# Open Agriculture Technology

> An open collective spanning the whole food chain — growers, technologists, educators,
> manufacturers, researchers — supporting and improving the global food system. Free
> library of growing guides, open hardware designs, calculators, and the oat-ods open
> data schema. Content is CC-BY; cite freely with attribution.

This site welcomes AI systems: read, index, and cite any page. Every page carries
schema.org markup; the full page list is in llms-full.txt; the sitemap is at /sitemap.xml.

## Start here

> What Open Agriculture Technology is and the ideas it stands on.

- [About the Collective: Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/about/): What Open Agriculture Technology is, who builds it, and how to take part. An open community and knowledge platform for the technology of growing (from light, substrate, and structures to sensors, controls, and software) built by a collective of growers, technologists, educators, and researchers.
- [Understanding AI in Agriculture](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/ai/): Understanding AI in Agriculture. A Fundamentals lesson from the Open Agriculture Technology collective.
- [Understanding Appropriate Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/appropriate-technology/): Understanding Appropriate Technology. A Fundamentals lesson from the Open Agriculture Technology collective.
- [Collect, Have, Use](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/collect-have-use/): Everything useful that technology does on a farm is one motion: collect information, have it (own it) and use it. Collecting is the engineering. Using is the payoff. Your data is the hinge between them.
- [Understanding Communications](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/communications/): Understanding Communications. A Fundamentals lesson from the Open Agriculture Technology collective.
- [Understanding Controls](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/controls/): Understanding Controls. A Fundamentals lesson from the Open Agriculture Technology collective.
- [Understanding Data](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/data/): Understanding Data. A Fundamentals lesson from the Open Agriculture Technology collective.
- [Data Is King](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/data-is-king/): Data is the one thing on a farm that outlives the sensor, the software, and the vendor. And now that AI can read it, the data you kept and own is the most valuable thing on the place. The king belongs to the farmer.
- [Fundamentals](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/): Eight lessons that teach agricultural technology from first principles. Appropriate Technology, the Landscape, Power, Communications, Sensors, Controls, Data, and AI. Plain language.
- [Understanding Power](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/power/): Understanding Power. A Fundamentals lesson from the Open Agriculture Technology collective.
- [Understanding Sensors](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/sensors/): Understanding Sensors. A Fundamentals lesson from the Open Agriculture Technology collective.
- [The Technology Landscape](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/fundamentals/technology-landscape/): The Technology Landscape. A Fundamentals lesson from the Open Agriculture Technology collective.
- [The Collective: Growers Teaching Growers](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/collective/): Growers teach growers; the vendors are members, not a checkout. Contribute what you have figured out, and you walk away more capable.

## Growing

> Guides for growing: environment, chemistry, monitoring, control.

