Pi Garden & Sensor Dashboard Kit

Two probes in the soil measure resistance (or capacitance, which resists corrosion) — wet soil conducts, dry soil does not. The Pi reads the value and texts you when the bed drops below a threshold. It is the automated version of the finger-test, and it never forgets.

A $30 Pi camera module gives a networked, scriptable eye — capture a daily timelapse of the garden, record 10 seconds when motion trips, or stream a live view. It is the cheapest way to put a camera where you want it and control it with code, no subscription.

Home Assistant (or Grafana) reads every sensor and renders a wall dashboard — the garden moisture, each room's temp, the camera feed, the automation log. A wall-mounted tablet or an e-paper display shows it at a glance. The dashboard turns a pile of sensors into a single picture.

The Pi is sensitive — for outdoor sensors, run a weather-proof PoE (power-over-ethernet) injector so one cable carries both data and power, or a low-voltage landscape wire to a waterproof enclosure. Keep the Pi itself in a dry box; only the weather-proofed sensors live in the rain.