A sketch is the small program that runs on a sensor's chip and makes it do its job — read the air, the soil, the water, and push the number somewhere you can keep it. This library will hold tested, copy-paste sketches for the common sensors, each one explained so you can flash it, change it, and own it. It is filling in over time; here is the shape each one takes.
What a sketch gives you.
Every sketch page here follows the same six parts — the same Collect·Have·Use bones as the rest of the site, for firmware:
- What it does — the sensor, the board, and the need it meets, with the honest appropriate-tech sizing.
- Parts and wiring — a bill of materials with prices and a wiring diagram.
- The sketch — the actual code, ready to copy and flash, openly licensed.
- The push — how it gets the reading to an endpoint (a webhook or MQTT), with the settings to fill in. See Connectivity.
- What you get — the data it produces, and what reads it: a dashboard, an alert, the matching stack.
- Notes — calibration, failure modes, and the gotchas worth knowing before you trust it.
What's coming first.
The early sketches cover the most common grower needs — the ones the stacks point at:
- A temperature and humidity sensor pushing to an endpoint (the Environment starter).
- A soil-moisture sensor for watering decisions (the Root Zone starter).
- A long-range link for a far-off sensor — the two-mile pump monitor.
- A simple relay switch driven by a reading (the Control starter), with the failure-safe defaults spelled out.
Honest tense: this list is the plan, not the inventory. The sketches arrive as they are written and tested — with the collective, over the next while.
How to use one.
When a sketch lands, using it is the same four steps every time: gather the parts from its bill of materials, wire it per the diagram, copy the sketch onto the board (the page walks you through the free tools), and fill in your endpoint settings so the reading has somewhere to go. From there it is yours — change it, extend it, share what you learn. If you have built something worth passing on, the collective would love to add it; reach us through the Contact page.