What is a grow room sensor & why do I need one?

To grow the best plants, you know you need visibility of your grow room conditions. The easiest way to get this invaluable clarity by using a grow room sensor. Get your FREE impartial list of the best grow room sensors at the bottom of the page.

If you don’t know what is working well for you (or what is working against you for that matter!) trying to make improvements is at best a stab in the dark.

By the time your plants are showing something is amiss, they’re already under stress. Honing in on what could be causing your plant’s problems can be a tricky and time consuming trip down the rabbit hole.

Sure you want to grow the best plants, but you don’t want to spend all day, every day tackling each new issue that pops up. Being reactive is inefficient and frustrating.

You can’t know where to focus your energy so you can make improvements if you don’t know what’s working… but don’t worry, there’s an easy solution.

Using grow room sensors takes all the guesswork out of getting the best out of your grow room. 🌿

So, let’s dive deeper into grow room sensors.

What is a grow room sensor?

A grow room sensor is a device that you put inside your grow room to measure and feedback on your environment. You can then use the resulting data to make improvements to your grow space.

A good grow room sensors should track a variety of environmental factors including some, or all of the following:

• Temperature
• Humidity (or relative humidity)
• Vapour pressure deficit
• Dew point
• CO2 concentration
• PPFD (or light spectrum)
• Air flow
• Amount of water in the growing medium
• Water temperature
• PH (How acidic or alkaline substrate or water is)
• EC (Electrical conductivity of water or substrate)

There are also other more granular things grow room sensors can track.

You can normally configure grow sensors to send alerts to let you know of any issues you need to fix. This allows you to remotely monitor your grow room.

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Why are grow room sensors important?

As mentioned at the start, grow room sensors (sometimes called grow room monitors,) tell you about the conditions within your grow environment.

You need to know what environmental conditions you’re providing to your plants. If you don’t know, you can’t decisively optimise your grow room or ensure you’re on the path to growing the best plants.

The main reason for growing indoors is so that you can get complete control of your environment… but if you’re not tracking data to act on, you’re missing a trick.

What are the benefits of using grow room sensors?

It’s a great question!… And there are a great many benefits, so let’s break them down:

Grow room sensors enable you to make time savings.

Indoor growing can be time consuming. Running a grow operation manually and responding to any problems that crop up is challenging.

One of the biggest costs indoor growers face is labour costs. Using a good grow room sensor should mean you don’t need to spend so much time obsessively checking in your environmental conditions.

This in turn means you can choose to spend your valuable time elsewhere.

You can save money using grow room sensors.

Because using a grow room sensor enables you to spend your time more efficiently, in turn, it can reduce labour costs.

Aside from the costs of your (or your employees) valuable time, the other big hitting expense when growing indoors is of course, the cost of energy.

Good grow room sensors will give you clarity about your environment. They enable you to make adjustments and ensure you’re giving your plants exactly what they need and not wasting resources.

You might find that you have been running heating or cooling when you don’t need to. Or you could discover that you don’t need to have dehumidifying (or humidifying) equipment on maximum for such prolonged periods.

You could uncover that your plants don’t need such powerful lighting or as much water as you’d been giving them. There are many opportunities to optimise that will result in savings. 💰

It’s generally expected that businesses should be collecting data to enable them to optimise and boost their performance whilst identifying how operating costs can be reduced. Businesses in indoor cultivation are no exception.

Grow room sensors give you peace of mind.

Just knowing that something is monitoring your grow space 24/7 and will let you know if anything is wrong reduces your mental load and frees up your brain space for other things.

The data that good grow room sensors collect can provide you with crucial information that will have a direct impact on the success of your grow.

Environmental sensors do the heavy lifting to give you clarity and understanding about the state of your environment. The data sensors provide empowers you to grow with confidence and rescues stress.

Get real time visibility using grow room sensors.

A grow room sensor is a physical device that is often made up of multiple sensors designed to gather and then relay data via the internet.

When you put a grow room sensor in your grow room, it takes measurements. The measurements that are taken depend on the particular grow room sensor but as a minimum should include; temperature, humidity, vapour pressure deficit (check our post about how to use a VPD chart to grow your best plants,) and CO2 levels.

All this data is then transferred via the internet to an app or program that gives growers visibility of their environment. (The data can be sent directly to a climate control system for automated grow room management too.)

The collection and transfer of the data (ideally) in real time (dependent on the sensor) gives growers the ability to take immediate action when needed.

Most grow room sensors encourage you to set up alarm parameters. This ensures you receive a warning when certain thresholds are exceeded to minimise risk to your plants and equipment.

