July 8, 2020 Software Update

This morning we deployed a new version of the FarmBot Web App. Here’s what’s new:

Faster photo taking

Thanks to a suggestion from @aronrubin, images can now be rotated in the farm designer map rather than at capture time. To use this option, toggle ADJUST ROTATION DURING CAPTURE to NO. This setting is available by clicking the ? tooltip next to PHOTOS. Note that this setting requires v1.0.14 of the take-photo package. If you have an older version, press the rotating arrows icon to update that package. 

This significantly decreases the time required to take a photo. On Genesis bots, we’re seeing a 50% decrease in time, and on Express bots about a 75% decrease! This option also allows for the uploaded images to no longer include black edges.

Crop map images

Going hand-in-hand with the setting above, the farm designer map can now crop images to either remove the black edges from images rotated at capture time, or to re-align edges with FarmBot’s axes after images are rotated in the map. To enable cropping, open the PHOTOS menu in the map legend and turn on CROP MAP IMAGES. 

Camera field of view visualization

A new setting in the map legend under the FARMBOT layer allows you to SHOW CAMERA VIEW IN MAP AREA based on the calibration settings and whether or not images are being cropped in the map.

Point Grids

You can now add grids of points to the map using a similar interface to adding a grid of plants. A new toggle for turning on the CAMERA VIEW AREA allows you to quickly create a point grid that can be used for taking pictures of the whole garden with minimal overlap and no gaps!

Miscellaneous

• Weed coordinates and radii are now rounded to the nearest whole mm in the weeds list.
• The SCAN CURRENT IMAGE button now shows an error toast if the camera hasn’t been calibrated yet.
• Added a warning to the Limit Switches section of the settings because new users were incorrectly enabling them without any attached.
• Fixed an issue where emails on self hosted setups were not working.