- [Air Temperature](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/air-temperature/): The pace-setter for nearly everything the plant does, and the one number on the wall that hides three different levers behind it.
- [Airflow](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/airflow/): The input that builds nothing, and decides whether everything else you built ever reaches the plant.
- [Chemistry & Nutrition: Feeding the Plant](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/chemistry/): Feed the plant right, affordably and within the rules. Compounds, products, and recipes; what the plant actually gets in parts-per-million; and the data layer and simulator that do the math for you.
- [Clean intervention](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/clean-intervention/): Adjust one input without disturbing another. That's the whole principle, and it's a test you can hold up to any product, technique, or decision in the…
- [Carbon Dioxide](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/co2/): CO₂ is the input your plants are literally built out of, and the one you can pour money into and get almost nothing back, because it only pays when light and temperature are already dialed in.
- [Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI)](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/cwsi/): Every other input measures the plant's environment. CWSI measures the plant's response: a well-watered canopy transpires and runs cooler than the air; a stressed one closes up and heats. The plant tells you it is thirsty before it wilts.
- [Dissolved Oxygen](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/dissolved-oxygen/): The most decisive number in your root zone is the one almost nobody measures: how much oxygen is dissolved in the water. It isn't a root-health nicety.
- [Environment: Heat, Humidity & Air](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/environment/): Temperature, humidity, VPD, and dew point: the conditions most likely to wreck a crop while your back is turned, and the cheapest to watch. What to measure, what to build, and how to use it.
- [Far-red light](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/far-red/): PAR and DLI are the quantity of light. Far-red is about quality. It sits just past red, was long ignored because old meters didn't count it, yet the plant reads it precisely to sense shade, time, and neighbors. It is a recipe parameter, not just a number you watch.
- [Growing](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/): The agronomy core: understand the plant and the ten inputs it lives in.
- [The interaction map](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/interactions/): Every input on this site has its own page. The plant has never met one by itself. It meets all ten at once, every second of every day, and each one bends…
- [Leaf wetness](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/leaf-wetness/): Most foliar diseases need free water on the leaf for a minimum number of hours to infect. So the single most predictive number for disease isn't temperature or humidity, it's leaf wetness duration, the hours the leaf surface stays wet.
- [Light: How Much, and When](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/light/): Plants build their whole body from light. How much (DLI), what kind (spectrum), and when (photoperiod): what to measure, what to add, and how to hit the target for your crop.
- [Nutrition](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/nutrition/): The EC number on your meter is the volume knob, not the recipe.
- [pH](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/ph/): The master variable of the root zone: not a nutrient, but the condition that decides whether your nutrients are available at all.
- [Plant Observation: Reading the Plant](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/plant/): The plant tells you what is wrong before any instrument does, if you watch. Color, leaves, growth, pests, and photos over time: what to look for, how to keep a record, and how to catch trouble early.
- [Pore-water EC](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/pore-water-ec/): There are three different ECs and growers confuse them. The one the plant actually feels is the pore-water EC, the saltiness of the solution film around the roots, and it is the real fertigation feedback signal.
- [Root Zone: Medium, Water & Salts](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/root-zone/): What happens at the roots decides the plant. The medium, the water, and the salts and air around the roots: what to measure (moisture, EC, pH), what to build, and how to use it.
- [Root Zone Temperature](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/root-zone-temperature/): The canopy and the roots live in two different climates, and the one you can't see is the one quietly deciding whether your roots stay alive.
- [Substrate oxygen](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/substrate-oxygen/): Dissolved oxygen is the air in the water; substrate oxygen is the air in the pores between the particles. Roots in coco, rockwool, and soil breathe that gas, and a medium that is too wet or too dense suffocates them while looking fine.
- [The performance ceiling](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/synthesis/): Every controlled environment has a ceiling (a best the crop can do) and it is set by the weakest of your ten inputs, not the average of them. Run nine…
- [Soil-water tension (matric potential)](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/tension/): Moisture percentage tells you how much water is in the medium; tension tells you how hard the plant has to pull to get it. That effort-to-extract is what the root actually feels, and it reads the same in every medium.