Increase quality & yields with grow room sensors.

The more you know about your grow environment, the better you’re equipped to optimise your systems and improve your processes.

Different plants and strains have different, specific requirements. Monitoring grow room data and comparing it with your end result will guide you down a path to creating the optimum environment for your exact plant’s needs every time.

Data from grow room sensors enables you to increase the quantity, quality and consistency of your end product whilst lessening the risk of losses AND improving efficiency – win win! (win, win win!)

Optimising your grow space based on clarity provided by high quality grow room monitors can also in some cases shorten the length of your growing cycle. This results in reduced energy and time costs and improved profitability.

Because grow room sensors give you visibility of your environmental factors, they can also inform equipment upgrade and investment decisions.

Using grow room sensors means you grow greener.

There are many motivations for indoor cultivation. You can grow all year round, it’s secure and it’s easier to control and prevent pests and diseases, but it is super energy intensive. One of the biggest benefits to using a good grow room monitor is that it enables you to grow greener and minimise energy usage.

When you ensure you’re giving your plants exactly what they need (and no more!) it reduces potential waste and decreases your grow’s carbon footprint, alongside your bills.

Sustainability in particular is really important to us here at Grow. The popularity of indoor growing is increasing. The markets that utilise large scale indoor agriculture are expanding and we want to help.

That’s why we create products like the Grow Sensor that make indoor growing more efficient and sustainable. Earth’s resources are finite and we should all do our bit to grow greener and minimise environmental harm.

So, now you’re sold on the benefits of grow room sensors. Maybe you’re wondering how you’ve been growing this long without one? Let’s take a look at who grow room monitors are for.

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Who are grow room sensors for?

Given our mission to make indoor growing more effective and sustainable, we’d argue that regardless of the size of the grow, capturing data and moving towards improving efficiency and green growing matters…

That said, growers’ needs vary and growing for fun is very different to growing as a business.

If growing’s your hobby…

Fully automated grow room controllers are often used to monitor and control large scale commercial grows… but they come at a (HIGH) cost.

For all the convenience that grow room controllers provide, the hefty price tag often ensures they’re priced way out of reach for the home grow enthusiast.

Quality grow room sensors on the other hand, can help you be the best grower you can be, at a fraction of the cost of a commercial grow controller.

They’ll help you to hone horticultural skills and grow the best quality plants on a small scale. Sensors can also ensure that you stay safe and are informed of any problematic goings on in your grow space.

If you grow professionally…

Grow room sensors work great alongside any grow room controllers you’ve already got. Using both enables you to further dial in your grow spaces and sustain the ideal conditions for the particular plant you grow. This is essential to profitable cultivation operations and will have a huge impact on your bottom line.

Our Grow Sensor also benefits from this awesome power-up: You can link together multiple sensors within your grow space and get a visual heat-map style image of the room. This means you can identify any hotspots, areas with poor ventilation or places that don’t get enough light to further improve your grow.

The larger the grow operation, the higher the stakes. Good grow room sensors facilitate instant notifications in the event of a crisis ensuring that you never lose a crop again.

Grow room monitors put cultivators like you in complete control of your environment. The information available enables you to scrutinise, monitor and improve your indoor farming operation, repeatedly.

The knock on effect of all of this, is the reward you reap for striving for excellence. Data driven cultivation leads to better quality and bigger yields. This in turn makes for happy, satisfied customers, repeat custom and a great reputation.

The (green) elephant in the room…

Although there’s increased focus on growing sustainably within commercial indoor growing, where profits continue to rise, sustainability is still, sadly, often under prioritised.

On that note, here’s something to ponder on: By the end of 2025, the expected global market value of legal marijuana is $146.4 billion (Grand View Research, 2020).

Medicinal hemp is a power hungry crop, one that’s grown indoors and has significant water and energy demands. As legislation changes, intensive farming of medicinal hemp continues to become more widespread.

It’s growers’ responsibility to take stock of their water and energy usage and not just as a PR exercise. As the market starts to become saturated in future, growing green could give farmers an edge over their competitors.

Check out Green Entrepreneur’s interesting article about how to redesign your indoor grow for sustainability.

Takeaways:

Smart growers these days leverage technology like grow room sensors and controllers to take the guesswork out of increasing their yields and growing a consistently better product.

Using a grow room sensor to monitor your grow space is an affordable option. It enables you to save you time, money and stress. It can also give you the clarity to make decisions AND grow in a more environmentally friendly way. 👍

Grow room sensors provide valuable insight to growers of all sizes, hobbyists to pro cultivators alike. To see what grow room monitor might be right for you, check out our comparison sheet below. 👇

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