Move
Manually move your FarmBot Open this panel in the app
The controls at the top of the panel allow you to view FarmBot’s current position, manually move it in real-time, take photos, go to home or find home, and shutdown or reboot FarmBot.
Viewing the current position
The CURRENT POSITION (MM) of your FarmBot is shown in the gray fields directly below the X AXIS, Y AXIS, and Z AXIS labels. This information is updated in real-time.
If your FarmBot has encoders (Genesis kits only), you can also view SCALED ENCODER (MM) data, as well as RAW ENCODER DATA for each axis. Toggle the display of this additional information from the menu in the top right of the panel.
Movements
There are four types of movements you can perform in this panel: relative movements, absolute movements, finding home, and going to home.
Relative movements
Move FarmBot a relative distance from the current location in any direction by using the arrow buttons. The default MOVE AMOUNT (MM) is 100, though you can also select 1, 10, 1000, and 10000 amounts.
Depending on your hardware settings, you may not be able to move beyond an axis minimum or maximum. When this is true, some arrow buttons may be disabled.
In the example below, because FarmBot is at the home position (0, 0, 0), half of the arrow buttons are disabled to allow only movements away from the home position and not through it. Clicking a disabled button displays a popup indicating why the button is disabled.
Matching the virtual controls to your real-life perspective
Depending on how you usually view your FarmBot, you may need to change which direction each arrow button sends your FarmBot so that the virtual controls match your real-life perspective. For example, if you usually view your FarmBot from the front (looking at the FarmBot logo on the tool head), you would want the button to send FarmBot in the negative Y direction. If you usually view your FarmBot from the side with the electronics box, you would want the button to send FarmBot in the negative X direction.
You can change the direction along each axis that the arrow buttons send your FarmBot by using the Invert Jog Button toggles in the menu in the top right of the panel. You can also swap the X and Y axis buttons, which will also rotate the map in the farm designer by 90 degrees.
Absolute movements
Move FarmBot to an absolute position by typing in new coordinates to the white input fields for the X AXIS, Y AXIS, and Z AXIS and then pressing .
FarmBot will operate all axes at once to get to the new position as fast as possible.
If you do not type in a new value for any of the axes, then FarmBot will maintain its current position along that axis and only move the needed axis or axes.
Finding home
The button with a icon will instruct FarmBot to find the home position for all axes in the order Z, Y, X.
FarmBot must have home-finding hardware such as encoders, stall-detecting stepper drivers, or limit switches in order to automatically find the home position.
Going to home
The button with a icon will instruct FarmBot to go to the home position for all axes as though you had typed in (0, 0, 0) to the move absolute input fields. Note that the go to home behavior will move all three axes at once.
Taking photos
The button will take a photo at FarmBot’s current location and provide progress updates of the capture and upload process in realtime. Photos can be viewed in the photos panel.
Other axis controls
In addition to the axis input fields, there are controls to , , , and for an individual axis located in the popups.
Motor load
View the latest, recent maximum, and recent average MOTOR LOAD for each each axis by clicking the load indicator bars below each axis label.
Motor load indicators are only available for FarmBot Express bots with STALL DETECTION enabled.
Motor position plot
To view a graph of motor positions over time, toggle ON the motor position plot in the menu of the panel.
Power button
The button shows a popup with options to , , , and FarmBot. More information can be viewed about each action by clicking the icon.
