What's new in each release of the ApplePacker machine software.
Versions are written as GEN.MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. The leading number is the machine generation the build is compatible with (5 = Gen5).
- Fixed a memory leak in the vision system that could cause the machine to crash after it had been packing for a while.
- Faster image processing: the vision system handles each frame more quickly, leaving more headroom to keep up with a full flow of fruit.
- If the vision system fails while the machine is running, the machine now stops with a "Vision System Failed" fault. Before, it could appear to keep running while no fruit was packed.
- If a robot motor is still faulted after the automatic reset, the machine now stops and shows which motor needs attention. Before, it could stop without a clear fault. A motor that fails to return to its home position is now switched off safely rather than left powered.
- Fixed the robot occasionally pausing for several seconds in the middle of a cycle.
- Defect detection models are now delivered separately from the machine software, so an improved model can be rolled out without a software update. The machine can also switch to a new defect model while it keeps packing, ready for a future APM update to control.
- The tray detection model has been updated to version 7.
- The language menu now shows the New Zealand or United States flag for English, depending on where the machine is.
- Improved the Spanish wording of several fault messages on the operator screens.
- If the robot's motor communication fails to start, the machine now reports that single fault and holds the robot until it is fixed, instead of showing a confusing list of missing-motor faults.
- A brief hiccup while the robot returns to pick no longer stops the machine with a critical fault. The robot now retries the move, and only stops if it fails again.
- New Size reject setting rejects fruit that is noticeably bigger or smaller than the rest of the run. The machine compares each fruit against the average size of the fruit it has measured over the last five minutes, and rejects anything more than the chosen tolerance away from it — 15% by default, adjustable from 5% to 25%. It starts once 30 fruit have been measured, and starts afresh each time the machine is started, so changing count size between runs is handled automatically. The setting can also be changed remotely, ready for a future APM update.
- The operator screens are now available in Spanish (Mexico). Pick the language from the flag menu at the top right of the Settings and Info dialogs. Fault messages, numbers and chart times follow the chosen language, and the on-screen keyboard gains an ñ key.
- Stem and calyx inspection are now a single End inspect setting.
- The defect detection model has been updated from v12 to v13, and has been trained on more apple varieties, including Golden Delicious and Sweetie.
- The Apples Packed and Fruit Rate cards on the operator screen can now be turned off for sites that don't want them. Both stay on by default, and changing them takes effect straight away without a restart.
- The machine now reports its reject rate, active recipe, stem angle, and whether stem and calyx inspection are on. This information is available on the machine now, ready for a future APM update to display.
- The machine now records the size of every fruit and the size of each type of defect it finds, building up a picture of fruit size and defect rates over time. These metrics are available on the machine now, ready for a future APM update to display.
- Rejected fruit is now turned calyx forward before it is ejected, whenever that costs nothing — the fruit must be the only one left in its lane, so a busy lane still ejects immediately as before. Rejects therefore leave the machine in a consistent, known orientation instead of however they happened to be sitting.
- The operator screen is noticeably quicker to respond. Every new connection between the screen and the machine software was waiting out a network timeout before falling back to a working address, costing around a third of a second each time; that wait is gone.
- Settings changed anywhere on the machine now appear on the operator screen within a second, and a setting that takes a moment to apply shows that it is saving.
- Fixed settings briefly flicking back to their previous value after being changed, and fixed changing several in quick succession causing the earlier ones to revert.
- The throughput chart now closes when you tap the background, rather than only when you tap the Fruit Rate card again. Tapping a control — starting the machine, opening settings — leaves the chart up.
- Fixed the throughput chart's axis labels showing the same number twice when reject rates are low.
- Fixed Manual Capture recording captures that contained no images. Debris that was tracked only briefly could produce a capture with no imagery and no thumbnails, and it was counted towards the session's captured total.
- Manual Capture now inspects fruit with a built-in analysis recipe rather than whichever recipe the machine was set to for production. Every defect type — rot, bruise, puncture, skin damage and skin blemish — is measured on every fruit captured, so a session collects complete defect data no matter how the machine was configured, and the production recipe can no longer pack or reject fruit part-way through a session. Whether captured fruit is rejected is still controlled by the session's own reject setting.
- The Fruit Rate card on the operator screen now opens a throughput chart. It plots packed and rejected fruit rate over a selectable window — 15 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours — so a shift can be reviewed at a glance.
