A premium Home Assistant card for Plant Monitor featuring OpenPlantBook integration, DLI-based light monitoring, rainfall-aware watering advice, mobile responsive layouts and a visual configuration editor.
Features
- Plant Monitor integration support
- OpenPlantBook species information
- Indoor and outdoor plant support
- DLI (Daily Light Integral) monitoring
- Rainfall-aware watering advice
- Dynamic health scoring
- Mobile responsive design
- Visual configuration editor
- Lovelace card picker preview
- Battery and Link Quality (LQI) support
- Soil moisture monitoring
- Temperature monitoring
- Humidity monitoring
- Soil temperature monitoring
- VPD monitoring
- Graceful degradation when optional sensors are unavailable
- Optimised for large plant collections
- HACS compatible
Why Plant Monitor Premium?
Most plant cards focus on displaying raw sensor values.
Plant Monitor Premium focuses on plant health.
It combines Plant Monitor status attributes, OpenPlantBook species data, DLI monitoring, VPD monitoring and rainfall-aware watering advice into a single premium dashboard card.
Designed and tested with more than 20 simultaneous plant cards, it is suitable for both small houseplant collections and larger indoor/outdoor plant dashboards.
Screenshots
Desktop Dashboard
Monitor multiple plants simultaneously with health scoring, alerts and watering recommendations.
Mobile View
Fully responsive layout designed for Home Assistant mobile apps.
Configuration Editor
Simple visual configuration with live preview.
Card Picker Preview
Easy discovery from the Lovelace card picker.
Outdoor Plant Monitoring
Rainfall-aware watering advice for outdoor plants.
Multiple Plant Dashboard
Designed to support large plant collections while remaining responsive.
Highlights
Plant Health Score
The card calculates a dynamic health score using Plant Monitor status attributes.
Typical monitored attributes include:
- Soil moisture
- Temperature
- Humidity
- Illuminance / DLI
- Soil temperature
- VPD
Health states:
| Score | Status |
|---|---|
| 90-100% | Excellent / Healthy |
| 70-89% | Attention / Good |
| Below 70% | Critical |
DLI-Based Lighting
Unlike many plant dashboards that rely solely on lux values, Plant Monitor Premium uses Daily Light Integral (DLI) wherever available.
Benefits:
- More accurate assessment of plant light exposure
- Better support for indoor grow lighting
- Better support for outdoor plants
- Avoids misleading momentary lux readings
- Supports morning accumulation behaviour where DLI is still building
Rainfall-Aware Watering Advice
Outdoor plants can incorporate rainfall sensors to generate intelligent watering recommendations:
- Water today
- Wait for forecast rain
- Useful rain due soon
- Avoid watering
- No action required
Default rainfall entities:
rainfall_today_entity: sensor.plant_rain_today
rainfall_24h_entity: sensor.plant_rain_next_24h
rainfall_48h_entity: sensor.plant_rain_next_48h
Important
This card is designed for the custom Plant Monitor integration.
It is not designed for the stock Home Assistant Plant integration.
Architecture
Plant Monitor Premium was developed and tested using the following architecture:
Zigbee Soil Sensor
↓
Zigbee2MQTT
↓
MQTT Sensor Entities
↓
Plant Monitor
↓
OpenPlantBook
↓
Plant Monitor Premium Card
The card does not communicate directly with the physical sensor.
All plant monitoring logic is provided by the Plant Monitor integration.
Requirements
Required
- Home Assistant
- HACS
- Plant Monitor custom integration
Strongly Recommended
- OpenPlantBook
Recommended For Outdoor Plants
- Pirate Weather
- HA-Illuminance
Optional
- Zigbee2MQTT
- ESPHome
- MQTT sensors
- Battery sensors
- Link Quality sensors
- Soil temperature sensors
- CO2 sensors
Installation
HACS Custom Repository
Until this card is accepted into the default HACS repository list, install it as a custom repository.
- Open HACS
- Go to Frontend
- Open the three-dot menu
- Choose Custom repositories
- Add this repository URL
- Set category to Dashboard
- Install Plant Monitor Premium Card
- Refresh your browser or restart the Home Assistant mobile app
Repository URL:
https://github.com/djmaxwell1975/plant-monitor-premium-card
Manual Installation
Copy:
dist/plant-monitor-premium-card.js
to:
/config/www/plant-monitor-premium-card.js
Add the Lovelace resource:
url: /local/plant-monitor-premium-card.js
type: module
Then refresh the Home Assistant frontend.
Basic Usage
type: custom:plant-monitor-premium-card
entity: plant.guelder_rose
plant_location: outdoor
Indoor example:
type: custom:plant-monitor-premium-card
entity: plant.monstera_thai_constellation
plant_location: indoor
Temperature override example:
type: custom:plant-monitor-premium-card
entity: plant.pieris_japonica_forest_flame
plant_location: outdoor
air_temperature_entity: sensor.pieris_japonica_forest_flame_temperature_2
Rainfall override example:
type: custom:plant-monitor-premium-card
entity: plant.guelder_rose
plant_location: outdoor
rainfall_today_entity: sensor.plant_rain_today
rainfall_24h_entity: sensor.plant_rain_next_24h
rainfall_48h_entity: sensor.plant_rain_next_48h
Entity Discovery
The card attempts to discover related Plant Monitor entities automatically.
You can optionally provide:
sensor_prefix:
device_prefix:
air_temperature_entity:
rainfall_today_entity:
rainfall_24h_entity:
rainfall_48h_entity:
Missing optional sensors should not prevent the card from loading.
Documentation
Additional documentation:
Tested Environment
The card has been tested with:
- Home Assistant
- Plant Monitor custom integration
- OpenPlantBook
- Pirate Weather
- HA-Illuminance
- Zigbee2MQTT
Hardware used during development:
- Tuya Zigbee soil sensors
- HOBEIAN ZG-303Z
- COOLO / CS-201Z compatible sensors
- Outdoor plants using public illuminance estimates
- Indoor plants using physical sensors
Validated on:
- 21 simultaneous plant cards
- 5 indoor plants
- 16 outdoor plants
- Desktop Chrome
- Desktop Safari
- Home Assistant iOS App
The v1.0.0 release is based on the V32 stable rendering engine and has been validated for more than 48 hours on a live 21-plant dashboard.
Performance
Plant Monitor Premium Card was optimised for larger plant dashboards.
The v1.0.0 rendering engine reduces unnecessary frontend re-renders and includes lifecycle recovery for:
- dashboard edit mode
- browser focus changes
- page restore
- Home Assistant mobile app resume
Known Limitations
- Requires the custom Plant Monitor integration
- Not designed for the stock Home Assistant Plant integration
- OpenPlantBook data quality depends on available species records
- Rainfall forecasts are estimates
- Battery and LQI are shown only when matching sensors exist
- Outdoor CO2 is not required and is generally not recommended
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