May 19, 2020 Software Update

Hi FarmBot community,

This morning we released a major new version of FarmBot OS (v10.0.0) and deployed a new version of the web app to go along. There are some important details in this update that we hope you will read. Let’s get started!

New MARK AS command

The MARK AS command in the sequence editor has been majorly upgraded. Now you can pass in Location Variables to this step, allowing you to systematically update Plants, Weeds, Points, and more without having to ‘hard-code’ in a specific item. This works great with sequences run over a group of items. For example, when running a seed planting sequence for 10 Spinach Plants, you can have FarmBot mark each plant’s status as planted.

We’ve exposed a variety of fields that you can change for various resources including X, Y, and Z coordinates, Radius, Color, and Status. There is also a custom write-in option that allows you to use meta.custom properties. For example, if you would like to mark points in the map with something like meta.soil-ph = 5, you can do that!

Meta properties are then viewable in item details panels.

And you can then use advanced group filters to select items that match your custom properties.

Important information for updating to FBOS v10:
Because FarmBot OS v10 is incompatible with the old MARK AS sequence command, we have globally disabled AUTO UPDATE. When you are ready to perform an upgrade:

• Press the UPDATE button on the device page.
• Go to the sequences page and find the old MARK AS step(s) in your sequences. These steps will appear as “Deprecated Mark As” in the sequence editor.
• Hit the CONVERT button to convert the old MARK AS step to the new one.
• Re-enable AUTO UPDATE.

Calibration improvements

Calibration has been changed to now move to the maximum position first, and then the home position. This makes the calibration process faster, as it eliminates one leg of the journey.

Homing improvements

Previously, homing was susceptible to failing when FarmBot would erroneously stall somewhere along an axis that was not the home position, and incorrectly set that location as 0.

Now, whenever FarmBot thinks it has found the home position, it will back up a short distance and then move forward again to verify that it stalls again in the expected location. If FarmBot has reached the true home position (a physical hard stop), it will always stall in the same location, and it will set that location as 0 after verification. If FarmBot has not reached the true home position (FarmBot had previously stalled erroneously), then it will continue forward until it thinks it has found the home position again, somewhere else. Currently the firmware is set to verify the location three times, though this may be lowered in the future.

Farm designer

Weeds can now have a status of “Active” or “Removed”, and the weeds panel has been updated to separate the two categories. You can now also use an additional map layer to toggle ON/OFF the Removed weeds.

You can now select all items in a group from the select panel.

There are now Z-coordinate input fields for Plants, Points, and Weeds, as well as a Diameter field for Plants.

Other improvements

• Groups have been moved up in location dropdowns to signify their greater importance.
• Groups have been added to the account seeding process, so new accounts and demo accounts have some examples of how that feature works.
• Fixed a bug with the group age filter where FarmBot OS was using the created_at date of a resource instead of the planted_at date.
• Improved the toast notification system to allow for permanent toasts and for the app to cancel toasts. For example, the “Reconnecting…” toast now gets cancelled once the app is “Reconnected”.
• Improved the layout of the IF statement command when there are variables.
• Updated verbiage throughout the app and some log messages to make things more clear.
• Added a new sequence command to SHUTDOWN FarmBot. Thanks @mbuchberger1967 for the request.
• The logs page tooltip has been removed because it did not provide any value. Thank you @rampollaluis on GitHub for submitting this PR, and congratulations on your first ever open-source contribution!
• Added a note to the connectivity popup to ensure FarmBot OS is up-to-date before troubleshooting connection issues.