April 9, 2024 Software and Documentation Update

Today we deployed a new version of the web app. Here’s what’s new:

Updated default settings

• Changed the default MOTOR CURRENT to 90% for the X-axis for all Genesis bots to reduce the potential of stepper driver overheat protection kicking in during movements, which can look like stuttering and result in a torqued gantry.
• Turned OFF the ALWAYS POWER MOTORS setting for the X and Y axes for all Genesis bots to prevent heat build up and the potential issues mentioned above.

Performance improvements

• Upgraded the GPT model for automatic Lua code generation to Open AI’s latest gpt-4-turbo model, which provides better reasoning capabilities and a longer context window for more accurate code generation.
• Implemented a limit of 30 steps per sequence to improve app performance and encourage better practice of using subsequences. According to our analysis this will affect about 2% of all saved sequences.
• Implemented a limit of 75 sequences per account to improve app performance. This will affect approximately 10 users in total whose accounts were responsible for degraded performance affecting everyone.
• Logs are now automatically deleted after 60 days to improve app performance and reduce hosting costs.
• Improved how image queries are handled to eliminate N+1 issues that would degrade performance in some circumstances.

Miscellaneous

• Fixed an issue where Genesis and Genesis XL v1.7 model options were not available when setting up a new account.
• Re-ordered FarmBot model listings to show the latest models first.
• Fixed various setup wizard bugs.

Documentation

• Added a new Lua example for watering based on the weather using the Open-Meteo API.
• Updated our Python developer documentation with improved examples and a better getting started flow.
• Uploaded a new Genesis v1.7 complete unboxing and assembly video:

A preview of what’s to come

You may have noticed that things have been a little quiet the last few months on the software side of things. That’s because earlier this year we began building out a new, fully 3D farm designer, offering a more beautiful, intuitive, accurate, and immersive way of viewing and interacting with your FarmBot.

While we’re still months away from launching this, when it is ready it will be the biggest update to the FarmBot web app in our history! The wait will be worth it 😄

In the meantime, to get an idea for what to expect, try playing around with our new model explorer on our homepage, which shares the same code that will eventually be used in the app!