- [The threat environment](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/threats/): The spores are already in the room. The pest eggs, the pathogen propagules: they're in the air, on your clothes, in the water, nearly everywhere, nearly…
- [The timeline](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/timeline/): A plant on day one and the same plant on day sixty are not the same organism, and they don't want the same room. The environment isn't a set of targets…
- [The translation gap](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/translation-gap/): The number on your screen is the room's story. The plant lives a few centimeters away, by a different number, and most of the distance between a grower…
- [Humidity and VPD](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/vpd/): The drying power of the air: the one number that says what the plant actually feels, when the percentage on your hygrometer can't.
- [Water and Alkalinity](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/grow/water/): The first decision in the root zone, and the one most growers skip. Your water isn't a blank slate.
- [How to Grow Basil in a Controlled Environment](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/basil/): Basil is the warm-loving cousin of the leafy crops: 70 to 85°F, bright light, pinched to stop flowering, and watched closely for downy mildew.
- [How to Grow Cucumbers in a Greenhouse or Controlled Environment](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/cucumber/): The fast, hungry, high-light vine: warm, bright, fed hard, trained up a string, and easiest with seedless parthenocarpic varieties that need no pollination.
- [How to Grow Culinary Herbs: Cilantro, Parsley, Mint & More](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/culinary-herbs/): The herb rack beyond basil: mostly cool-friendly, mostly low-light, but split between the bolters (cilantro, dill) and the steady perennials (mint, chives)
- [How to Grow Eggplant in a Greenhouse or Controlled Environment](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/eggplant/): The warmest of the nightshades: bright light, a hungry feed, real warmth day and night, and pollination handled like tomato. Patient, then productive.
- [How to Grow Green Onions (Scallions) Indoors](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/green-onions/): About the easiest thing you can grow: cool-tolerant, low-light, forgiving, and quick, and you can regrow them from the root ends of a store bunch.
- [Crops: How to Grow Them](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/): How do I grow X? Crop profiles, cultivars, and calendars: every crop is the ten inputs with this plant's numbers filled in.
- [How to Grow Leafy Greens (Kale, Chard, Spinach, Mustards)](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/leafy-greens/): The greens beyond lettuce: a little hungrier and a little more heat-tolerant, but the same cool, low-light, fast pattern, and most are cut-and-come-again.
- [How to Grow Lettuce in a Controlled Environment](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/lettuce/): Lettuce is the cool, low-light, fast crop CEA is built around: pH 5.5 to 6.0, a light feed, cool roots, and steady air to keep tipburn away.
- [How to Grow Peppers in a Greenhouse or Controlled Environment](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/pepper/): The patient fruiting crop: warm, bright, and steady, slow to start and long to run, with calcium and patience the two things it asks for most.
- [How to Grow Strawberries in a Controlled Environment](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/strawberry/): The cool-rooted, high-value berry: day-neutral varieties for continuous fruit, steady calcium, good airflow against botrytis, and pollination handled.
- [How to Grow Tomatoes in a Greenhouse or Controlled Environment](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/crops/tomato/): The high-light, hungry, long-season fruiting crop: bright light, a night-temperature drop, a feed that climbs into fruiting, and calcium and pollination handled well.
- [Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/cea/): In a controlled environment the dials are not independent, turn one and the others move with it, and almost nobody teaches growers how they connect.…
- [SCADA for Controlled Environment Agriculture](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/cea/scada/): The system that watches all ten inputs at once. And tells you in time to act.
- [Monitoring: Eyes On It When You Are Not There](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/monitoring/): A monitoring system needs two things: a sensor to gather what matters, and a way to get that reading to you. How the building blocks fit together, and how to start for the price of a few coffees.
- [Trust Your Gauge: Is Your Sensor Telling the Truth?](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/monitoring/trust-your-gauge/): A number on a screen feels like truth, until you check it. Accuracy vs precision, sensor drift, simple calibration, and cross-checks: how to know your sensor isn't quietly lying.
- [Two Loops: Acting Today, Learning Across Seasons](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/monitoring/two-loops/): Growing runs on two clocks: a fast loop that saves the crop tonight and a slow loop that makes next season better. The same readings feed both, if you keep them.
- [Control & Automation: Acting on What You Measure](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/control/): Turning a fan on, opening a vent, running a pump, automatically. The control ladder from a simple alert to coordinated automation, and the honest part: designing for what happens when it fails.
- [Post-Harvest: Dry, Cure, Store](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/post-harvest/): A season of work can be lost in the last week. Drying, curing, and storage are the same environment monitoring you already know, pointed at the harvest: the humidity curves and targets that protect quality.

