PlantPulse XR - Immersive Smart Gardening
Introduction
Keeping plants alive and thriving indoors might seem simple, but for many people, it’s not.
Problem
Many people find it difficult to keep their plants healthy at home due to limited knowledge, time, or awareness of the environment. As a result, plants often become unhealthy or die too soon. Even when they survive, they may not grow well or produce healthy results.
To address this common challenge, we looked for a solution that is both smart and supportive.
Solution
PlantPulse XR is an interactive XR-based system that helps individuals monitor and care for indoor plants using IoT sensors and a collaborative Digital Twin experience. Each plant is equipped with a soil moisture sensor, temperature sensor and light sensor connected to a replica in an XR app developed in Unity with Meta XR tools.
This blend of technology allows users to better understand their plant’s needs and act accordingly.
How it works
The app visualizes plant and it's development in real time, together with the dashboard containing various data provided from IoT.
Supervisors can follow the plant’s development remotely, offer personalized insights, and provide helpful feedback.
Plant owners can learn from this advice and apply it directly to improve their plant’s health.
Educational Values
Beyond improving plant care, PlantPulse XR also supports learning and growth for users themselves.
- Promotes self-sufficiency and responsibility through plant care
- Teaches gardening basics: humidity, temperature, moisture, and growth conditions
- Introduces users to core concepts in IoT, XR interaction, and digital twins
- Encourages peer-to-peer learning and mentoring through expert guidance in a shared virtual space
Design process: Explain adding evidence on the general overview of how you planned, designed, and developed your project, including the goals, challenges, and solutions.
Design Process
Explain adding evidence on the general overview of how you planned, designed, and developed your project, including the goals, challenges, and solutions.
The design process began with a discussion about whether we should continue developing the project from the first module of the course. That project involved using various design tools, cognitive theories, and methods to make thoughtful design decisions in dynamic and complex environments. The topic was Delivery Logistics, and it was difficult to create a solution that both met the course requirements and provided real value for delivery drivers.
Instead, the team held a brainstorming session to generate new app ideas that would not only align with the course requirements: Mixed Reality, Multiplayer, and Virtual Twin, but also be complex enough to meet the academic expectations and meaningful as a complete product within the given deadlines.
The initial idea was to create a digital twin of a greenhouse, allowing a single supervisor to remotely monitor and manage multiple greenhouses. However, after conducting research and further consideration, we realized this concept had limited practical value. Most greenhouses are already automated and managed by experienced gardeners, making additional remote automation unnecessary.
As a result, we shifted our focus (as mentioned in the introduction) toward individuals who care for plants at home.
This idea addresses a real-world challenge: Many people struggle to care for their home plants due to a lack of knowledge or time.
To solve this, we aim to develop a system that makes plant care more accessible, interactive, and educational through immersive technology.
Our goals include:
- Encouraging healthier plant care through real-time data and personalized guidance
- Making gardening more engaging and informative
- Helping plant owners, especially those unsure how to maintain their plants, to receive quick and remote support from experts through collaborative XR.
Features and functionalities
Multiplayer XR Collaboration
Our system enables real-time supervision and collaboration between plant owners and expert supervisors in a shared XR environment. While both users can be online simultaneously to interact live, this is not required—supervisors can review plant data and leave guidance asynchronously, making support flexible and convenient. screenshots, gifs, or videos
Meta Horizon User Avatars
We integrate Meta Horizon avatars to represent both plant owners and supervisors in the XR space. This adds a social and humanizing element to the collaboration, enhancing presence and engagement. Using the built-in Meta avatars also simplifies implementation since our app is developed for Meta headsets, allowing us to leverage existing avatar systems without extra development overhead.
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IoT Integration
Each plant is equipped with soil moisture, temperature, and light sensors. These were chosen based on sensor availability at our university and because our tomato plant model consists of three parts—each sensor controls one part of the digital twin. Although more factors can influence plant health, this approach balances prototype feasibility with meaningful data representation.
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Digital Twin of the Plant in XR
The tomato plant’s real-time sensor data is visualized as a digital twin within the XR app. This intuitive visualization helps users understand the plant’s status by directly linking environmental data to a lifelike 3D model.
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Dashboard with Live Statistics
Positioned beside the digital twin, the dashboard displays real-time readings from the IoT sensors, providing clear insights into soil moisture, temperature, and light levels.
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Growth History and Notes Backlog
The app maintains a historical log of plant growth and sensor data over time, allowing users and supervisors to track trends and evaluate the effectiveness of care strategies.
