Comparison
🌱 Why GrowHardware Is Different
✨ Fractal Architecture: A Design That Replicates at Every Scale
GrowHardware proposes an architecture that replicates its organizational logic from a single ESP32-CAM to a Raspberry Pi orchestrating a network of devices. Each node is autonomous, yet can integrate into a greater system. This allows true, decentralized, and resilient scalability.
“Where there was hierarchy, now there is autarky.”
🧠 Medullas: A New Language for Controlled Environments
Instead of thinking of sensors and actuators as isolated parts, GrowHardware introduces the concept of “medullas”: water, light, air, temperature, and humidity. These dimensions translate into inputs and outputs that can be controlled, traced, and improved using artificial intelligence.
“We design with living concepts, not with wires.”
💡 Practical Modularity, From Indoor to Agro
GrowHardware enables orchestration of controlled environments at any scale:
- A standalone ESP32-CAM connected to local sensors and actuators.
- A Raspberry Pi controlling multiple nodes (ESP, Arduino, etc.) via WebSocket.
- A federated backend that links remote farms and entire communities.
Fractal: the same technical and conceptual pattern in a single plant or a network of cooperatives.
🤖 Living Technology + Augmented Intelligence
- Sensors that learn, not just measure.
- Protocols that evolve.
- AI that adjusts cultivation based on historical, environmental, and genetic data.
GrowHardware integrates AI through a TensorFlow layer exposed via API, enabling prediction, anomaly detection, and productive environment optimization. All fully open and documented.
🌍 Global Comparison
| Project | What it offers | What's missing compared to GrowHardware |
|---|---|---|
| FarmBot | Robotic open source control for farming | Not modular, expensive, lacks distributed traceability |
| OpenAg (MIT) | “Food computer” with RPi + sensors | Hard to replicate, closed, inactive community |
| Mycodo | Great environmental control with RPi | Not federated, no fractal-based model |
| ESPHome + HA | Generic home IoT control | Not agri-specialized, lacks AI and medulla concepts |
| Open Source Ecology | Free philosophy for production tools | No automated cultivation IoT architecture |
🚀 Our Differentiator
- Living fractal architecture: each node is a system on its own.
- Medulla philosophy: we abstract productive variables into living concepts.
- Real intelligence: traceability, sensors, data, and AI connected.
- Suitable for a hacktivist or a rural cooperative.
- Designed for low-cost environments with limited connectivity.
- 100% open source and free to grow with you.