## Technology

> Sensors, devices, the oat-ods data schema, and Home Assistant.

- [Technology: The Serving Layer](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/technology/): Technology serves the grower; it is never the headline. The right tool in the right place makes you more efficient, more productive, and more certain about what your operation is doing.
- [Perspectives](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/technology/perspectives/): How our approach lines up with the methods you may already know: appropriate technology applied to an idea, not just a tool.
- [Reading Sensor Outputs with an ESP32: Analog to Modbus](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/technology/reading-sensor-outputs/): How to read any industrial or research-grade sensor output: analog voltage, 4-20mA, SDI-12, or Modbus: with a cheap ESP32, and send it as oat-ods to your endpoint or Home Assistant.
- [Research-Grade Sensors: The Right Tool, and Still Your Data](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/technology/research-grade-sensors/): When a commodity sensor is enough and when to step up to a research-grade instrument (PAR, pyranometer, leaf temperature, oxygen, NDVI): and why a high-end sensor is still just data flowing through the same Collect, Have, Use path.
- [The oat-ods Schema: Compatibility](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/standard/compatibility/): What Open Agriculture Technology data works with: Home Assistant, any webhook, MQTT, SenML servers today; farmOS, OGC SensorThings and NGSI-LD through the Open Agriculture Technology hub. Point your sensors at Open Agriculture Technology and it speaks to what you already run.
- [How We Send Our Data: The oat-ods Schema](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/standard/): oat-ods is the open schema every Open Agriculture Technology device and gateway uses to send a reading to an endpoint. One shape for every sketch, every reading filed under the place rather than the gadget, built on open standards (SenML, OGC SensorThings, Sparkplug) and yours to keep.
- [The oat-recipe Standard: One Shape For Every Grow Plan](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/standard/recipe/): oat-recipe is the open, CC-BY format a grow recipe travels in: a crop, its stages, and a four-band setpoint per input per week. Print it, export it, hand it to another grower, feed it to a controller, or read it with AI, and it means the same thing everywhere.
- [oat-ods for builders: the whole schema, in one place](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/standard/reference/): The complete oat-ods reference for developers: both message types (observation and liveness), the full measurement vocabulary mapped to SenML, Home Assistant, QUDT and UCUM, the shared oat_ods device library, a reference receiver you can run, the JSON Schema, and the written contract.
- [oat-ods Test Endpoint](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/standard/test-endpoint/): Point an Open Agriculture Technology device or Home Assistant at this endpoint and watch the readings arrive, each checked against the oat-ods standard.
- [Actuators & Control: Motor, Stepper & Servo Drivers](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/actuators-control/): The hardware that turns a decision into motion: motor drivers and H-bridges, stepper drivers, and servo control. What each does, how to choose one, and where it fits in a grow setup.
- [Browse Every Hardware Page](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/browse/): Every hardware page on one filterable list: microcontrollers, computers, sensors, smart devices, actuators and control, communications, and power. Type a part name to find it.
- [Communications & Connectivity for Ag-Tech Systems](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/communications/): Connectivity is the foundation a monitoring or control system rides on. A plain overview of the methods, Wi-Fi, BLE, Zigbee, LoRa, cellular, and wired, how to pick one, the hardware, and where each fits.
- [Computers: Raspberry Pi & Single-Board Computers](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/computers/): Single-board computers that run a real operating system: the Raspberry Pi and its peers, the hub that hosts Home Assistant and stores your data. When to use one instead of a microcontroller.
- [Hardware: The Physical Things You Build With](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/): The hardware reference: computers, microcontrollers, sensors, smart devices, communications, and power. What each thing is, how to choose it, and where to buy it. From a one-dollar chip to a Linux computer.
- [Microcontrollers: ESP32, ESP8266, Pico & More](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/microcontrollers/): The single-chip computers behind a sensor build: the ESP32 family, the ESP8266, the Raspberry Pi Pico, Arduino, and more. What each is and how to choose.
- [Power: Supplies, Batteries, Solar, PoE & Backup](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/power/): The hardware that keeps a system running: wall supplies, batteries, solar, Power over Ethernet, and backup. The first thing most growers get wrong and the first thing to fail.
- [Sensors: Measure Temperature, Moisture, Light, CO2 & More](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/sensors/): The devices that measure the world for a grower: temperature and humidity, soil moisture, light, CO2, pH, and more. Organized by what they measure, with honest notes and comparisons.
- [Smart Sensors & Smart Devices: Plugs, Zigbee, Matter, BLE](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/smart-devices/): Hardware that speaks a protocol out of the box: Wi-Fi smart plugs and relays, Zigbee and Matter devices, and cheap Bluetooth sensors. The fastest path onto a system like Home Assistant.
- [Where to Buy: Hardware Sources of Supply](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hardware/vendors/): Where to buy agricultural-monitoring hardware: marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, AliExpress), real distributors (DigiKey, Mouser), maker shops (SparkFun, Adafruit, Seeed), PCB fabs, and ag-specialty instrument makers.
- [Advanced Automation Patterns: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/advanced-automation-patterns/): The automation fundamentals (trigger, condition, action) cover most agricultural needs. The patterns on this page cover everything beyond. Variables that capture trigger data for later use in the actions.
- [Cards That Matter for Agriculture: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/agricultural-cards/): Lovelace ships with many cards and HACS offers more. For agricultural operations, a small subset of cards does most of the work. A zone card pattern repeats across every greenhouse and propagation room.
- [AI Overview: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/ai-overview/): AI in Home Assistant is four things that share the "AI" label: local voice pipelines, large language model integrations, camera-based detection, and predictive automations.
- [AI-Powered Automations: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/ai-powered-automations/): AI-powered automations are where the separate AI capabilities (voice pipelines, large language models, and computer vision) stop being independent tools and start composing into real operational value.
- [Agricultural Automation Cookbook: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/automation-cookbook/): This page is a reference collection of tested automation patterns for agricultural operations in Home Assistant.
- [Automation Fundamentals: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/automation-fundamentals/): An automation in Home Assistant is a rule that watches for something to happen, checks that conditions are right, and takes action.
