Mushroom Monitor
A one-week DIY grow monitor — ESP32 sensors in a mushroom-shaped housing, streaming plant conditions to a Streamlit dashboard
Mushroom Monitor
The Mushroom Monitor was a one-week project for the course “Hands-on Experience of Field Life,” where students cultivated plants and were ranked by how well they grew. As an EE student, I took the engineering approach — build a remote weather station to keep an eye on growing conditions without being physically present at the farm.
The finished monitor — a red mushroom with white dots housing the sensors
System
The monitor is built around an ESP32 for its built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. It integrates three sensors:
- Ambient light sensor — tracks sunlight exposure
- DHT11 — measures temperature and humidity
- Soil humidity sensor — monitors soil moisture levels
Sensor data is fused in Python and streamed to a Streamlit web dashboard with hourly updates, so growing conditions can be checked from anywhere.
Power
Using the ESP32’s deep sleep mode, the monitor wakes periodically to sample and transmit, then goes back to sleep. With careful power budgeting, a single charge lasts up to two weeks in the field.
The Mushroom Monitor deployed in the field