- Fruit rate figures are now consistent everywhere. The card, the chart and the machine's reported rates all read the same two numbers, each averaged over the last minute, so packed and rejected can be meaningfully added together for a throughput figure.
- The tray camera's viewing region can now be positioned from the technician screen, against the live camera image, instead of needing a config file edit and a restart. The tray vision view also starts on its own when opened, matching the infeed and lane views.
- The machine now acts on fruit it fails to pick. A fruit that misses three times is rejected, and a rotation unit that misses raises a warning that clears on its next successful pick. Both thresholds are adjustable per site, and either can be turned off by setting it to zero.
- A fruit that misses a pick is now rolled before the next attempt, so the gripper meets a different part of the fruit rather than retrying the same face.
- Colour up is now a plain on/off setting. The previous "Auto" option could never actually turn colour up off, so it always behaved as On; the setting now does what it says.
- Fixed colour up being inverted when set from an external system: a request to turn it off turned it on.
- Fixed the throughput chart using enough browser memory to eventually take the machine screen down when left open for long periods.
- Chart axis labels are larger and better spaced so they read at arm's length on the kiosk screen.
- Fixed an issue where pressing Stop while the machine was waiting on a tray overheight would hang: the stop never finished until the obstruction physically cleared. Stop now completes promptly, and the automatic "warn then stop" response to a persistent overheight works as intended.
- An emergency stop or safety trip during a normal stop now halts the robot immediately, instead of letting the slower controlled stop run to completion first.
- Tray cameras running firmware 1.25.0.0 are now accepted alongside 1.22.0.0.
- New Manual Capture mode lets an operator hand-feed a batch of fruit through a stopped machine to collect labelled training images. The machine captures every fruit with stem, calyx and colour-up inspection forced on, tags each capture with the session name and variety, and shows live counts of fruit in progress and captured so far. Fruit can be packed or rejected during the session.
- Fruit variety is now typed in as free text with an autocompleting suggestion list of apple varieties, replacing the fixed set of variety buttons.
- The on-screen touch keyboard has been redesigned with a familiar phone-style layout, clearer keys and a predictive word-suggestion strip; tap outside the keyboard to dismiss it.
- The machine screens have been visually refreshed for a consistent look: buttons, switches, dialogs and cards now share one style, switches and mode selectors show a clear "saving" state while a change is applied, and the app uses a slimmer scrollbar.
- Fruit capture images upload substantially faster and use far less storage and network capacity — thumbnails are now compact JPEGs sized for the dashboard rather than full-resolution images.
- Inspection tags recorded against a capture now reach the site server in the same cycle as the capture itself, instead of trailing it by up to a minute.
- Fixed a servo fault subscription problem that could leave fault reporting in a bad state.
- A failure while processing a single infeed camera frame no longer disrupts the rest of infeed vision.
- Fixed the "view packer" link from the site server, and machine page assets, failing to load when the machine is reached through a reverse proxy.
- Fixed capture thumbnail export.
- Fixed an issue where automatic fruit-capture cleanup could leave old, untracked capture files behind, which over time could fill up the machine's storage.
- Machines now also watch overall free disk space and automatically free up more room if the drive starts running low, even when storage is otherwise under quota.
- Adjusted default fruit-capture storage settings for more consistent, frequent cleanup.
- Fixed a rare issue where a single fault during placement could create several duplicate entries in the fault history instead of one.
- Fixed an issue where fault-clear times and packer state end times could occasionally go missing from exported history.
- The Infeed region editor now keeps regions within the camera frame bounds and stays available for use even if the live preview fails.
- Expanded technician camera views for easier monitoring.
- Updated the defect detection model to a newer, more accurate release that reduces false-positive rot detections.
- Machines now automatically manage their fruit-capture storage, freeing space based on a configurable quota while protecting captures marked for retention.
- Fruit-capture cache cleanup now runs every 5 minutes by default.
- Rotation-unit power cycling on Gen5.0 and Gen5.1 machines now coordinates the ECB board's power state and startup delay, preventing false communication faults during expected shutdowns.
- Draining or emptying the machine no longer reports an invalid tray-row fault when the current pick cycle finishes as intended.
- Fruit colour presentation has been substantially improved, using smoother colour tracking, adaptive positioning and pick-rotation compensation to present the selected colour more consistently.
