Flaura, the Smart Watering Pot

While indoor plants can brighten up a home or office space, you need to remember to water them regularly. It’s a task that many of us don’t always do. This would include Martin, who notes that, “I engineer, and I don’t garden stuff.”

Fortunately, Martin has come up with an alternative to continuously providing water to plants, in the form of "Flaura." This 3D-printed smart pot features a built-in 0.7 liter liquid reservoir, storing enough water for about three months of watering. A small pump is used to spray the plant when needed, according to soil moisture levels attained via a capacitive sensor. In addition, the pot has a sensor setup for the reservoir itself, allowing the plant’s human minder to keep it sufficiently filled.

These sensors are tied to an ESP32 microcontroller on a Wemos Lolin32 board, which initiates the watering pump motor as needed. The ESP32 also uses its WiFi capabilities to push notifications to a smartphone via the Blynk app. This app lets you tweak settings, and generates graphical info about how your plant setup is performing.

The system is battery controlled, and uses the ESP32’s sleep capability to only wake once a day to check moisture levels. This enables it it to function for months on a LiPo battery before it needs to be recharged.

The system looks like a really excellent way to keep plants happy, and the video below gives a nice overview of the device’s features. Martin plans to share further tutorials and information on how to build it yourself in the future, so be sure to check back there and/or subscribe for updates!