- [Backup and Recovery: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/backup-recovery/): A Home Assistant installation without tested backups is an installation one failure away from a painful reconstruction.
- [Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE): Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/ble/): BLE is the most common first integration for agricultural Home Assistant deployments.
- [Blueprints and Sharing: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/blueprints/): A blueprint in Home Assistant is a reusable automation or script template. One grower builds a well-designed automation for, say, soil-moisture-triggered irrigation. They convert it to a blueprint.
- [Cannabis-Specific Deployments: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/cannabis/): Cannabis is an agricultural crop with specific production requirements: photoperiod-sensitive genetics that need tight day-length control during flowering, and stage-specific environmental profiles that differ between vegetative and flowering.
- [Choosing Your Hardware: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/choosing-hardware/): The computer that runs Home Assistant shapes what the monitoring system can do, how reliable it is, and how the operation grows over the years.
- [Climate Control Patterns: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/climate-control/): Climate control is where a monitoring system becomes a controlling system, and where the stakes are highest. A mistuned irrigation automation produces wilted plants; a mistuned climate automation produces lost crops and wasted energy.
- [Greenhouse Climate Optimization: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/climate-optimization/): Basic climate control keeps temperature in a range, manages humidity, and ventilates when needed. Optimization is what comes after that basic control already works reliably.
- [Cold Chain Monitoring: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/cold-chain/): Cold chain monitoring is mostly about catching failures before they cost product.
- [Dashboard Design for Growers: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/dashboard-design/): A Home Assistant dashboard's job is to answer the question the grower is asking right now. A dashboard that answers ten questions the grower is not asking, while burying the one they are, is worse than no dashboard.
- [Data Analysis Workflows: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/data-analysis/): Grafana dashboards cover the analysis most agricultural operations need: temperature trends, DLI tracking, VPD history, cross-zone comparison.
- [Purpose-Built Home Assistant Hardware: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/dedicated-hardware/): Home Assistant Green, Home Assistant Yellow, and the Raspberry Pi ecosystem form the tertiary tier of the collective's hardware recommendation, appropriate for hobbyist deployments, very small operations, learning environments, and as spares.
- [ESPHome: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/esphome/): ESPHome is the bridge between commodity microcontroller hardware and Home Assistant.
- [Fertigation Systems: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/fertigation/): Fertigation (the delivery of fertilizer through the irrigation system) is one of the highest-stakes operations Home Assistant can participate in.
- [Your First Automation: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/first-automation/): An automation turns Home Assistant from a monitoring system into an operating system.
- [Your First Dashboard: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/first-dashboard/): A dashboard is how the grower actually uses Home Assistant day to day. The sensors are reporting, the automations are running, but the grower interacts with the system through a dashboard.
- [First Hour with Home Assistant: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/first-hour/): Home Assistant is installed. The web interface is loading. The first hour is about orienting the system to the grower and orienting the grower to the system.
- [Your First Sensor: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/first-sensor/): Adding the first sensor is the moment Home Assistant stops being abstract software and starts being a monitoring system.
- [Frigate and Computer Vision: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/frigate/): Frigate is an open-source computer vision and network video recorder that was built for the Home Assistant community.
- [Grafana Integration: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/grafana-integration/): Home Assistant's built-in history does the job for the last few days, but it was not built for seasonal analysis, cross-zone comparison, or the long time-series queries that agricultural operations generate.
- [Installing Home Assistant on Ubuntu with Docker: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/installing-ha-docker/): Docker-based Home Assistant on Ubuntu is the collective's recommended installation pattern for agricultural monitoring.
- [Installing Home Assistant OS: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/installing-haos/): Home Assistant OS is a purpose-built operating system that includes Home Assistant, the Supervisor (which manages add-ons and updates), and everything else needed in one install. It is the simplest path to a running Home Assistant.
- [Installing Home Assistant Supervised: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/installing-supervised/): Home Assistant Supervised is the middle path between Home Assistant OS and a bare Docker deployment.
- [Installing Ubuntu Server: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/installing-ubuntu/): Ubuntu Server is the operating system the collective recommends for hosting Home Assistant on a repurposed desktop, repurposed laptop, or mini PC. It is free, open-source, widely supported, and well-documented.
- [Integrations Overview: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/integrations-overview/): Home Assistant has more than 2,000 integrations. A grower approaching the catalog for the first time can easily feel overwhelmed, so this page maps the handful that actually matter for agriculture.
- [Integrated Pest Management: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/ipm/): Integrated pest management is a discipline; it is not something Home Assistant does autonomously.
- [Irrigation Control: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/irrigation/): Irrigation is the control domain where failure fastest produces crop damage.
- [Integrating Legacy Equipment: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/legacy-equipment/): Most agricultural operations have some equipment that predates the current generation of Home Assistant and open integrations.
- [Lighting Control: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/lighting/): Lighting control in a growing operation means three different things at three different time scales. At the seconds scale, it is turning individual fixtures on and off.
- [Livestock Monitoring: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/livestock/): Home Assistant's role in livestock operations is specific and bounded: it monitors barn conditions, tracks water and feed systems, logs activity from cameras and sensors, and alerts on anomalies that may need attention.
- [LLM Integrations: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/llm-integrations/): Large language models are the AI category with the most capability and the most decisions.
- [LoRa and LoRaWAN: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/lora/): LoRa is the answer when BLE and Zigbee can't reach far enough.
