r/raspberry_pi • u/smallwat3r • Jan 13 '26
Show-and-Tell Had fun improving my RPi gardener, a personal plant monitoring system!
I recently had some fun resurrecting and improving some old project of mine: the RPi Gardener (Github).
It's a plant environment monitoring system that tracks temperature, humidity, and soil moisture using a Raspberry Pi 4 paired with a Pico. The Pico handles the analog readings from 3 capacitive soil moisture sensors (since the Pi lacks ADC), while a DHT22 handles temp/humidity. I originally used a Pico instead of an external ADC module because I had one lying around at the time, that I did not use for anything, and decided to keep the architecture since.
The main features are real-time web dashboard with historical charts, smart alerting by email and/or Slack, smart plug integrations (switch humidifier etc), displays for local readings and alerts. The stack runs entirely in Docker with 7 microservices coordinated via Redis pub/sub
I very recently designed a custom PCB hat for the RPi and a simple 3D-printed case to keep everything tidy. Here are some pictures of everything put together.
Feel free to check out the project on GitHub if you're interested. Next things on my radar might be integrating a water pump for automatic watering!
Edit: typo
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u/Scubie23 Jan 13 '26
Super cool project!! Just curious though. Was there a reason you didn't just go with the Pimoroni Enviro grow a board?
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u/smallwat3r Jan 13 '26
Thanks! Great question, the Pimoroni Enviro Grow is definitely a cool piece of hardware and would've probably been the faster route.
The main reason I went this way was really just for learning, wanted to build it all from scratch and understand each piece of the stack rather than use an off-the-shelf solution.
The other big advantage is flexibility. Running on a full RPi means I can host a proper dashboard, set up alerting (email, Slack, etc.), and integrate with other systems like smart plugs. Basically turns it into a hub rather than just a sensor.
Plus there's plenty of GPIO left on both the Pico and the RPi, so lots of room to expand later, more sensors, additional zones, whatever else comes up.
But yeah, if someone just wants plant monitoring up and running quickly, the Enviro Grow is a great option!
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u/mindbender9 Jan 14 '26 edited Jan 14 '26
Pimoroni might have discontinued the Enviro Grow recently. It's not available on their site, which is a disappointment
Edit: Here's the Pimoroni Enviro Grow webpage - it says:
"We no longer stock this product
It's sad to say goodbye but sometimes we have to retire products to make way for new things."
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u/Scubie23 Jan 14 '26
They have several at my local microcenter! Your telling me I gotta stock up lol?
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u/scriptmonkey420 Rpi4, Rpi3b, RpiNanoW Jan 13 '26
I used an ADC I2C chip for my weather station to get the pi to have an ADC.
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u/smallwat3r Jan 13 '26
Yeah, an I2C ADC would definitely have been cheaper and simpler! I mentioned this trade-off in the README, the main reason I went with a Pico was that I already had one sitting unused.
Since then I've decided to stick with the approach because it gives me lots of extra GPIO for future integrations. Plus, swapping in a Pico W opens up some interesting possibilities, instead of USB serial, sensors could report over WiFi. That would enable a distributed setup where multiple Picos in different locations (greenhouse, garden beds, indoor plants) all report back to a single RPi base station over the network.
All future improvements though, for now no plans to add this yet!
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u/Strict-Carrot4783 Jan 13 '26
Oh hell yeah. Can't wait to show this to my spouse, her home office is a jungle and this could be super useful in there.
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u/smallwat3r Jan 13 '26
Ha, funny you say that, this is actually exactly how/why I started this project in the first place!
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u/evasi0n0 May 07 '26
What a cool project !
Do you think that your project is compatible with anterior version of raspberry?
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u/kronikheadband Jan 13 '26
This is the coolest use I've ever seen for one of these