KORU — IoT-Enabled Smart Plant Pot and Air Purifier for Home and Workplace
- IndustryConsumer Electronics
- Solution IoT, Embedded, Mobile, Cloud, Startup
For the Love of Plants
If you struggle to keep your plants watered, or worry about overwatering them, you are not alone! Improper watering, unbalanced light exposure, and poor soil quality can easily turn your lush, green home into a plant graveyard. Thanks to built-in sensors and AI, Koru monitors and automates the health of your plants.
Challenge
Botany Labs was formed in 2020, with the goal of revolutionizing the plant care industry by creating a product that allows consumers to remotely water and monitor their plants, as well as provide automated air purification to the surrounding environment.
Although the company has a strong internal background in plant care and technology, it required expert-level software development and hardware prototyping to develop its minimum viable product (MVP). Specifically, the company required advanced capabilities in the following domains:
- Embedded/firmware development
- IoT cloud configuration
- iOS/Android mobile application development
- Hardware prototyping
Botany Labs’ desired MVP required several key characteristics spanning numerous technologies:
- Physical device with a set of custom embedded sensors connected to the cloud
- Ability for device sensors to collect data and send/store it to the cloud
- Ability for end users to remotely control the device and access data via native iOS/Android mobile apps
“While we were developing a smart home device and looking for a qualified partner to take the proposed concept to the next level, we partnered up with SaM Solutions. We chose SaM Solutions to be our partner for this project because of their high competencies in the field and their flexibility to adapt to various needs throughout the process. In the end, we are pleased with the high quality and thorough understanding of the task at hand and helped tackle any issues that arose. Overall, we are delighted with the dedication and enthusiasm of the entire team to make this project a reality and look forward to more successful projects together.”Ahmed El IbiaryCTO & Co-Founder
Solution
Based on the project’s rigorous technical requirements, Botany Labs selected SaM Solutions as their technical partner for custom mobile, embedded, cloud, and IoT development.
Due to the desired MVP’s complex technological characteristics, the project was divided into two work streams – software development and hardware prototyping.
The scope of software development included the following:
- Architecture design
- Firmware/embedded development
- Cloud configuration
- Mobile app development (Android, iOS)
- Back-end server configuration
- System testing
Hardware prototyping was completed by SaM Solutions’ partner EnCata, and included the following:
- Initial project planning
- PCB design and prototyping
- Housing design
- Delivery of POC prototypes
- Prototype testing
The engineering teams followed an Agile methodology and utilized leading-edge technologies such as serverless architecture (AWS Lambda), IoT (AWS IoT Core), Google Firebase, as well as Java, Python 3, iOS/Android, and embedded development on ESP32 microchips.
In Partnership with
Toolbox
Success
With a complex set of project goals spanning multiple technologies, our joint development teams were able to successfully meet all of Botany Labs’ desired MVP requirements under the estimated timeframe and within the forecasted budget.
The IoT solution is hosted on cloud infrastructure and utilizes serverless functions, with our engineering teams being responsible for completion of the following:
- Native mobile development on both iOS and Android platforms;
- Embedded development on microcontrollers;
- Back-end server development;
- DevOps service on AWS cloud;
- Business analytics and project management.
The resulting consumer electronics product features numerous functionalities and advanced integrations between several different technologies.
Solution capabilities include:
- Built-in database of over 150 plants
- Custom automated programs for plant-specific care
- Automated plant watering, water level tracking, and related functionalities
- Real-time notifications and alerts
- Remote control and real-time monitoring via iOS/Android mobile apps
- Extended plant health indicators
- Automated air purification system
- Statistics, graphics, and analytics of plant care history