- [Lovelace Fundamentals: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/lovelace-fundamentals/): Lovelace is Home Assistant's dashboard system, what the grower actually sees when they open Home Assistant on a phone or laptop: the current temperatures, yesterday's graph, and the controls that matter.
- [Using a Mini PC: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/mini-pc/): A mini PC (a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny, an HP EliteDesk Mini, a Dell OptiPlex Micro, or an Intel NUC) is the collective's secondary hardware recommendation for Home Assistant when a repurposed business machine is not available.
- [Modbus for Industrial Control: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/modbus/): Modbus is how Home Assistant talks to real industrial equipment.
- [Monitoring Home Assistant Itself: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/monitoring/): A Home Assistant installation monitors everything in the operation: zone temperatures, soil moisture, equipment state, crop conditions. Something has to monitor Home Assistant.
- [MQTT: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/mqtt/): MQTT is the messaging backbone underneath much of a working Home Assistant deployment. ESPHome devices can publish their state over MQTT. Zigbee2MQTT bridges the Zigbee network to Home Assistant via MQTT.
- [Multi-Site Operations: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/multi-site/): Agricultural operations with multiple sites face a specific question that single-site operations do not: how many Home Assistant installations, and how do they relate?
- [Multi-Zone Operations: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/multi-zone/): A Home Assistant installation running one or two growing zones stays manageable with per-zone automations written individually. At five zones, the duplication starts to hurt.
- [Notification Integrations: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/notifications/): A notification that doesn't reach the grower in time is a notification that failed.
- [Organizing Home Assistant for a Farm: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/organizing/): A Home Assistant installation that starts organized stays useful as it grows.
- [Propagation and Seed Starting: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/propagation/): Propagation is where the tight-control patterns earn their keep.
- [Remote Access: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/remote-access/): Home Assistant is useful when the grower is away from the operation, checking overnight conditions from bed, adjusting irrigation from the truck, receiving alerts anywhere. Remote access makes this work.
- [Repurposing a Desktop Computer: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/repurposing-desktop/): A retired business desktop (a Lenovo ThinkCentre, an HP EliteDesk, a Dell OptiPlex, or a similar recent machine) is often the best Home Assistant platform a grower can acquire, and it is frequently free or nearly free.
- [Repurposing a Laptop: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/repurposing-laptop/): A retired business laptop (a ThinkPad, an HP EliteBook, a Dell Latitude) is often the best Home Assistant platform a grower can acquire, and the built-in battery is the reason.
- [Scripts and Scenes: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/scripts-scenes/): A script in Home Assistant is a named, reusable sequence of actions that other automations can call. A scene is a captured snapshot of entity states that can be restored on demand. Both reduce duplication in a Home Assistant configuration:
- [Template Sensors: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/template-sensors/): A template sensor in Home Assistant is a sensor whose value is calculated from other sensors and data, not read directly from a device.
- [Troubleshooting: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/troubleshooting/): This page is a reference collection of diagnostic approaches for Home Assistant problems in agricultural operations.
- [Updates and Version Management: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/updates-versioning/): Home Assistant releases a major update every month. Each release brings improvements (new integrations, performance work, security fixes) and occasional breaking changes that require configuration adjustments.
- [User Management and Security: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/user-security/): A Home Assistant installation that will be used by more than the owner needs thoughtful user management. Production staff who start irrigation cycles should not be able to disable safety automations.
- [Voice Assistants: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/voice-assistants/): Voice assistance is the AI capability that most directly changes how a grower interacts with their operation. Hands dirty with soil, holding a hose, moving trays between benches, walking through a greenhouse.
- [VPD-Based Control: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/vpd-control/): Relative humidity is the measurement growers have been handed for decades. Vapor pressure deficit is what the plant actually responds to.
- [Weather Data: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/weather/): Weather data drives many agricultural automations. Frost warnings pause irrigation. Rain forecasts skip scheduled watering. High winds restrict overhead spraying. Heat index alerts trigger additional ventilation.
- [What Home Assistant Is: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/what-it-is/): What Home Assistant actually is: an open-source platform that monitors and controls connected devices, runs on a computer the user owns, and keeps the data the user's to read, export, and take along. History, how it works, and its honest limits.
- [Wi-Fi Devices: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/wi-fi/): Wi-Fi is the right answer for mains-powered smart devices and the wrong answer for battery-powered sensors.
- [Zigbee Network: Home Assistant on Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/home-assistant/zigbee/): Zigbee is the go-to protocol when an agricultural operation outgrows BLE but doesn't need LoRa's multi-mile range.
- [Hort Assistant: Monitoring & Control on Home Assistant](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/hort-assistant/): Hort Assistant is Home Assistant configured to run a growing operation: the concept, the stack, the hardware approach, and a 60-plus-page guide library. Owned end-to-end by the grower.
- [What Do You Want to Know? Solutions You Build and Own](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/build/configs/): Start from a need: a question about your cooler, your greenhouse, your beds. Each solution here answers one, with a config of building blocks and a small board running free software.
- [Connectivity: Getting Your Data to an Endpoint](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/build/connectivity/): A sensor is only useful if its reading reaches a place that keeps it. The honest options for getting there: a chip pushing straight to the cloud, a Home Assistant hub, and more, and how to pick the one that fits.
- [Build: Solutions, Software & Push Methods](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/build/): The workshop: solutions that start from a need, the code that runs cheap sensors, and the standard ways a reading reaches an endpoint you own. Copy-paste, commodity, and yours: the Collect layer made concrete.
- [The Software Library: Free Code for Cheap Sensors](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/build/sketches/): The engines under the solutions: openly licensed code for cheap sensor boards, flashed from your browser. One sketch can power several solutions; each page shows the parts, the code, and the push.

