Gardening With…OpenSCAD?

October 1, 2026 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

Unless it’s automated or using some other form of high-tech trickery, a vegetable garden isn’t exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to see on Hackaday. Be that as it may, the bountiful crop of peppers [Mihai Oltean] grew on the side of his house was done the old fashioned way, with nary a transistor in sight. So what’s the catch?

Well, in this case, it’s more about the journey than the end result. The produce sprouting in [Mihai]’s garden may be common enough, but the method in which he designed the garden itself is worth a closer look. To our knowledge, it’s the first time somebody sat down and wrote out all the code to generate a 3D model of a vertical garden in OpenSCAD.

Usually, we see OpenSCAD used to produce design files for 3D printing or occasionally 2D CNC operations. But that’s not what’s happening here. The goal was to simply plan out how all the parts of the system would come together, and [Mihai] felt comfortable tackling it in the code-centric workflow offered by OpenSCAD. We know the feeling well.

Though the code isn’t necessarily being used to produce parts for manufacture, [Mihai] does bring in a bunch of virtual components to stand in for their corporeal counterparts. We’re partial to using a parts library such as NopSCADlib for this kind of thing, but from the looks of the GitHub repo, [Mihai] decided to implement his own versions of the screws, nuts, washers, and sections of metal extrusion used to construct the garden wall.

We recently covered the advantages of “building” a complex multi-part project like a CNC control cabinet virtually in your CAD tool of choice before bending metal on the real thing. This project is a fantastic example of that concept, as it shows that the technique isn’t limited to electronic components.

An Interactive Tomato Farm Overseen By AI

July 7, 2026 by Ian Bos 14 Comments

Oh, the farming lifestyle…living off the land, fending for yourself. But who’s got time for all that? For the modern hacker, the best option in the garden space may be this over-engineered automated AI tomato farm created by [Gerd Nicolay]. You can even interact with it right now through the magic of the Internet.

[Gerd] started off with your run-of-the-mill pot and plant, choosing the humble tomato to keep the system simple. Then things started to escalate, with the addition of automatic lighting, watering, and data logging environmental parameters like humidity. Now we’re getting somewhere, but there’s more that can be added. How about an entire AI council to monitor and decide the fate of each individual tomato while recording an entire storyline to go alongside the growing cycle?

That’s right, four different models collaborate to ensure only the utmost quality of care for these tomatoes based on camera feeds, humidity, and various other environmental factors being recorded constantly. Is this a little overkill? Maybe for those who have even a modest sense of gardening knowledge — but who can bash the mountain of documentation and data collection on these wonderful little plants?

Perhaps the best part: you can recommend actions for the AI counsel to take from the comfort of your own web browser. While the TomatoFarm might be slightly unnecessary for the average farmer, if you want to try a more reasonable monitoring system, we have you covered too!

The Only Snail You Want In Your Garden Is A Seed-Starting Hack

February 28, 2026 by Tyler August 11 Comments

As temperatures warm up in the Northern Hemisphere, one’s mind naturally turns to the outdoors and the garden — even if some of our gardens are still snow-covered. One secret to good gardening is that many of the plants we love take too long to grow if started from seed outside, at least in relatively temperate climes. There are a myriad of ways to grow seedlings indoors, and this new hack highlighted by [GrowVeg] looks like a great way to get started.

The idea apparently comes from the seedier side of Instagram, where [Farida Sober] has been popularizing it as a “seed snail”, a name they seem to have coined. The technique is very simple: take a sheet of something cheap that won’t disintegrate when moist like bubble wrap or cardboard, layer it with soil — up to 5 cm depending on your seed size — and you roll the whole thing up like a piece of sushi to produce the spiral shape that gives the hack its name. With a piece of tape to hold the roll, it’s just a matter of planting your seeds according to the packet directions. If that’s clear as mud, check out the video embedded below.

