JalRakshak Garden AI: Bringing Open-Source AI Into the Garden 🌱

Description and use

JalRakshak Garden AI is a local‑first system that combines a React dashboard, FastAPI backend, ESP8266 firmware, and soil/temperature sensors to monitor gardens and enable automated watering using local AI inference.

Problem

Home gardeners lack a local, privacy‑preserving system that can monitor environmental conditions, log plant care, and automate watering based on real sensor data.

Outcome

The prototype demonstrates sensor data collection and a planned end‑to‑end flow from ESP8266 to dashboard, with future work on reliable Wi‑Fi, sensor calibration, and safe automated watering.

Workflow

• Build React frontend for garden management and journal
• Implement FastAPI backend with SQLite and IoT telemetry endpoint
• Configure ESP8266 to read DHT11 and soil sensors and send data over Wi‑Fi
• Integrate sensor readings into dashboard
• Add second soil sensor for comparison and calibrate outputs
• Design relay and pump safety circuit with thresholds and cooldowns
• Plan automated watering rules and emergency stop

Evidence

The DHT11 has already produced real readings of approximately 30–31 °C and 64–66% relative humidity during testing.

Source

The mini pump and relay are part of the hardware prototype. Before enabling automatic watering, I plan to add safeguards such as configurable moisture thresholds, a maximum pump runtime, cooldown periods, and a manual emergency stop.

Source