what did you build?

TamaGROWchi is an interactive, gamified way to monitor the health of your plant.

what does it do?

🌱Monitor the health of your plant in real time (light, temperature, water level) 🌿Level up when you consistently take care of your plant (keep within light range/water on time) 🪴Lose health when you neglect your plant (overwater, too little light)

game logic

🎮12 hours in light range/not thirsty = +5 HP, +10 XP 🎮12 Hours out of range/thirsty = −10 HP 🎮Water when due = +10 HP, +10 XP 🎮Water early = −5 HP (overwatering kills houseplants)

Each species has its own light band, temp range, and watering interval 100 XP = level up, and the plant on screen grows through six stages 0 HP = dead, restart required

hardware

📟Raspberry Pi Pico 2 📟ALS-PT19 (Analog Light Sensor Breakout) 📟MPL3115A2 (I2C Barometric Pressure/Altitude/Temperature Sensor) 📟Tactile switches

database

🪴 http://www.tropicopia.com/house-plant/

challenges

🛠️ Real time clock blocked the I2C bus -- had to remove it 🛠️Wanted to implement a RFIC tap with phone to water the plant, but Pico 2 has no wireless, meaning so there was nothing to send the tap to

what worked?

⚡The device is fully standalone. No WiFi, no phone, no laptop — it senses its environment, runs the whole game loop, and saves progress to flash, so you can unplug it mid-game and it comes back exactly where it was. Most hackathon hardware forgets everything the moment it loses power.

⚡The plant is drawn procedurally rather than as a sprite, so it actually responds to state — it grows through six stages as you level up, and droops when it's unhealthy or thirsty. No image assets, just shapes.

⚡The overwatering rule turned a button into a real decision. Watering when the plant is due heals it; watering early hurts it. That's the thing that actually kills houseplants, and it's what makes the countdown on screen matter.

⚡Two screens on one microcontroller, which took figuring out — both OLEDs ship with the same I2C address, so they can't share a bus. One runs on the Pico's first I2C unit, the other on the second.

what happens next?

💡RFID NFC Tap - on a Pico 2 W the sticker would hit the device directly and log a watering with a tap instead of a button press. 💡Web-app or mobile dashboard

Built With

• adafruit