Once the seedlings have grown, it looks like it will be very easy to unroll the spiral and pluck them out to plant in the ground or bigger pots without overly traumatizing their roots, like we always do starting in flats. If it weren’t for those delicate roots, it certainly looks like the snail might save some space compared to, say, peat pots. Just remember that starting under the proper LEDs can make a huge difference to how quickly your seeds grow. No dirt? No problem — once sprouted, your plants can be made to grow hydroponically. For the really adventurous, there’s even aeroponics.

Continue reading “The Only Snail You Want In Your Garden Is A Seed-Starting Hack” →

Mobile phone reading an NFC tag with information on a garden plant

NFC Puts A Stake In The Ground

August 15, 2023 by Michael Shaub 21 Comments

Sometimes we have a new part or piece of tech that we want to use, and it feels like a solution looking for a problem. Upon first encountering NFC Tags, [nalanj] was looking for an application and thought they might make a great update to old-fashioned plant markers in a garden. Those are usually small and, being outside 24/7, the elements tend to wear away at what little information they hold.

[nalanj] used a freeform data structuring service called Cardinal to set up text information fields for each plant and even photos. Once a template has been created, every entry gets a unique URL that’s perfect for writing to an NFC tag. See the blog post on Cardinal’s site for the whole process, the thought behind the physical design of the NFC tag holder, and a great application of a pause in the 3D print to encapsulate the tags.

NFC tags are super hackable, though, so you don’t have to limit yourself to lookups in a plant database. Heck, you could throw away your door keys.

Plants compared side-by-side, with LED-illuminated plants growing way more than the sunlight-illuminated plants

Plant Growth Accelerated Tremendously With LEDs

April 30, 2022 by Arya Voronova 37 Comments

[GreatScott!] was bummed to see his greenhouse be empty and lifeless in winter. So, he set out to take the greenhouse home with him. Well, at least, a small part of it. First, he decided to produce artificial sunlight, setting up a simple initial experiment for playing with different wavelength LEDs. How much can LEDs affect plant growth, really? This is the research direction that Würth Elektronik, supporting his project, has recently been expanding into. They’ve been working on extensive application notes, explaining the biological aspects of it for us — a treasure trove of resources available at no cost, that hackers can and should learn from.

Initially, [GreatScott!] obtained LEDs in four different colors – red, ‘hyper red’, deep blue, and daylight spectrum. The first three are valued because their specific wavelengths are absorbed well by plants. The use of daylight LEDs though has been controversial. Nevertheless, he points out that the plant might require different wavelengths for things other than photosynthesis, and the daylight LEDs sure do help assess the plants visually as the experiment goes on.

Next, [GreatScott!] borrowed parts of Würth’s LED driver designs, creating an Arduino PWM driver with simple potentiometers. He used this to develop his own board to host the LEDs.

An aluminum PCB increases heat dissipation, prolonging the LEDs lifespan. [GreatScott!] reflowed the LEDs onto it with solder paste, only to find that the ‘hyper red’ LEDs died during the process. Thankfully, by the time this problem reared its head, he managed to obtain the official horticulture devkit, with an LED panel ready to go.

[GreatScott!’s] test subjects were Arugula plants, whose leaves you often find on prosciutto pizza. Having built a setup with two different sets of flower pots, one LED-adorned and one LED-less, he put both of them on his windowsill. The plants were equally exposed to sunlight and equally watered. The LED duty cycle was set to ballpark values.

The results were staggering, as you can see in the picture above — no variable changing except the LEDs being used. This experiment, even including a taste test with a pizza as a test substrate, was a huge success, and [GreatScott!] recommends that we hit Würth up for free samples as we embark on our own plant growth improvement journeys.

Horticulture (aka plant growing) is one of the areas where hackers, armed with troves of freely available knowledge, can make big strides — and we’re not even talking about the kind of plants our commenters are sure to mention. The field of plant growth is literally fruitful and ripe for the picking. You can accomplish a whole lot of change with surprisingly little effort. The value of the plants on your windowsill doesn’t have to be purely decorative, and a small desk-top setup you hack together, can easily scale up! Some hackers understand that, and we’ve started seeing automated growing solutions way before Raspberry Pi was even a thing. The best part is, that you only need a few LEDs to start.

