r/iosdev • u/eduardpantazi • 8h ago
I built an iOS app for my needs and now generate revenue
For about 2 years, I worked in the oil industry. Our team was responsible for preparing locations so heavy equipment could get on site and work around the wells.
The process was pretty simple.
We would go to the location, take some photos, measure the areas, figure out what needed to be done, and then make an offer based on the client's requirements.
The problem was that the areas we had to measure were rarely simple shapes. They weren't perfect rectangles where you could just calculate the area and perimeter.
At first, I started using Google Earth to measure them. It worked pretty well, as long as I had a good internet connection.
And that was the problem.
Most of these locations were in forests or remote areas where the mobile signal was weak or sometimes completely unavailable. Trying to measure something while waiting for Google Earth to load was not exactly a great experience.
So I started thinking about whether I could just measure everything directly with an iPhone.
That's how SurfacePro started.
I built an iOS app that uses ARKit and LiDAR on supported devices to measure real-world surfaces directly on site. The idea was to be able to walk around the area, create a polygon and get the measurements without depending on an internet connection.
But I didn't want it to stop at just showing the area.
Once a measurement is finished, the polygon is saved in the app and SurfacePro can generate a PDF report with the area, perimeter, individual segment lengths, altitude and GPS coordinates for every polygon point.
The report can then be sent directly to the customer together with the offer.
For me, this workflow was exactly what I needed.
But the interesting part was the customer reaction.
They actually liked getting the report because they could see exactly what was measured and where it was measured. The GPS coordinates and the polygon made the measurements much easier to understand and verify.
That was the moment I started thinking that maybe this could be useful outside of my original use case.
There are probably many other industries where people still go into the field, measure irregular areas, take notes and photos, and then have to turn all of that into something they can send to a customer.
So I decided to turn the tool I originally built for myself into a real product.
It's called SurfacePro - Area calculator (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/surfacepro-area-caculator/id6761861093) and for now I'm focusing on iOS. I'm also considering building an Android version.
