How-to guides
Step-by-step tutorials for building and running your Verdalio setup.
Your first hydroponic recipe
Recipes are Docker for plants. How to pick a proven one from the marketplace and run your first hydroponic grow.
Inside the vertical hydro tower: 33 sites, automated dosing
A PVC rain tower with 33 growing sites, closed-loop pH and EC dosing, and compliance-band analytics — how it is automated end to end.
Why we built ML sensor calibration
A $3 probe and a $100 probe measure the same voltage. What you pay for is the software. How Verdalio makes cheap sensors read like lab-grade ones.
One shelf, three herbs, zero dead basil
Basil, mint, and Vietnamese basil on a Budapest apartment shelf — ESP32-C6 Zigbee nodes and local LED automation.
Getting started with outdoor soil automation
A 27.87 m² garden that waters itself — soil-moisture probes, weather-aware scheduling, and why it kept running when the internet dropped.
Your first grow — a walkthrough
From a ready hub to a running grow: pair devices, pick a recipe, bind roles, start.
Pairing Zigbee devices
How the hub pairs Zigbee 3.0 sensors and actuators through the ZBDongle-P coordinator.
Calibrating pH and EC probes
Two-point pH and EC calibration, buffer solutions, mS/cm not PPM, KCl storage, and operator discipline.
What Magdi can do
The Claude-powered growing assistant — diagnosis, questions, automations, BYOK, local-first.
Choosing a hydroponic method
NFT, DWC, Ebb & Flow, Drip, Aeroponics, and Tower — tradeoffs, space, and fault tolerance.
Water source selection
Tap vs RO vs rainwater, baseline EC, carbonate hardness, pH management, and EC interpretation.
Reservoir cleaning and sanitation
Sanitation vs sterilization, safe chemicals (H₂O₂ yes, bleach no), and cleaning schedules.