Roof windows that open with the heat and slam shut before a storm. Watering by relay. A daily AI read on what the plants went through. Built at home, wired by hand, documented honestly — bugs included.
The real dashboard shows this scene in realtime over MQTT: two roof flaps that actually move, a climate map, and — since this week — a water-zone glow that honestly covers only the north bed, because that's the only bed valve 1 reaches.
Once a day the server sends 24 hours of temperature, humidity and cloud-cover history to Claude, which returns a short plain-language analysis: how the climate behaved, and early warnings for heat stress or mildew risk. It shows up on the dashboard like a note from someone who was watching all day.
“A warm afternoon peaking at 27.4°C; the roof vented on time and kept the spike short. Overnight humidity stayed above 85% under cloud cover — watch the lower tomato leaves for early mildew, and consider venting earlier tomorrow morning.”
Every node is a €5 ESP32 talking MQTT to a small server. Fail-safe by design: lose the network and the windows close, valves shut themselves off, nothing floods.
Two nodes drive 12V linear actuators through BTS7960 H-bridges — one per roof flap, north and south. A weather guard on Open-Meteo data closes both windows on thunderstorms, gusts over 50 km/h or rain, then restores the last wanted position when it clears.
A sensor node publishes inside temperature and humidity over MQTT. The climate engine vents on hysteresis — open above 25°C, close under 21°C — with the weather guard always taking priority. At midnight, Claude analyses the full day.
A fail-safe-closed 1″ solenoid valve on a Grove relay, on its own node with its own firmware — deliberately decoupled from the climate logic. Manual for now, from a dashboard button or a shell script; soil-moisture automation is the next chapter.
The roof limit switches are probably dead or miswired, so the move-timeout is parked at 90 seconds as a workaround. The DS18B20 outdoor sensors never worked despite hours of diagnosis; a DHT11 does the job for now. That's what building real hardware looks like — and it all still runs.
Actuators mounted, H-bridges wired, limit switches fitted (and promptly suspected dead — 90s timeout workaround in place). The weather safety-close and the 2-hour heartbeat failsafe have both already earned their keep.
A separate ESP32 with a DHT11 for inside temperature and humidity, publishing WiFi signal strength as a bonus. The fancy DS18B20 probes never talked back despite extensive diagnosis — the humble onboard sensor won.
climateControl.ts vents automatically on inside temperature with clean hysteresis. And once a day, the last 24 hours of climate history goes to Claude for a short written analysis with heat-stress and mildew warnings.
Firmware flashed and tested over USB; the relay clicks on command. Confirmed this week: valve 1 only waters the north bed — so the dashboard now honestly shows the water glow on the north plants only. Next up: wiring the 12/24V supply to prove the valve really opens.
If enough people want it, two things could exist. Tell me which one you'd use — that's genuinely what decides the roadmap.
Pre-flashed ESP32 nodes, actuator drivers, relay board and wiring guide — retrofit any hobby greenhouse with self-venting windows and watering in a weekend. No soldering marathon, no firmware rabbit hole.
I'd buy the kit →The dashboard and climate engine as a product: live scene of your greenhouse, weather-aware failsafes, and the nightly AI analysis — for growers who already have the hardware but not the picture.
I'd use the software →Learn to build it yourself: a hands-on course from the real build log — wiring ESP32s and actuators, MQTT, fail-safe design, and hooking up the AI analysis. As a video series, workshop or a day in the actual greenhouse.
Teach me →Leave your email and what you're interested in. No spam — just build updates and a first shout when the kit or software becomes real.