farmbot_os/docs/target_development/building_target_firmware.md

Building FarmBot OS

Building an Image from source

This project is written in the programming language Elixir and built using the Nerves Project framework.

Cloning

Farmbot OS now bundles and builds the Arduino Firmware. This is bundled as a git submodule. You can choose to do one of: git clone https://github.com/FarmBot/farmbot_os.git --recursive or

git clone https://github.com/FarmBot/farmbot_os.git
git submodule update --init --recursive
cd farmbot_os

To initialize the repository.

Before you begin

You will need a number of things before we start:

• A x64 bit non windows machine
  • We suggest the latest OSX or Ubuntu LTS.

Install dependencies

If you have the above set up you will need some software dependencies:

• Erlang
• Elixir
  • Nerves Bootstrapper found here
• GNU Make + GCC
• git

Optional dependencies

• python
• opencv-python

Following this guide will get you mostly setup.

Development

Most development will be done in "host" environment. This means that rather than making a change on your computer, then pushing it to the device, we can rapidly develop things from the luxury of our own machine. See The Nerves getting started guide for more information about this. But as a side effect, we will need to be able to configure (at least) two different environment/target combos. where:

• environment - is one of:
  • prod - The production environment.
    • No developer features enabled (such as logs, local fw updates etc).
    • No remote shell
    • No remote firmware updates.
    • Must be digitally signed.
  • dev - The development environment.
    • Logs most things to the console.
    • Remote shell
    • Remote firmwre updates.
  • test - The test environment
    • Only exists for running tests on the host target currently.
• target - the target this environment will run on. Usually one of:
  • host - For development.
  • rpi3 - Run on Farmbot's intended hardware.

Feature development

If you plan on developing features, you will probably want to develop them with the dev and host combo. These are both the default values, so you can simply do:

export FARMBOT_EMAIL="email@server.com" FARMBOT_PASSWORD="supersecret" FARMBOT_SERVER="https://my.farm.bot" CONFIGURATOR_PORT=4000 # you should only need to do this once
mix deps.get # You should only need to do this once.
iex -S mix # This will start an interactive shell.

Development on device

Sometimes features will need to be developed and tested on the device itself. This is accomplished with the dev and rpi3 combo. It is highly recommended that you have an FTDI cable for this such as this one

MIX_TARGET=rpi3 mix deps.get # Get deps for the rpi3 target. You should only need to do this once.
MIX_TARGET=rpi3 mix firmware # Produce a firmware image.
# Make sure you SDCard is plugged in before the following command.
MIX_TARGET=rpi3 mix firmware.burn # Burn the sdcard. You may be asked for a password here.

Local firmware updates

If you're bot is connected to your local network, you should be able to push updates over the network to your device.

# make some changes to the code...
MIX_TARGET=rpi3 mix firmware # Build a new fw.
MIX_TARGET=rpi3 mix firmware.gen.script # this should onlye be ran once
MIX_TARGET=rpi3 ./upload.sh <your device ip address> # Push the new fw to the device.

Your device should now reboot into that new code. As long as you don't cause a factory reset somehow, (bad init code, typo, etc) you should be able continuously push updates to your device.