Problem
I have ~15 balcony plants and wanted a reliable watering setup that doesn’t require daily manual work.
Approach
- ESP32 controller
- Manual + scheduled modes
- Simple water source (bottle/tank)
- Designed for future multi-zone expansion
Tradeoffs
- Kept hardware minimal (fewer failure modes)
- Prioritized reliability over fancy UI early on
What I’d improve next
- Flow sensor for closed-loop verification
- Soil moisture feedback per zone
- Small dashboard for status and alerts