PlantHub watches soil, light, temperature, and humidity in real time — then tells you, in plain English, what your plant needs and why. No more guesswork. No more crispy fiddle-leafs.
Soil moisture at 24%. I'll water for 8s in the morning — rain is expected tomorrow.
The Problem
You shouldn't need an engineering degree to keep your tomatoes alive — or $200 to automate one plant.
80%
of houseplants die from improper watering.
$200+
is the average cost of a smart garden system.
Hours
of YAML and soldering for any DIY solution.
Timers
is all most "smart" planters really are.
Meet PlantHub
Reads sensors and the forecast, then picks from five AI modes — Conservative through Manual. Every decision logs the reasoning behind it.
Premium hardware from $15. No lock-in, 5–10× cheaper than the competition. Safety limits on watering time and cooldowns are enforced in code, not prompts.
AI compiles schedules into on-device rules. Wifi drops, your garden keeps going — and skips watering when rain is in the forecast.
Push notifications straight to your phone via AWS SNS. Threshold warnings, AI decisions, device-offline events — you pick exactly which alerts reach you.
How it works
Three steps from box to autonomous garden. No YAML. No soldering. No regret.
Your node self-registers, generates a claim code, and waits. No firmware flashing. No terminal commands. No soldering.
Type the code, pick your plant. PlantHub loads its profile, ideal ranges, seeds 30 starter rules, and the AI starts generating smarter ones from day one.
Five AI modes from fully autonomous to notify-only. Override per tenant, per zone, or per plant — anytime. The AI adapts its check schedule to your plant’s needs.
Soil moisture is trending downward. Consider watering soon.
Live demo
This is what a real PlantHub device page looks like. Sensor data flows in via SSE, AI evaluates your plant's condition, and actions are recommended — all in real time.
Capabilities
Skips watering when rain is on the way. Pre-empts heatwaves. Tells you why before acting.
Ask "Why are my basil leaves drooping?" and get answers backed by your sensor history, weather data, and learned patterns — in plain English.
Analyzes your sensor data and plant profile, then recommends threshold-based automation rules you can approve with one tap. No manual config needed.
Scores each actuator's effectiveness, climbs from LOW to EXPERT confidence, and factors your feedback into the next run.
Compiled from 30 seeded templates and AI recommendations. Your wifi can drop all afternoon — the garden keeps going.
Conservative, Balanced, Aggressive, Power-Saver, Manual. Override at tenant, zone, or device — inheritance sorts the rest.
Checks more often when your plant is stressed, less when it's thriving. Adapts its own interval to save energy and API costs.
Decisions, threshold warnings, and device-offline events streamed over SSE — plus push notifications straight to your phone via SNS.
Moisture, temp, light, pH ranges for tomatoes, herbs, succulents and more. Custom profiles too.
AI learning loop
Most "smart" planters guess once and repeat forever. PlantHub watches what happened, remembers similar situations, discovers what works together, and tightens its own rules.
Every action captures the sensor delta it produced — before vs. after, per actuator.
Effectiveness is scored. Confidence climbs LOW → MEDIUM → HIGH → EXPERT as samples accumulate.
Your feedback — "too early", "too long" — is batched hourly and turned into learned context.
Each evaluation is vectorized and stored. Before the next check, the AI recalls similar past situations to inform its decision.
Detects multi-actuator patterns — like watering + ventilation at 6 AM producing 2× better results than either alone.
All learned patterns — single, multi-actuator, and your preferences — are injected into the next prompt.
Safety you can prove
These aren't prompt instructions — they're enforced inside the code path that delivers every actuator command. The LLM physically can't exceed them.
Max water duration
Hard cap per command — AI cannot override.
Per-actuator cooldown
Same actuator can’t fire again until the timer expires.
Daily evaluation cap
Prevents runaway LLM spend and rapid decision churn.
