flight is over, instead of real-time. There is also screen-sharing options via your mobile device itself, if you just want to share real-time what’s displayed on your screen. There may be 3rd party apps or other solutions for that. Finally, if you only care about the GPS coordinates, is there a GPS device you can stick to the drone (which will push it over 250g so a license may be required), and which can be tracked separately?