Sensorie greenhouse wants to make growing vegetables at home the norm. It offers smart solutions for year-round harvesting

David Bažout from FIT (Faculty of Information Technology) BUT (Brno University of Technology) is turning classic greenhouses into smart ones. Inspired by his dad's story, he decided to create a system that would make growing vegetables and fruit at home much easier. Almost a hundred gardeners across the Czech Republic already have a smart greenhouse from Sensoria and the team around David Bažout will expand the existing smart equipment with a unique hydroponic system soon.

From March to Christmas your own fresh vegetables. In the context of current prices, this sounds like a very tempting offer to more and more Czechs. However, in an ordinary greenhouse they often struggle to achieve conditions that make almost year-round cultivation possible, and the demands of the present day don't help them either.

David Bažout from FIT BUT came up with a solution for exactly these situations. His startup Sensorie can make a “smart” greenhouse out of anyone. By combining the control unit, sensors and a custom app, the owner can set the ideal conditions and monitor what is happening in the greenhouse from anywhere. “The main idea is that you just choose the conditions you want to keep in your greenhouse. Our control unit then takes care of the rest,” confirms Bažout.

He was inspired by his dad, who is an enthusiastic gardener. But according to David Bažout, at the same time he is a very busy person who has no time to deal with the garden alone. Sensorie was created for just such people. Thanks to automation, you can grow your own vegetables and fruit almost all year round, but you can also go to work, spend time with your family or enjoy your hobbies.

It is an investment that will pay for itself in three years

Almost a hundred Czech gardeners have purchased Sensoria solutions since the company was founded. “We have quite a lot of good feedback, based on which we have tried to fine-tune the system both in terms of technology and user-friendliness,” he says.

The app offers two basic modes – summer and winter. “We came to the conclusion that this division is the best for year-round cultivation. It's not about heating the greenhouse to twenty-five at Christmas, but being able to adapt the conditions to the outside environment and create a certain symbiosis. They integrated all these findings into the application. “So at the moment a person buys equipment from us, they know how to use it. So that they don't have to figure it out gradually, but it guides them," adds Bažout. The purchase of the technology and the most popular type of greenhouse will cost Sensoria a total of around forty thousand crowns. “Of course, it depends on how much one uses the greenhouse, but the payback is somewhere between two and three years,” adds Bažout.

Unique hydroponic solution is functional and affordable

While last year's war in Ukraine significantly increased people's interest in greater food self-sufficiency and the possibility of year-round cultivation, a significant increase in energy prices also affected sales. Sensoria, however, was not discouraged by the situation. It only pointed in a new direction. “We were accepted into the technological incubation and thanks to that we were able to start developing our own hydroponic system,” says David Bažout.

Hydroponics, i.e. growing without soil, using only a nutrient solution, has boomed in recent years, he says, but there is still a lack of solutions on the market for ordinary people. “On the one hand, there are cheap solutions that require attention every day. You have to go into the greenhouse, measure it, and if necessary adjust it. Which in today's demanding and hectic times is not an option for most people. On the other side is industrial hydroponics. Such systems basically take care of everything themselves and are worthwhile for industrial greenhouses, but are too expensive for the ordinary grower,” points out Bažout. Their vision is to bring growing your own vegetables to the general public. “That's why we were looking for a solution for ordinary people and I'm delighted that we've found one,” he says, adding that they are excited about the results so far. “Our system is able to do without expensive sensors. It can estimate the parameters of the nutrient solution based on a sophisticated algorithm. It's not as precise as industrial cultivation, but it's perfectly suitable for use in conventional greenhouses,” says David Bažout.

For now, the hydroponic system from Sensoria is still in testing. It should go on sale in the autumn of this year. According to David Bažout, many of the current customers can't wait. “We always try to make new features available to anyone who has purchased from us in the past. We're working on it so that the news can be connected to the existing system,” he points out. This will make it possible to combine hydroponics with conventional soil cultivation within the Smart Greenhouse from Sensoria.

Community greenhouse offers places to rent and fresh vegetables

Besides families with children, customers are also companies and cities. Sensorie wants to focus even more on Smart Greenhouses for cities and businesses. “At the beginning of this year we opened the Community Greenhouse in Brno. People can rent a garden bed and grow their own right among the apartment buildings. During the working week, the smart equipment also takes care of the harvest for them. We're excited about how passionate people are about it. They enjoy it, they think about it, they go there to relax,” says David Bažout. Furthermore, their Community Greenhouse was followed up with a Smart Marketplace. This makes it easy for anyone passing by to buy fresh vegetables. In the greenhouse, they choose it and pay online via QR code.

At the beginning, David Bažout didn't expect to end up with hydroponics and growing. “But when we see how satisfied people are and how it brings them something, it motivates me and my colleagues a lot. We see the real result of our work and that we are helping. Thanks to this, we still enjoy our work,” concludes David Bažout with a smile.

(zeh)

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