Watching your greenhouse at 2 am, from your phone

Growers tell us the hardest part of the job is not the work. It is the nights. The power goes, the fans stop, and by the time someone drives out in the morning a house of seedlings has cooked or chilled.

Every zone, live

A small controller in each greenhouse zone reads air temperature, humidity, soil moisture and light every few seconds. The nexp greenhouse app shows every zone against the targets you set for its crop, with the last hour, day or week of history.

Control from anywhere

From the web or the nexp phone app you can set the exhaust fan's speed, run the irrigation pump for a set time, open the drip or mist valve, set the roof vent and switch the heater to a set point. The controller confirms each command, so you know it happened.

Rules and crop profiles

Most of the work is routine, and routine can be written down:

• Fan on when the air stays above 26 °C for a minute.
• Mist when humidity drops below 60%.
• Water every morning at six for two minutes.

Rules for one crop and stage are grouped into a profile, such as "Tomatoes, flowering". Switch the profile on for the zones that grow that crop and the equipment follows it day and night. You can describe a goal in plain words and have the AI draft the rules; it works from the zone's sensors and equipment and never sees your readings. You check the draft and save it.

When something goes wrong

You are alerted when a reading leaves its range, when the mains power goes, when the battery runs low and when a controller stops reporting. Each controller also shows whether it is on mains or battery and the strength of its Wi-Fi or mobile signal.