Former Apple engineer brings you in-home plant automation

Even though Andrew Pletenetskyy had a great job at Apple designing hardware products, he was constantly traveling and unable to look after his indoor garden.

He tested out a few automated watering solutions that were available on the market, but decided to solve this problem by coming up with his own. Pletenetskyy teamed up with Silicon Valley engineer, Alex Yevdakov, and together they formed the startup 7sensors Inc., in an effort to not only automate the watering process, but to actually improve the growing process.

The duo’s first product, the 7sensors Grow Box is a fully automated environment that not only waters your plant, but also provides it withlighting that has the proper intensity and spectrum, as well as controls temperature, humidity and airflow. The kit also does all of this while running on the energy of a single light bulb.

How it works

Once users receive the Grow Box, they must plant a seed or a plant clone into the soil and add water to the tank. Then a plant type must be selected from the accompanying smartphone app  and the setup is complete. About once a month, users will need to re-fill the large tank with water, but other than that it’s a pretty hands-off experience.

Grow Box has a transparent design so everyone can witness a fresh plant all year long. Since the environment is enclosed and the air entering and exiting the box is filtered, there is no need for pesticides  so anything grown will be as organic as possible. The conditions inside the box are precisely controlled, the plant of your choice is kept at its optimal growing conditions ensuring best possible development and avoiding unpredictable environmental factors.

In testing, one of the 7sensors experimental grows actually produced more than 30 bell peppers from a single plant.

What makes this possible is the comapny’s proprietary LED array, which has an adjustable spectrum and intensity control in real-time with Grow Box’s logic. In addition, the light is designed with optimal reflectors tailored specifically to box’s growing area volume minimizing light and, as a result, energy losses.

Learn more at 7sensors.