- Presentation timing now adapts to waiting fruit and conveyor fullness, improving throughput without giving up refinement time when the lane has spare capacity.
- Infeed camera exposure now adjusts automatically from the fruit itself and corrects uneven image brightness; technicians can tune it and compare raw and corrected previews.
- Empty-machine mode now actively clears the infeed traverse with automatic shake and sweep movements while coordinating the denester and infeed.
- Infeed conveyor advances are synchronized with the orientation yokes to improve fruit flow through the lanes.
- Missed picks are now detected, reported and tracked in machine diagnostics and monitoring metrics.
- Defect inspection now continues correctly when colour presentation is disabled and when an inspected stem or calyx end is visible.
- The ColourUp technician view now provides richer hue-track, heatmap and presentation-target diagnostics.
- Technicians can tap a detected fruit in the lane-vision screen and confirm that it should be rejected.
- Fruit decision recipes now support more flexible consecutive, rolling-window and total-count rules, with live analytics and ruleset version tracking for easier tuning and diagnosis.
- Technician settings stay synchronized when machine settings are changed externally and now show the active ruleset.
- The machine now reports a rolling fruit reject rate.
- Tray vision advances the conveyor in configurable duty cycles and continues acquiring trays correctly during controlled stops.
- Improved rejection reliability by preventing lane-advance stalls and correcting reject-conveyor cycling.
- Improved recipe-processing reliability when multiple rules inspect the same defect area concurrently.
- CrashCam video is now rotated automatically to match whether the machine is left- or right-handed, keeping the technician live view correctly oriented.
- Technicians can set a maximum number of tray snapshots to capture, see capture progress and let capture stop automatically when the target is reached; unlimited capture remains available.
- Tray overheight detection now follows the live tray region automatically, reducing duplicated setup and keeping detection aligned with current tray settings.
- Remote Modbus firmware updates are no longer blocked by stale runtime login state, while machine-stopped and firmware validation safety checks remain in place.
- The default lane fruit mask now includes the full brightness range, improving detection of darker image areas.
- Technicians can now tune the lane vision HSV fruit-detection thresholds directly from the lane vision screen. Adjustments apply immediately, are saved to the machine configuration, and can be reset to factory defaults with one tap.
- The recirculation machine toggle continues to work as before and no longer risks overwriting the tuned threshold settings.
- Updated defect detection model (v11), retrained on an expanded dataset. This version is experimental and released for evaluation.
- The machine now monitors the temperature of key hardware — AI accelerator, colour cameras, 3D cameras and servo drives — so overheating issues can be spotted and diagnosed before they cause downtime.
- The main-menu screen can now show a configurable machine identifier card, making it easy to tell machines apart at a glance.
- The remote dashboard now reports all active faults (not just the most severe one) and whether the machine is empty of fruit.
- Fixed an issue where Denester/Inserter inhibit faults could disappear from the screen after starting the machine.
- New technician Tray Buffer Review page: the machine keeps a rolling buffer of the most recent tray camera captures, so a technician can look back at what just happened on the tray line, browse captures full-screen, select a range, and save any of them for later analysis.
- Machines that were deployed with an incorrect history-server address are now corrected automatically at startup.
- Tray snapshots now include an annotated image showing what the machine detected (tray outline, pockets and fruit positions), making captured snapshots reviewable at a glance.
- Corrected fruit orientation rotation belt speed control (with updated board firmware), improving fruit rotation accuracy during orientation.
- Updated tray detection model (v6)
- New tray conveyor pulse advance diagnostic tool.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- Updated tray detection model (v5) with experimental support for USA trays.
- Tray snapshots are now captured on a time interval (default every 2 minutes) instead of on every capture, giving an even spread of tray data; the interval is adjustable from the technician settings page.
- If the machine software fails to start due to a configuration problem, the screen now shows a clear failure panel with the error details and a restart option, instead of being stuck on "Loading...".
- Safety fix: manual tray jog now stops immediately if a door is opened or the safety circuit trips, and jogging cannot be started while the safety circuit is tripped.
- Fixed machine status reporting so the monitoring server no longer shows the machine as both Stopped and Offline after a shutdown.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- Defect and size decisions are now confirmed across several consecutive frames per fruit before they are acted on, reducing false triggers from one-off readings. The number of frames required is adjustable and can now be changed live without restarting the machine.