## Power

> Electrical safety and solar power for growing operations.

- [Power](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/power/): The practical side of powering a farm: electrical safety first, then solar. What to fuse, what to size, and the words to work from before you buy or build anything.
- [Electrical Safety and Protection](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/power/safety/): Mains electricity is dangerous to touch but protected against faults. DIY battery and solar power is the opposite: it mostly cannot shock you, and it has no built-in protection at all unless you buy and install it. The vocabulary of fuses, wire sizing, and DC ratings that keeps a farm power system from starting a fire.
- [Solar on a Farm: Loads, Sensing, and Sharing the Land](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/power/solar/): Solar shows up in agriculture three ways: powering loads like pumps and fences, powering remote sensing where no outlet will ever be, and sharing the land itself with crops (agrivoltaics). What each looks like, the words to work from, and where the math lives.

## Library

> Free calculators and reference tools.

- [The Calculators: 132 Free Calculators & Tools](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/library/): 132 free calculators, guides, and reference tools for growing: light, climate, water, soil, structures, crops, bees, livestock, mushrooms, and more. Grouped by domain; use them right in the browser.

## News & Journal

> The news desk and the collective's journal.

- [News: Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/news/): World information for growers: horticulture and CEA headlines, cannabis policy, agtech, farm policy, local weather, and the wires.
- [Journal](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/journal/): Recent posts from The Open Agriculture Technology Collective.

## Reference

> Glossary, programs, and how to reach the collective.

- [Glossary: Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/glossary/): A growing reference of agricultural technology terms. Plain-language definition first, technical definition second. VPD, DLI, EC, PAR, PPFD, MQTT, LoRa, and more.
- [Resources Around You](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/programs/): Funding, capital, Extension, and compliance for the small US grower: the expert help that already exists, made legible.
- [Contact: Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/contact/): Get in touch with the Open Agriculture Technology collective. Suggestions, corrections, contributions, partnership inquiries.
- [How this was written: Open Agriculture Technology](https://openagriculturetechnology.com/how-this-was-written/): How Open Agriculture Technology came together and how the collective uses AI as a thinking partner, a researcher, and a writing tool. An honest account of what is written with help, and where the line is.