Photos and Files

You can attach photos, voice notes and documents to the work you record in Sporeline. This page covers what you can attach, how large each file can be, and how much your farm can keep.

What you can attach

• Photos (JPEG or PNG) on harvests, contamination reports, notes, cleaning logs, air tests, batches and strain tests, and in Farmhand chat.
• Voice notes (M4A or MP3) from the phone app, on a block or in Farmhand chat.
• PDFs and CSVs on a batch’s Files card and on a strain test, for lab certificates, run printouts and paper records. Farmhand chat takes photos and voice notes only.
• Photos of paper log sheets that you send to log transcription. These count toward your farm’s storage like any other photo.

iPhone photos saved as HEIC are not accepted. On the iPhone, open Settings > Camera > Formats and choose Most Compatible, and new photos are saved as JPEG.

How large each file can be

A phone photo is usually 2 to 6 MB, so these limits only stop unusual files. If a file is over its limit you see this message, and nothing is uploaded:

This file is too large. Photos and voice notes up to 25 MB, PDFs up to 50 MB, CSVs up to 10 MB.

Make the file smaller and try again. For a PDF, save it again at a lower image quality or split it into parts. For a photo, take it again at a lower resolution, or send a smaller copy from your phone.

Storage for your farm

Every file your farm uploads counts toward its storage:

On Free that is roughly 100 to 200 phone photos. When your farm reaches its storage you see this message, and the upload doesn’t start:

Your farm’s file storage is full (500 MB of 500 MB). Upgrade in Settings > Billing for more room.

Your files stay where they are and you can still open every one of them. Records without a photo or file save as usual. To keep uploading, an Owner upgrades the farm in Settings > Billing.

Good to know

• Storage is counted when an upload starts. An upload you cancel partway, or one that fails, still counts toward your farm’s storage for now.
• Removing a file from a record does not give its space back yet.
• If you think your farm’s count is wrong, email us and we will check it.

On the phone, with or without signal

A photo or voice note you take in the phone app is kept on the phone the moment you take it. Losing signal, the app closing or the phone restarting does not lose it.

You can record a harvest, flag contamination, add a note, log a cleaning or save a voice log with photos when the phone has no signal. The record waits on the phone and sends itself when the phone is back online: the photos and voice notes upload first, then the record that uses them. The block or location shows the record right away, with a Saving line under it until it has gone through. After a voice log the phone says:

Saved on this phone. It uploads when there’s signal.

A location’s cleaning history on the phone shows the ten newest cleanings first. Tap Load more under the list to see older ones. A cleaning you logged without signal keeps the time you logged it, so if ten newer cleanings went in before it reached Sporeline, it sits further down the history and can show Saved at the top until you load the page it is on.

Seeing what is still waiting

Open More and look at the Sync card. While photos or voice notes are still going up it shows N files waiting to upload. The actions pending line above it counts the records waiting behind those files. You don’t need to do anything; they send as soon as the phone can reach Sporeline.

Signing out or handing the phone to someone else does not delete anything that is waiting. It sends the next time the same person signs in on that phone.

If a file can’t be uploaded, the card reads N files couldn’t upload with the reason under it, and the records that use those files wait too. Retry uploads tries again once the cause is fixed. What to do depends on the reason:

• The file is over its size limit. The sizes are in the table above, and retrying won’t make the file smaller. Take the photo or voice note again; a normal phone photo is well under the limit.
• Your farm’s file storage is full. An Owner upgrades the farm in Settings > Billing, then tap Retry uploads.
• This file is no longer on this phone. The phone’s copy was removed, for example by clearing the app’s data. That file can’t be sent, so take the photo again and record it again.

If a sheet closes before you save

If the app closes while you have a sheet open, say the phone runs out of battery halfway through a harvest, the photos you took are still on the phone. They come back the next time you open that block’s or location’s sheet, as long as that is within a week. After a week the phone throws away photos that were never saved to a record.

Farmhand

If a Farmhand message doesn’t go through, the phone says:

Not sent. Your message and attachments are still here.

Your text, photos and voice clip stay in the box, so you can send again when you have signal. A photo that already uploaded on the first try is not uploaded a second time.

Older versions of the app

An older version of the phone app can still upload photos and voice notes for now, up to a daily limit for each farm. When the farm reaches it, the older app shows:

This version of the app has reached today’s upload limit. Update the Sporeline app to keep uploading.

Update the app from the App Store or Google Play and uploads carry on. Only the updated app keeps photos on the phone while there is no signal.