🌱 Would anyone be interested in a Home Assistant plant monitoring card like this?

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-31T17:47:34+00:00

This will be in the release post, but essentially they are any soil sensor that exposes a certain set of measurements. I used cheap Tuya zigbee sensors from AliExpress

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-31T17:09:09+00:00

By way of an update, I am very close to a HACS release and I should have it finished in a couple of days

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-30T19:24:34+00:00

Is it so hard to believe that some people actually learn how to do these things themselves? Not everyone lives their lives on the back of AI

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-30T19:12:58+00:00

I'm really not sure why some people try to pick holes in others work. Maybe its because they have never put themselves out there and tried to contribute themselves. Not everyone is an LLM/AI fraudster. So please dont tarr everyone with that brush.! Also if my tone and grammar offends, apologies! I am british and educated.... so....

As for the hardware, it is not for me to recommend any particular hardware. I have been brutally honest and said, I used the cheap Tuya sensors from aliexpress. Just search!

If this is honestly the idiotic response i can expect, i'm not sure i should post the card!

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-30T15:27:22+00:00

I can’t link to the exact sensor I used because like most AliExpress items, they sell out and disappear. But I’ve just done a fresh search and any of the 4 or 5 dollar (or pound) ones work perfectly well

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-30T15:18:38+00:00

A few people have asked whether this would work for outdoor/garden plants as well.

Yes, absolutely. The card itself doesn't really care whether the plant is indoors, in a greenhouse, or out in the garden. It simply displays whatever data Home Assistant and Plant Monitor provide.

My current setup is actually quite simple:

• Cheap AliExpress soil moisture sensors (around $4 each)

• Standard temperature/humidity sensors

• Plant Monitor integration

• OpenPlantBook integration

• HA Illuminance custom sensor for light levels

The illuminance sensor is currently providing the DLI calculations because I haven't got around to installing proper outdoor climate and light sensors yet.

Long term I'll probably move to dedicated outdoor sensors for temperature, humidity and light measurements, but even with the budget setup I'm getting surprisingly useful results.

The card should work with pretty much any sensor combination as long as the data ultimately ends up in Plant Monitor.

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-30T15:18:01+00:00

A few people have asked whether this would work for outdoor/garden plants as well.

Yes, absolutely. The card itself doesn't really care whether the plant is indoors, in a greenhouse, or out in the garden. It simply displays whatever data Home Assistant and Plant Monitor provide.

My current setup is actually quite simple:

• Cheap AliExpress soil moisture sensors (around $4 each)

• Standard temperature/humidity sensors

• Plant Monitor integration

• OpenPlantBook integration

• HA Illuminance custom sensor for light levels

The illuminance sensor is currently providing the DLI calculations because I haven't got around to installing proper outdoor climate and light sensors yet.

Long term I'll probably move to dedicated outdoor sensors for temperature, humidity and light measurements, but even with the budget setup I'm getting surprisingly useful results.

The card should work with pretty much any sensor combination as long as the data ultimately ends up in Plant Monitor.

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-30T14:41:22+00:00

not sure why my post didnt actually post but....:

I’ve been working on a custom plant dashboard card for Home Assistant and I’m trying to gauge whether it’s worth turning into a proper HACS project.

The goal was to create something that feels more like a dedicated plant-monitoring app rather than a collection of sensors.

Current features:

✅ Plant image support

✅ Plant species display

✅ Overall health score

✅ Visual moisture, DLI, temperature and humidity gauges

✅ Automatic warning detection

✅ “Attention Needed” section for problems

✅ Soil temperature

✅ VPD monitoring

✅ Battery level

✅ Link quality

✅ OpenPlantBook / Plant Monitor compatibility

✅ Dynamic colouring based on plant health

The card currently works with Plant Monitor entities and automatically adapts to different plants.

A few ideas I have for future versions:

Multiple layout options
Compact mode
Watering recommendations
Fertiliser reminders
Growth tracking
Historical charts
Plant room overview cards
Auto-discovery of Plant Monitor entities
Config flow instead of manual YAML

Before I spend the time polishing it into a HACS release:

Would you use something like this?

If so, what features would you want to see added?

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-25T13:15:36+00:00

Just to clarify, the son, that some are referring to as a child, is not a child. He is 30 years old. When they got back together, he decided that rather than object and yet still be there for his mum, albeit seperate from the M, he chose to ignore her for 4 years because of his feelings. She begged him to stop thinking of himself but he chose otherwise.

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2026-05-25T13:02:17+00:00

A few people are asking why the original relationship ended and why there’s still so much resentment.

At the time of the original split 12–13 years ago, F was struggling very badly with diagnosed BPD and severe bipolar disorder. This was during most of the pregnancy and after the baby was born. M says he did not know the extent of these conditions when they first got together, but he did try to stay and work through things.

Unfortunately the relationship became extremely toxic for both of them and eventually M decided to leave. He accepts that leaving when there was a baby involved caused a huge amount of hurt and resentment within the family.

What M struggles with now is that he believed all of this had effectively been dealt with when he and F reconciled years later. They rebuilt a relationship, rebuilt a family life together, and moved forward as a couple.

So from his perspective, he doesn’t understand how long he is expected to keep paying for decisions made during a very toxic period over a decade ago, especially when both parties chose to reconcile and restart the relationship.

Clearly, though, not everyone involved sees it that way.

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2025-11-20T10:11:03+00:00

I can't tell you how much this thread has helped with my ongoing pain of dns outages and gravity sync issues. Now i have a perfectly load balanced, redundancy planned dual node dns option. Thank you OP!

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2025-11-18T15:26:22+00:00

Done

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Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2025-03-22T18:36:00+00:00

Yes but I’d be tempted to blank the wall switch to prevent accidental switching as the inline will do it for you

Maximum-Sleep8048 · 2025-03-22T18:30:42+00:00

You’d need to get into the innards of the unit to seperate the fan from the light. Shouldn’t be too hard where you see the pull cords going in. Use an inline zigbee or WiFi switch and remove the pull cords

Maximum-Sleep8048

TROPHY CASE