"from seeds import plants: using IoT to grow healthy herbs"
summary
Builds an automated system that actually grows alfalfa herbs and uses far less water: MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico W reads a capacitive soil moisture probe and runs a peristaltic pump with a tunable moisture threshold, and remote logging to influx DB. Seeds sprout in about 3–4 days, reservoir barely needs topping up, distance sensor gives noisy growth signals, YOLO v11 / custom vision and simple ML show low confidence but workable proof of concept, code repo available.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00IoT herb growing intro
- 2:13Problem inspiration & safety
- 3:57Timer to event-driven watering
- 6:42Hardware: sensors pumps feedback
- 9:33Beyond moisture: environmental sensing
- 12:42Wi-Fi & remote data logging
- 14:51Remote monitoring with Raspberry Pi camera
- 17:00YOLO computer vision experiments
- 19:06Model to count seeds and leaves
- 20:52Lessons learned & next steps
- 22:15Embracing failure in learning
- 23:40Q&A: water savings & thresholds
- 27:13Q&A: Micropython improvements
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