Continue reading “Plant Growth Accelerated Tremendously With LEDs” →

A soil moisture sensor with silkscreen chipped and copper corroded

Soil Moisture Sensor Coating Lessons Learned The Hard Way

March 2, 2022 by Arya Voronova 35 Comments

Ever wanted to measure soil moisture? Common “soil moisture meter module arduino raspberry compatible free shipping” PCBs might deceive you with their ascetic looks. Today, [Raphael (@rbaron_)] is here to teach us (Twitter, unrolled) what it takes to build a soil-embedded sensor that can actually survive contact with a plant.

As the picture might hint, waterproofing is of paramount importance, and soldermask doesn’t quite cut it. Raphael describes his journey of figuring out approaches and coatings that would last, starting from simply using nail polish, and ending with the current option – a rotisserie-like device that rotates sensors as the coating applied to them dries, mitigating a certain kind of structural failure observed long-term. With plenty of illustrative pictures and even a video of the rotisserie device in action, you’ll quickly learn things that took time and effort for Raphael to figure out.

This isn’t the first time Raphael shares some design battlefield stories and lessons with us – he has taught us about overall capacitive moisture sensor principles, too! If that interests you, we’ve covered quite a few moisture sensor designs, from cheap but hardy two-nails designs to flip-dot-equipped ones, and some of us take the commercial designs and upgrade them!

We thank [Chaos] for sharing this with us!

Continue reading “Soil Moisture Sensor Coating Lessons Learned The Hard Way” →

A tupperware-sized 3D-printed aeroponics cell, a grid-like contraption, with about 30 cloves of garlic in it, about five of them starting to grow. The cell is printed with white plastic, and there's a semi-transparent acrylic roof with LED strips attached to its underside, lifted about 3-4 inches above the garlic.

Aeroponic Cell Grows Garlic, Forwards CellSol Packets

January 16, 2022 by Arya Voronova 16 Comments

Certain pictures draw attention like no other, and that’s what happened when we stumbled upon a Twitter post about “resuscitating supermarket garlic” by [Robots Everywhere]. The more we looked at this photo, the more questions popped up, and we couldn’t resist contacting the author on Twitter – here’s what we’ve learned!

This is an aeroponics cell – a contraption that creates suitable conditions for a plant to grow. The difference of aeroponics, when compared to soil or hydroponics methods, is that the plant isn’t being submerged in soil or water. Instead, its roots are held in the air and sprayed with water mist, providing both plenty of water but also an excess of oxygen, as well as a low-resistance space for accelerated root growth – all of these factors that dramatically accelerate nutrient absorption and development of the plant. This cell design only takes up a tiny bit of space on the kitchen countertop, and, in a week’s time, at least half of the cloves have sprouted!

Much like a garlic bulb, this project has layers to it – in that this aeroponic cell is also a CellSol node! The CellSol project is a distributed communication system that can use LoRa and WiFi for its physical layer, enabling you to build widely spanning mesh networks that even lets you connect your smartphone to it where it’s called for – say, as an internet-connected hub for other devices to send their data through. We’ve covered CellSol and it’s hacker-friendliness previously, and one of the intentions of this design is to show how any device with a bit of brains and a SX1276 module can help you form a local CellSol network, or participate in some larger volunteer-driven CellSol-powered effort.

If, like us, you’re looking at this picture and thinking “this is something I’d love to see on my desk”, [Robots Everywhere] has published the STL files for making a hydroponic cell like this at home, as well as all the code involved, and some demo videos. Hopefully, the amount of aeroponics projects in our tips line is only going to increase! We’ve covered Project EDEN before, a Hackaday Prize 2017 entry that works to perfect an aeroponics approach to create an indoor greenhouse. There’s also a slew of hydroponics projects to have graced our pages, from hardware store-built to 3D printed ones!

Continue reading “Aeroponic Cell Grows Garlic, Forwards CellSol Packets” →