Overview
EarthScout builds commercial-grade field sensor stations — soil moisture, temperature and EC probes below ground, weather sensors above — that stream growing conditions to growers in real time, helping them cut irrigation costs and water use.
I develop and maintain the Android app growers use to watch that data all season. But the part I find most interesting is the other role the app plays: it's also the service tool for the hardware itself.
A phone instead of a truck roll
Sensor stations live in remote fields, and firmware doesn't stay still. The app connects directly to a station over Bluetooth LE to deliver firmware updates and run diagnostics on the spot — so when something misbehaves, the fix is a walk to the field with a phone, not a support visit or a shipped replacement.
Hardware
Field sensor station
Soil + weather sensing, all season
Monitor
Real-time crop data
Live conditions on the grower's phone
Service
Firmware & diagnostics
OTA updates and on-site troubleshooting from the app
Highlights
- Real-time field data — multi-factor growing conditions, above and below ground, streamed to the grower's phone.
- OTA firmware updates — new firmware delivered to stations over BLE, straight from the app.
- Built-in diagnostics — the app can interrogate hardware in the field and pinpoint faults before anyone opens an enclosure.
- Production discipline — Crashlytics and structured logging watch every release; updates ship through CI/CD with staged Play Store rollouts.