Plant tracker for Home Assistant

This is a simple appdaemon solution to keep ("manual") track of when you need to water your plants. Basically a habit tracker for watering your plants with AppDeamon and Home Assistant. No plants died during the making of this app.

This is an example of how I use the script together with Button Card by RomRider (the colors represent the four different tracker states. The numbers are the days since the plant was watered).

Plant infromation:

What the PlantTracker.py does:

The script creates a sensor for each plant you want to track. The sensor has four states: 3 (the plant was watered today), 2 (the plant does not need water), 1 (the plant should be checked/can be watered), 0 (the plant needs water). The states are calculated every day at a chosen time (0:05 by default) and when the "last watered date" is changed (for example when you water the plant).

The script also stores the "last watered date" in a file so that the states are retained after a restart.

More in post on the Home assistant forum.

Instuctions

Add PlantTracker.py to your AppDaemon apps path (ex. /config/appdaemon/apps/). You will have to set up the script in AppDeamon and add all the plants you want to track in the configuration file (apps.yaml).

Options for each plant:

• watering_interval (required): Interval between watering
• friendly_name (optional)
• last_watered (optional), format: YYYY/MM/DD (if you want to set a date at init. The date can also be changed maually in developer tools > states)(default:today)
• icon (optional)
• watering_window (optional): How many days to stay in state 1 (should be watered). (default: 1)

A path to the file where the script keeps the "last watered dates" is also needed. The path below works for me on hass.io.

Example content in apps.yaml

plant_tracker:
  module: PlantTracker
  class: PlantTracker
  file: /config/appdaemon/apps/plants.db 
  plants:
    ava:
      friendly_name: Ava
      watering_interval: 4
      icon: mdi:leaf
      watering_window: 3
    pilea:
      friendly_name: Pilea 
      watering_interval: 7
      icon: mdi:leaf
      watering_window: 4

Helper script

You will have to add some way of updating the "last watered date" from Home Assistant. One way to do this is to enable python scripts and add "water.py" to the python scripts folder. This script updates the date for the "last watered date" to today. The script can then be called any way you want. I do this from the button card.

Button card

This is my template setup for the Button Card in lovelace:

button_card_templates:
  plant:
    custom_fields:
      days_since_watered: '[[[return entity.attributes.days_since_watered]]]'
    double_tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: python_script.water
      service_data:
        entity: '[[[return entity.entity_id]]]'
    hold_action:
      action: call-service
      service: python_script.water
      service_data:
        entity: '[[[return entity.entity_id]]]'
    icon: '[[[return entity.attributes.icon]]]'
    state:
      - color: 'rgb(30,144,255)'
        value: '3'
      - color: 'rgb(0, 128, 0)'
        value: '2'
      - color: 'rgb(128,64,0)'
        value: '1'
      - color: 'rgb(255, 0, 0)'
        value: '0'
    styles:
      custom_fields:
        days_since_watered:
          - position: absolute
          - right: 0%
          - top: 0%
          - height: 20px
          - width: 20px
          - font-size: 10px
          - line-height: 20px
      grid:
        - position: relative
      name:
        - font-size: 12px
    tap_action:
      action: more-info

I have set up the template so that a tap gives me info about the plant. Double tap or hold runs water.py.

And the buttons in my case:

      - cards:
          - cards:
              - entity: plant_tracker.hattifnattus
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - entity: plant_tracker.ava
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - entity: plant_tracker.pilea
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - entity: plant_tracker.orkideen
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
            type: horizontal-stack
          - cards:
              - entity: plant_tracker.treet
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - entity: plant_tracker.sam_mynting
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - entity: plant_tracker.orkideto
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - entity: plant_tracker.efoy
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
            type: horizontal-stack
          - cards:
              - entity: plant_tracker.stk
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - entity: plant_tracker.kinesisk_pengeplante
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - entity: plant_tracker.kaffe_plante
                template: plant
                type: 'custom:button-card'
              - color_type: blank-card
                type: 'custom:button-card'
            type: horizontal-stack
        type: vertical-stack

Test with influxdb and grafana

This is a test of a visualistation of plant tracker states in grafana (with Cal-HeatMap plugin):

This shows the plants states in the last three months (From deep blue - just watered, to green to grey). For now this looks quite messy because I have done a lot of testing.

About

I am still learning python, and this is the first project I share. Any feedback or suggestions are appreciated!

Changelog

1.2.2020

• Fixed error in watering_window
• Fixed class name
• Fixed time on run_daily (to 00:05)
• Fixed initialization error. Now creates empty db file.