We're some guys from Switzerland thinking about building some useful measure to counter the "Drone hate" and over-reaching regulation fantasies that are currently going on in some of our governments.

Here's a rough outline of what we're trying to build:

• A web application where people can register themselves (voluntarily, address verification via physical letter)
• Ability to print out a sheet with QR codes to stick to your model (potentially as-a-service for a small fee)
• The data will be fully encrypted. Part of the QR code URL would be a random key to decrypt part of your information (for example phone number and name)
• Access via QR code will also give you the ability to notify the owner if you found a model

This will be targeted towards regular RC clubs / plane owners, RC drone and racing clubs etc, as they do have similar requirements/problems.

The goal is to show to the government bodies that there is already a system in place that satisfies their actual requirements of criminal prosecution IF something happens and give a reasonable alternative to the transponder idea that DJI recently proposed (some of the guys in our civil aviation government body are playing with that idea as well)

We're explicitly building this as free software, so clubs all over the world could run this themselves if they want. For the same reason, we're not using anything too new or fancy, so deployments should be simple and easy, with only a few standard django commands.

If you see this, you're welcome to help. Go checkout the issues on Github to see if there's something that you could work on :)

Please talk to Marc Urben or David Vogt if you have an idea. Then the standard rules apply: Fork, send a PR/MR, discuss, and we'll be happy to merge.

We use crowdin.com for translation. If you want to help us to translate ModelREG into your language, head over to https://crowdin.com/project/modelreg and start working :)

We explicitly don't put up a complex deployment, so everyone with a bit of Python knowledge can join in and help (or run the application for themselves).

To get started, install Python (3.5 or newer) and preferrably, create a Virtualenv (not really necessary, if you're into development, we suggest you look into it). Also install npm which is used to install and manage e.g. JQuery and Bootstrap. Then, run the following commands to get started:

pip install -r requirements.txt
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py runserver

After this, you should have a running development version up and running on http://localhost:8000

There's some test data dumped in the _dev directory. Go have a look there to get some data to play around with.

The specification and plans are found at spec/README.md. If you want to help out, see what's missing over there.

There are two ways of deployment: Either in a classic way, or using Docker Compose.

If you are a club or national body and want to use the software, please google how to properly deploy a Django application. There's a few more things to consider (like using a proper SQL database instead of sqlite3, and using an SSL/TLS certificate. The latter is utterly important, as there will be person-related information transferred on this application that you may not want everybody to see).

With Docker Compose, you can just run the following commands to get started:

docker-compose up

We also provide "official" modelreg docker images which you can find on Docker Hub.

To get the image up and running, you need to copy .env.example to .env and configure this file to your liking.

The docker image provides a few points to configure the application, which you can change if you want:

• Volumes:

  • /usr/src/app/static This contains the static files for the application. You should mount the "static" directory, so you can serve it properly via a dedicated web server by adding the following parameters to docker run:
  • /usr/src/app/db.sqlite3 Mount this if you're using SQLite (not recommended for production!)

• Initialisation:

  • To update the database structure (required on the first run, or after updates), set the following env variable: MIGRATE=true
  • To create an initial superuser, use the environment variables SUPERUSER_NAME, SUPERUSER_EMAIL and SUPERUSER_PASSWORD. If those variables are not set, we assume that you already have a superuser in your database.

• Running

  • Database: The Docker environment currently supports MySQL and PostgreSQL only. This may change in the future to support other databases as well. Pass the following env variables to tell the app about your DB server: DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME, DB_HOSTandDB_TYPE`.

    The DB_TYPE must be either the values sqlite3 (the default), mysql or postgresql.

    Note: If you don't set those parameters, the default SQLite3 is used, which is not suitable for production use!

    Optionally, you can also pass the port as DB_PORT. IF not given, it will default to the database's default (5432 on PostgreSQL, 3306 for MySQL)

  • Secret Key: Django uses a secret key to encrypt cookies and authentication tokens. By default, it is randomly generated on startup. If you want to set it to a permanent value, pass it as SECRET_KEY env variable.

  • Port: Set the port to listen on by using the PORT variable.

  • UWSGI=true: Enable UWSGI mode. This is preferred when using the application in production. If not set, the application will run a regular HTTP server.

  • Debugging: You can enable debugging by adding the following parameter: DEBUG=true

  • Allowed Hosts: Django can restrict access, so the application will only work on a given set of domains. This should be a comma-separated list of domain names: ALLOWED_HOSTS=modelreg.example.org,www.modelreg.example.org

  • Email settings: By default, the app does not send email and prints emails to be sent to STDOUT. To enable sending emails, you need to pass valid configuration via the following environment variables. They map directly to the corresponding settings in Django, documented here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/settings/#email-host

    • EMAIL_HOST=smtp.myserver.com
    • EMAIL_PORT=587
    • EMAIL_HOST_USER=modelreguser
    • EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=verysecret!
    • EMAIL_USE_SSL=true
    • EMAIL_USE_TLS=false

  • System settings: Set the following variables to configure the name and email address of your application.

    • [email protected] - The email address that is used as the sender of all notifications. Does not need to own a mailbox.
    • SYSTEM_OPERATOR="ModelReg Team" - The name of your team. Is used as the greetings line in emails

We intend to keep this all in the open, and thus all the code in here is licensed AGPL, unless stated otherwise. For the full terms, see LICENSE.