STEM in the garden: how to monitor plants with IoT sensors and Grafana Cloud

Marie Cruz, a Senior Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs, introduces her daughter to IoT, monitoring, and observability through a gardening project. Together, they set up an IoT system to monitor plant moisture levels using a soil moisture sensor, Arduino, Prometheus, and Grafana Cloud. The project involves connecting the sensor to an ESP32 development board and using Arduino IDE to write a program that reads sensor data and determines soil moisture status. Prometheus collects and stores the data, while Grafana Cloud visualizes it through dashboards and alerts. This interactive project not only enhances her daughter's understanding of IoT and tech concepts but also showcases how technology can be applied in everyday activities such as gardening.