Comparison
We love ESPHome — we built on it. We just made it accessible to people who aren't engineers.
| Feature | PlantHub | ESPHome | Home Assistant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Plug & claim | Hours of YAML | Complex local setup |
| Intelligence | AI-based (context aware) | Rule-based | Rule-based |
| AI chat (ask about your plants) | |||
| AI-suggested automation rules | |||
| AI memory (learns from history) | |||
| Plant knowledge | |||
| Weather integration | Manual add-on | ||
| Offline operation | Cloud-dependent | ||
| Push notifications | Native SNS | You build it | Complex YAML |
| Self-provisioning hardware | Plug & claim | Flash firmware | Flash firmware |
| Data retention | 1 year of history | Run your own DB | Your DB, your problem |
| Safety limits | Fail-safes (AI can’t override) | Only what you wrote | Only what you wrote |
| Mobile app | Native Android + Web | Clunky third-party | |
| Hardware included | |||
| Customer support | Forums |
Hardware
The same chips expensive competitors use — without the 10× markup or locked-down firmware.
Starter Node
1 sensor
Garden Kit
Soil + env + pump
Greenhouse
5 nodes
Use cases
Keep your balcony tomatoes and herbs thriving without daily check-ins.
Perfect humidity for your monstera. Automatic misting when needed.
Create named zones — Balcony, Greenhouse, Indoor — assign devices, and cascade AI settings per zone. Override modes without touching individual plants.
Scale to dozens of devices. AWS IoT Core with mutual TLS in production. Admin claim codes for bulk onboarding.
Why you can trust it
A garden controller talks to water pumps and heaters. It has to be safer than a prototype. Here’s what holds PlantHub together when nobody’s watching.
Your data is scoped at the API, filter, database, and MQTT layers. Guessing another user’s device ID still gets you nothing.
Reasoning, sensor data observed, weather context, commands issued — all logged against the session that made them.
Max durations, per-actuator cooldowns, and daily evaluation caps live in the command pipeline — not in the prompt.
Mutual TLS to AWS IoT Core. Per-device X.509 certificates and scoped IoT policies. Each device can only talk to its own topics.
FAQ
Your rules keep running. PlantHub compiles the active schedule to on-device rules, and the broker’s last-will message lets the dashboard flag the device offline the instant it reconnects.
Yes. The internet is used for AI decisions, weather fetches, and app sync. Day-to-day watering and ventilation rules execute locally.
Yes. Each device has a chat interface where you can ask questions like "Why are my leaves yellowing?" — the AI uses your sensor history, weather data, and learned patterns to respond in plain English. Conversations are saved so you can pick up where you left off.
Adaptively. If your plant is stressed, the AI checks more often. If everything’s stable, it waits longer — saving energy and API costs. You can also set a fixed schedule or switch to fully autonomous mode.
Yes. Based on your sensor data and plant profile, the AI analyzes patterns and recommends threshold-based automation rules you can approve with one tap — no manual if-then configuration needed.
50+ profiles out of the box — tomatoes, peppers, herbs, succulents and more. You can create custom profiles with your own moisture, temp, and light ranges.
Yes. PlantHub runs on ESP32-C3 with standard I2C and analog inputs. A published firmware SDK is on the roadmap for deeper extension.
Your tenant data is isolated at the API, filter, database, and MQTT layers — another user cannot query or subscribe to your devices. Every AI command is logged with full reasoning for your own audit.
Yes. PlantHub sends push notifications straight to your phone via AWS SNS. You choose exactly which events trigger alerts — threshold warnings, AI decisions, device-offline events, or all of the above.
Free during the beta. Post-launch pricing will be announced to waitlist members first, with early-bird rates locked in.
It’s on the hardware roadmap, no public ETA yet. USB-C is the supported power option today and will remain stable long-term.
If you have wifi and plants, PlantHub works. Weather data covers cities worldwide via OpenWeatherMap.
Early access
We're launching soon. Join the waitlist for early-bird pricing, first access to hardware, and input on features we build next.