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Supervisor-to-Plant Owner Collaborative Notes
Supervisors can leave personalized notes directly attached to the digital twin, offering tailored advice and feedback. This fosters an ongoing educational relationship, helping plant owners improve care practices based on expert guidance.
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Intuitive XR Interactions with 6 Degrees of Freedom (6DoF)
Our application supports full 6DoF movement, allowing natural, immersive navigation and interaction within the virtual space. Users can interact through both hand tracking and controllers:
- Distance Grab: Grab and move notes and dashboard elements from a distance for ease of use.
- Normal Grab: Precise close-range manipulation.
- Poke Interaction: Used for interacting with dashboard elements and typing notes via the Meta built-in overlay keyboard—keeping all input seamless within XR.
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Multiplayer Colocation
The XR experience supports colocation, enabling users and supervisors to share the same virtual space with synchronized views of the digital twin and dashboard, enhancing collaboration when online together.
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Installation
Installation process to build and run your project. Use code blocks, tables, or lists to show the chosen platform's commands, steps, or requirements. Mention any dependencies or libraries that your project uses and how to install them.
To install and run "Plant Pulse XR", follow the instructions below.
IOT
The moisture sensor will be put inside the soil of the pant and the temperature sensor will measure the room temperature and both sensor values are transmitted over 2 MQTT topics.
Components
- Sparksfun Soil Moisture sensor
- Temperature sensor
- ESP32-S2 Thing Plus
- LiPo Battery 3.7 V, 1500
- Breadboard small
- Various wires
Software
1. Setting Up Unity Hub Download and install Unity Hub from official page
2. Installing Unity Editor and Required Modules In Unity Hub, go to the 'Installs' tab and click on the 'Add' button to install a new version of the Unity Editor. Select Unity Editor LTS version 2022.3.56f1 Also, during the installation setup, you should select the following options:
- Microsoft Visual Studio IDE (for code editing).
- Android Build Support
3. Configuring Unity Project
a. Import the Meta XR SDK:
- Navigate to Window > Package Manager.
- Click the '+' icon and select 'Add package by name'.
- Enter 'com.meta.xr.sdk.all' and click 'Add'. Restart Unity if prompted.
- The version used in this project was 74.0.3
b. Build Setting Configuration:
- Go to File > Build Settings
- select 'Android' as the target platform.
- Click 'Switch Platform' to confirm.
- On Scenes in Build add: startup-environment, design-environment and safety-environment
| Platform | Device | Requirements | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | Meta Quest | Unity 6 or higher, Arduino | |
| Android | Phone | Android 32 or higher |
You also need to install the following dependencies or libraries for your project:
- A Unity plugin for building VR and AR experiences
Usage section: Show how to use your project and interact with its features. You can use examples, screenshots, gifs, or videos to demonstrate your project's user interface, controls, and feedback. You can also provide tips, tricks, or best practices for using your project effectively.
Usage
To use PlantPulse XR and interact with its features, follow the guidelines below:
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Launch PlantPulse XR on your Meta Quest headset. You can either host a session or join an existing one with a colleague or supervisor.
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You’ll appear in the shared virtual environment using Meta Horizon-style avatars.
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In the scene, you’ll see a digital twin of a tomato plant that is linked to real-world IoT sensors (moisture, temperature, light). This digital twin reflects live changes from the physical plant.
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Use the dashboard next to the plant to view real-time sensor stats.
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Supervisors can leave collaborative notes pinned next to the plant using the built-in overlay keyboard. These notes serve as a guidance or feedback for the plant owner.
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You can interact using either hand tracking or controllers. Use 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF) movement to walk around the scene and explore the plant from different angles.
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Use the grab to bring the dashboard or notes closer or position better for yourself.
The experience does not require both users to be online at the same time. Notes and plant state remain available across sessions, supporting flexible collaboration.
When finished, simply exit the session. Your notes, sensor logs, and the state of the plant will remain saved for the next user to review.
References
3D assets: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/tomato-plant-e0b559690e384fc0a9f3a05913f609c4 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/vegetation/flowers/stylized-plants-in-pots-207656
Keyboard and notes: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/integration/meta-xr-core-sdk-269169
Dashboard: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/integration/meta-xr-interaction-sdk-265014
Meta Avatars: https://developers.meta.com/horizon/documentation/unity/meta-avatars-overview/
Contributors
Antonio Jerkovic
anje7074@student.su.se
Linkedin
Prageeth Monasha
prsa1276@student.su.se
Linkedin