PlantPal

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A companion app for the plant lover who keeps forgetting their plant is alive.

problem

Smart plant products are built for farmers or serious hobbyists — not casual plant owners Raw sensor dashboards require technical knowledge most users don't have Affordable options don't exist for students and solo professionals Nothing was designed for someone who loves plants but lives a full, distracted life

solution

An IoT companion system built under ₹1,000 — a sensor kit paired with a playful mobile app. What makes it different? Instead of data dashboards, each plant gets a mascot with a face, a name, and a personality. What does that mean in practice? The plant communicates its own health. You don't read numbers. You read a mood.

The brief started as a hardware problem. Build a working IoT watering system under ₹1,000.

But early research kept pointing elsewhere. The people we designed for weren't neglecting their plants because they didn't care. They were neglecting them because life moved fast and a pot in the corner was easy to forget. The real design problem wasn't sensors. It was emotional distance.

that insight led to the mascot. Duolingo and Headspace had both proven that consistency isn't built through information. It's built through relationship.

We gave each plant a character, a name, a birthday, and a voice. Kavya Says became the plant's daily check-in. The water level wasn't a percentage buried in settings.

It was the expression on your plant's face. At 72%, it smiled. At 12%, it looked distressed. One detail came from watching real users: people accidentally tapped the water button. We switched to tap-and-hold. Then realised it did something extra. Holding the button felt like watering.

The working prototype tied it all together. ESP32 sensors (soil moisture, humidity, temperature) feeding live data into the app. Multiple plants, each with their own identity and fertiliser reminders. The 12% screen became the emotional proof of concept: not a push notification, not a red badge.

Just your plant looking distressed. Harder to ignore than a number. What this confirmed is that the category isn't IoT. It's companionship. The sensors exist to support a relationship, not replace one.