As an open-source project, we’re always looking at ways to onboard, empower, and reward 3rd party developers to improve and expand upon the FarmBot software ecosystem. The project ideas below have been identified as valuable contributions to the FarmBot community either because they:

  • Substantially improve the core experience for a large number of users (building features, fixing bugs)
  • Responsibly identify and fix security vulnerabilities
  • Promote further 3rd party involvement (writing libraries, improving documentation, etc)

Because we think these types of projects are so valuable, we offer prizes to developers that complete a project, provided that the contribution meets the following general requirements, in addition to any specific project requirements.

General requirements

  • The contribution must be licensed with a permissive open-source license, such as the MIT license. Resources for selecting a license can be found here.
  • The contribution must be of high quality. It should have an appropriate code style, not introduce security vulnerabilities, and include test coverage.
  • The contribution must be wholly documented.

Project ideas

Working on something big?

Send an email to contact@farm.bot to let us know what you’re working on and why you think it would be a valuable contribution. We’re happy to provide developer support as needed.

Core features and bug fixes

Browse our GitHub project board and repositories to find features and bugs you may be able to help with. A good place to start is anything tagged good first issue.

Wrapper libraries

Writing CeleryScript by hand requires in-depth knowledge of FarmBot internals. A wrapper library such as FarmBot JS or FarmBot Py allows 3rd party developers to write code using high-level abstractions instead of low level primitives. Wrapper libraries increase productivity, decrease time spent learning platform details and reduce the risk of breaking changes during upgrades.

FarmBot currently offers official wrappers for Javascript and Python and wishes to offer wrappers in as many languages as possible.

Supplemental features and 3rd party scripts

Software projects that increase the usefulness of the platform are always a welcome addition. Examples of supplemental features are:

  • Packages that increase the farming capabilities and efficiencies of a FarmBot device.
  • Tools that help developers write software more quickly (editor plug-ins, CLI tools, NPM packages, etc.)
  • 3rd party hardware and accompanied software controllers, such as new tools that can attach to the Universal Tool Mount.

Prizes

If you’ve completed a project, send an email to contact@farm.bot to let us know about it! We’ll review your work and let you know if we can offer you a prize. Some past prizes to 3rd party contributors have included:

  • FarmBot T-shirts and stickers
  • FarmBot shop gift cards up to $1,000 in value
  • Full FarmBot kits

Prizes are the cherry on top, not the cake or the icing

Please note that prizes are given out at FarmBot Inc’s discretion, and not every contribution will necessarily earn you a prize. We award prizes as a gift to recognize awesome people and high quality contributions. Please don’t try to game us or abuse our generosity. Prizes are not payment, not guaranteed, and should not be considered to be compensation.