Hello !
I’m a teacher in an agriculture scool in France
I am a teacher in an agricultural school in France, and I would like my students to program the bot. Is there a virtual Farmbot where they can create their sequences without any risk, before I copy the finished sequences on the real bot?
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@CoutancesNature This is something we have wanted to do for quite some time, but there is currently no simulator. Some members of the community have expressed an interest in building a third-party simulator, but we have not seen anything published yet.
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Just thought about that. I am a unity developer as well. How about building a 3d simulation of the farmbot?
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I also would be very interested in a simulator. I am a agriculture coordinator at the Alabama institute for the Deaf and Blind. I could use the simulator to develop a braille system for blind students. After they master the simulator i could turn them loose on the real thing. Please keep me updated on the simulator.
Regards,
Zach
If I was to install the OS on a spare rpi3 without the Farmduino and the other components, does the my.farmbot interface function properly? Could students create sequences and layout plants? Could they run or test sequences without the feedback from the farmduino?
Hi @rob.niedermeyer . . I just tested this for you, as I don’t yet have a real bot, simply the 24V FarmBot power supply powering my Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Plus and my v1.4 Farmduino controller. I unplugged the Farmduino USB cable to do these tests.
Yes.
Yes, but Movement commands, Pin Control, ( anything needing a live Farmduino ) will error out quickly.
PS @rob.niedermeyer . . the cost of a Farmduino board to build a more capable training simulator is modest . . problem is that those Farmduino v1.4 boards seem to be unavailable presently.
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This is an interesting topic, Im over here in Washington state we are planning to have 3 farmbot up and running by the end of the year but a simulator would allow for more people to learn with out having to physically come.
I was wondering about the Farmbot 3d model that already exist and whether or not any body has started using that as a simulation model or connecting that to a physical Farmbot?
@kkobald do you think it would be possible through unity?
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That is for sure possible. The question is, if the app can be pointed to a different api endpoint which would be the computer where the unity app is running on. There the software that usually sits on the raspberry has to run maybe inside a docker container which then talks to the unity app. The Unity app would act as the farmduino. But this I do not know: is this also a simple json api or fancy binary stuff? Should it be the latter then it might get a bit more complicated.
And a big question is: would there be funding for that?
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Hello,
I’m new to farmbot and looking for a way to let my students experience the possibilities of programming combined with everyday jobs/activities. The Farmbot software really looks prommissing and I would like to be able to test the software without actually ruining a well prepared garden bed.
This way all of the class would be able to test and program there own garden in a simulation like form. (In groups of 2 or 3) If you manage to create such a simulation I’m sure IT-classes all over the world would be interested, and I can assume other parties might have an interest as well…
It also matches some elements of a post regarding an farmvile simulator I read earlier. Here
Thanks for the great inspirational video’s you give, they help me to inspire the students and show that programming is everywere!
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@thijslangerwerf We don’t offer a simulator yet but it is on the roadmap. Some folks at Nvidia have also been working on a possible solution, but it is still an early endeavor.
More tech-savvy users can run a DIY “simulator” by attaching an Arduino Mega to a Raspberry Pi and running it as if it were a FarmBot Genesis v1.2. You will be able to see all of the usual animations from within your FarmBot account without needing to purchase any rails or motors. It requires some technical know how to get up and running, but it can be an effective way to test things out in a simulated environment.
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What if we used ROS? I know that this would be a bigger step but it would give us access to a very big community and code base, including simulations. It would be easier to use algorithms that others have developed and it would make R&D results from farmbot experiments more useful for other contexts (let’s say, a camera weed detection can be developed on farmbot and then deployed on an autonomous vehicle or a drone). What do you think?
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@RickCarlino Thanks for the response, I’ll look into the Arduino solution you were talking about, we might be able to create a useable solution! I’m verry curious to the early endeavor Nvidia is working on 
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Hej @RickCarlino, not to force the project into any direction. I think the project is great as it is, but it would be interesting to hear your opinion about using ROS and if you guys have heard about it or considered it…
@jensGeorgsen We know what ROS is and considered it in the early days of FarmBot. I have no interest in using ROS in the future. FBOS is a very mature codebase with over 7 years of lessons learned and edge cases covered. Leaving our current Nerves / Elixir ecosystem would be a very costly decision.
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