We’ve seen plant monitors many times before now, but this one, by self-taught electronics tinkerer Ovidiu, is worth a closer look. First of all because its creator is self-taught: if you can imagine it, you can build it; the only downside of being self-taught is that it’ll probably take you longer than it would if you knew what to do/where to look.

Ovidiu’s used an ESP32 and an e-ink display to create a plant monitor with an impressive eleven days battery life (longer if you run it without the display), and kept electronic components off the soil probes so that they are cheap to replace should they break/get stolen by foxes. The machine monitors temperature, soil moisture levels, humidity, light levels and more, and shares data via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.