- Tray over-height detection now adapts to the actual heights of the fruit being packed, for more accurate over-height handling.
- Improved sizing accuracy for the Gen5 tray camera.
- Machine name is now included in telemetry, so this machine's data appears under the correct name in monitoring dashboards.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- CrashCam now runs as its own dedicated service, with a refreshed technician page and a live camera feed that clearly shows when a source is offline or running in a degraded state.
- The machine now keeps running when a camera develops a fault: each camera's health is monitored individually and passed to the sequencer, so a single camera problem no longer stops the machine.
- Clearer camera fault reporting, with only one fault shown per camera at a time and more helpful fault messages.
- Added a fault that is raised when a camera's connection speed is degraded, so an under-performing camera link is flagged to the operator.
- New slide-to-lock conveyor jogging for easier, safer manual conveyor movement.
- More reliable fault handling across stop/start cycles: fixed tray over-height and infeed-overfull faults that could latch on or block the machine from starting.
- Tray jog is now cancelled automatically before the machine starts.
- Tidier, more consistent operator interface.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- Restored correct service and host name tags on machine logs and metrics, so Packer telemetry once again appears under the right machine name in monitoring dashboards.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- Slowed down the non-placing actuator for smoother, gentler operation.
- Removed the older encoder test from the conveyor calibration dialog; it is being replaced by an improved pulse-advance test.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- Updated the rotation-unit firmware to v8, correcting the yoke advance speed.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- More reliable startup fault reporting: pneumatics, camera-trigger, rotation and infeed boards that are unreachable at power-on now show a clear communications fault on screen instead of staying silent.
- Cleaner fault display: paired left/right rotation-unit faults are now combined into a single message per unit, reducing on-screen clutter.
- Better handling of incorrect board firmware, with faults clearing automatically once the firmware is corrected.
- More accurate conveyor encoder calibration, with extra settle time between calibration pulses.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- More reliable robot homing: new optimised and side-homing modes, plus per-servo calibration offsets that reduce minor servo collisions and make homing smoother and more dependable.
- New external IO inhibit support.
- Clearer Modbus 1-based board names.
- More robust fault handling and recovery around the servos and CAN communication, plus corrected stop behaviour.
- General stability and reliability improvements.
- Improved safety and power handling: the machine now coordinates power-loss and resume across the robot, servos and conveyors more reliably, with clearer controlled stops (drains before stopping).
- New explicit safety-start warning shown on screen before the machine starts.
- The reset button now lights up to guide the operator.
- More robust hardware fault reporting (servo communication faults reported correctly; spurious faults during power loss cleared).
- Faster homing.
- More reliable data sync to remote servers (honours the replication setting; fixed database timeouts during replication).
- General stability and reliability improvements to the Gen5 machine control software.
- Added monitoring of the kiosk task so the operator screen stays running reliably.
- Fixed a rare crash caused by the local database being momentarily locked.
- New, modernised operator screen (rebuilt user interface).
- MindVision cameras now report their temperature.
- Smoother startup and shutdown behaviour.
- Fixed the missing configuration tab and various small UI issues.
- More reliable camera speed detection when cameras are connected through a PCIE hub.
- Fixed recirculation ball lane detection.
- Improved fruit inference and image streaming responsiveness.
- Cameras now report their connection speed status.
- Faster, cleaner tray vision capture.
- Added a "delete last fruit" action for operators.
- A camera that fails to produce an image now raises a fault instead of stalling the machine.
- Fixed the main window dropping behind other windows when closing message boxes.
- Gen5.2 machine support, including updated IO configuration.
- More reliable fault handling (no more duplicated faults; cleaner startup when previous runs did not close cleanly).
- Improved defect detection accuracy.
- Numerous stability and reliability improvements across machine control and logging.
- Added the ability to disable the X servos during homing.
- Fixed a regression introduced in 5.0.1.0.
- Added configurable fruit sampling rules to recipes.
- Improved lighting and camera trigger behaviour.
- Various fixes to the defect capture page and fruit stream downloads.
- First release for Gen5 machines.
- Upgraded defect detection (model v6) and tray models for better accuracy.
- Improved camera exposure handling.
- Numerous reliability fixes across inference, faults and the machine control software.