March 28, 2025 Software Update

Today we’ve got an exciting update for you. Let’s dive in!

3D farm designer beta

Originally inspired by video games such as Farmville, the FarmBot farm designer has always been at the core of our user experience, providing a virtual representation of your garden for visually designing your crop layout and monitoring what your FarmBot is doing in realtime.

We put 10 years of work into our original SVG-based 2D designer and it has served our users well in that time. However, as time has gone on it has felt increasingly outdated compared to more modern 3D applications and is the wrong foundation to build the type of beautiful, rich, and tech-forward experience we think is possible.

About a year and a half ago we embarked on reimagining the farm designer as a fully 3D environment — one you could rotate around to view from any angle, one with richer graphics and a greater correspondence to the real world, and one that would lay the groundwork for more intuitive and powerful features that are cumbersome or impossible to pull off in 2D.

Today we’re releasing the first version of this new 3D environment in beta and we can’t wait for you to try it out.

To turn on the 3D view, find the 3D MAP BETA toggle in the lower right of the screen. You can switch between 2D and 3D as many times as you want without compromising or changing any of your data.

Here are some things to keep in mind when trying it out:

• This is a beta release. The 3D farm designer is not yet at feature parity with the 2D designer. You can’t yet drag to edit object locations, multi-select, or view photos or sensor data, amongst other things. Getting to feature parity is our top priority, but it will still take some time to get there.
• Please forgive the rough edges - we’re still working on some performance issues. But do also let us know what specifically might be causing issues for you, or what you would like to see improved or implemented.
• Enjoy! We’re finding it very fun to orbit around, zoom in and out, and fly through the garden in a new way with the richer graphics.

Adding plants, points, and weeds

Adding objects to your garden works just like in 2D, simply mouse over the location you wish to add an object and click to add. For points and weeds, a second click will set the radius after the first click sets the location.

3D settings

We’ve added a lot of settings for you to customize the look of the raised bed and dial in the specific dimensions of your installation so that your virtual FarmBot closely matches reality. Search for “3D” in the settings panel to find them all!

Top-down view

In addition to the default 3D perspective view, you can also view the 3D garden from the top-down with perspective turned off, just like the old 2D designer. To toggle between the viewing modes, click the grid/cube button in the bottom right.

What’s to come

As mentioned earlier, our top priority is getting to feature parity with the old 2D designer. That is, rebuild (and improve) in 3D all of the features we already have in 2D, and then phase out the 2D designer later this year. But that’s just the beginning. Here are some additional features we look forward to:

• Full 3D representation of soil height and other sensor readings.
• A new camera view, where you can view the perspective from the FarmBot camera even as it moves over the garden in realtime.
• More performant and efficient ways to bulk-add plants to the garden, such as the ability to “stamp” in a pattern of multiple plants.
• New quick-actions in the 3D environment to provide faster access to common workflows that keep users more immersed in 3D rather than scrolling through lengthy panels.
• More animations to better illustrate the full FarmBot state, for example, when the Rotary Tool is active.
• 3D mapping of where stalls and other problem logs occur.
• An interactive electronics box with operable buttons and LEDs, and the display of diagnostic information.
• Setup wizard steps for configuring the 3D environment to match real life.
• Customizable background environments including a laboratory and a greenhouse setting.
• Dynamic lighting and other effects based on your local time and weather.
• Easter eggs for those who look 👀

Other additions with this release

• Fixed a bug where the app would crash upon the first keystroke in the points search field. Thank you @jsimmonds for pointing this out!
• Updated some of the default settings (such as the Y-axis map size) for more accurate setups from the get-go.
• FALLBACK SOIL HEIGHT is now set based on the camera-to-soil measurement performed in the setup wizard.
• A new 3D greenhouse scene currently available in our 3D promotional page, coming soon to the app.
• Fixed an issue affecting the display of some tooltip documentation links.
• Added documentation notes for grid iterator function scope.

Genesis v1.8 update

We’re just a little behind schedule with the current production run (things move as fast as the slowest part). We’re now targeting to review the first QA kits off the production line around the first or second week of April, with the rest of the production being finished shortly after barring no major issues found in QA. We thank our pre-order holders for their patience and can’t wait to get these new kits into your hands!

In the meantime, we’re working on the v1.8 documentation release, upholding our commitment to 100% open-source hardware. Stay tuned for our most comprehensive release yet.