Frequently Asked Question

Open Source Code

Gaia is fully open source! This means that you can freely view the source code that is powering your plant app. Our entire tech stack is licensed under AGPLv3, so you are also free to use and modify the code yourself. For more information about the AGPLv3 license, take a look at gnu.org: gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

We host our source code repositories including documentation on how to get started modifying the code over on GitHub:

• For the mobile app: github.com/GaiaByTeamLime/app
• For the firmware that is running on the sensor: github.com/GaiaByTeamLime/firmware
• The authentication backend: github.com/GaiaByTeamLime/auth
• Temporal data logging service: github.com/GaiaByTeamLime/temporal
• For our homepage: github.com/GaiaByTeamLime/website
• And for this support portal: github.com/GaiaByTeamLime/support

We're open to issues and pull requests! If you find any issues be sure to share them with us either by emailing or opening an issue on the correct GitHub repository. 

Alternative Firmware

The sensor that we use to make Gaia work is the TT-GO T-HiGrow, an open hardware sensor from the manufacturer LILYGO. It contains an ESP-32 microcontroller with WiFi and Bluetooth support and is able to do much more than what the firmware currently is capable of. If you wish you can connect the sensor over USB and program many different types of firmware. Note that flashing  different firmware will make the app unable to work and is unsupported. These are a few that we found:

• The official demo firmware from the manufacturer: 
  • https://github.com/Xinyuan-LilyGO/LilyGo-HiGrow
• Home Assistant support over MQTT: 
  • https://github.com/pesor/TTGO-T-HIGrow
  • https://github.com/BeardedTinker/LilyGO-TTGO-HiGrow
• ESPHome support: 
  • https://github.com/bruvv/LILYGO-T-Higrow-Esphome
• Demo Arduino IDE sketch:
  • https://github.com/ronaldvdmeer/LilyGO-TTGO-T-Higrow-ESP32-BME280-edition/