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Tend.

early prototype · v0.1

A shared garden journal for keeping track of what’s planted, how things are doing, and how a connected watering setup is behaving.

What it is

The idea for tend was brought to me by my wife, who keeps a garden on our front deck and in our backyard.

With our busy schedules, sometimes we forget to water the plants, and after a few perished due to a lack of moisture, I realized it would be easy to build an automated watering system with an ESP32, some capacitive soil sensors, and a small water pump.

I added some photography and note-taking capabilities to make it feel like a digital field notebook for the budding (see what I did there) botanist I fell in love with.

it does

+ keep a shared record of your planting stations, plants, notes, and photos
+ let the people in your household sign in and look after the same garden together
+ show recent moisture levels and a history of when a bed was watered
+ help you connect a watering device to a specific station and tune how it behaves
+ work nicely in a phone browser

it doesn’t

× check the weather for you
× send texts, reminders, or alerts
× work fully offline or only on your home network
× handle timed watering schedules
× feel finished yet — some of the watering flow is still being built

What it runs on

app: a React web app, hosted online rather than on a local Pi
backend: Convex for data, auth, file uploads, and the device API
devices: ESP32 boards with moisture sensors and a relay-controlled pump
sign-in: email login codes, with shared households and join codes
license: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
source: github.com/luca-gugs/plant-people

Try it

Right now, tend is still a developer-friendly prototype rather than a polished install. If you want to try it, the README walks through local setup and the pieces you’ll need.

$ git clone https://github.com/luca-gugs/plant-people.git && cd plant-people && npm install && npx convex dev --until-success && npm run dev

read the README →source on github ask me a question

Changelog

2026 · apr 21

first commit. The early shape is already there: a shared garden journal, photo logging, device setup, and the beginnings of automatic watering.

The goal is a garden that is a little more forgiving of the person tending it.