July 1, 2025 Software Update

Hello all, last week we pushed a big update to the FarmBot web app with many improvements. Here’s what’s new:

3D soil height

The 3D farm designer now renders an interpolated 3D mapping of the soil’s surface based on the measured or manually entered points that are marked AT SOIL HEIGHT. The more points you add the more accurate your mapping can be, increasing the precision of seed planting depths and rotary tool actions based on soil height offsets.

Install the web app to your device

Using progressive web app (PWA) standards, the FarmBot web app can now be installed to your device via your web browser, enabling it to function and feel a bit more like a native app. The current set of features include:

• Allowing you to have the app’s icon on your home screen.
• Showing the app without the surrounding browser interface.
• Surfacing the app in your operating system’s launcher and quicksearch.
• Showing the app independntly of your browser in your OS’s app switcher/bottom bar.
• Exposing deeplinks to some common app panels via a long-press on the app icon in some OS’s.
• Allowing app links to open directly in the app rather than in a new browser tab.

To install FarmBot on your device using Chrome, click the “Install” button in the URL bar on desktop or the “Add to home screen” button in the overflow menu on mobile.

New 3D peripheral animations

You’ll now find these animations in the 3D environment to help you see FarmBot’s current state at a glance:

• Water flowing through the tubing and showering down to the soil whenever the watering nozzle is mounted and the solenoid valve is active.
• Spinning rotary tool implements whenever the tool is mounted and the forward or reverse peripheral is active.
• Airflow clouds whenever the seeder is mounted and the vacuum pump is turned on.
• Additional light emanating down from the gantry main beam whenever the LED strip is active.

Realtime sun position and lighting

The virtual sun now moves throughout the sky according to your FarmBot’s LOCATION (lat/lon) and the current date and time. If you’ve correctly set your FarmBot’s HEADING - the angle it is facing in degrees from North (use the new North Arrow to help you!) - then you’ll see realistic lighting and shadows that correspond to your real-life garden at all hours of the day!

Plus, a new TIME TRAVEL popup in the main navigation allows you to move forward and backward through the day by 1 hour increments, or reset the view to the current time.

New environments

In addition to the default Outdoor scene, you may now select your FarmBot’s ENVIRONMENT to be a Lab or Greenhouse.

Miscellaneous

• Updated panel and popup styling to provide a greater sense of depth and subtle tactility.
• Improved the styling of nav popups to better indicate the currently open popup.
• Added stars to the night sky.
• Demo accounts many now simulate peripherals being active.
• Fixed a bug causing part of the 3D FarmBot to be cut off in the top-down view.
• Added OS download links and firmware support for our new v1.8 machines.
• Click events are now only activated for visible objects.
• Fixed some issues with doc links, setting links, and navigation.
• Gantry mounted seed troughs are now rendered in the correct position.
• Optimized parts of the app to use less memory, reducing our internal hosting costs.
• Added a 3D loading screen and improved the loading performance.
• Fixed an issue with the calibration retry reset distance.
• Fixed issues causing unnecessary log search and device API requests.