Why I built PlantLab
The Problem
Let's say you are a new or aspiring cultivator. You got some seeds, soil, nutrients, and the rest of your setup. You plant the seed and in a few days a little sprout starts growing. You hope that all goes according to the instructions you read or videos you watched. But at some point, your plant looks a little off. Perhaps the leaves are curling or its color changes. Something doesn't seem right. You search online, post photos on growing forums. You adjust pH, nutrients, lights. Sometimes the plant bounces back and sometimes it doesn't. You wish you could get a clear signal about what's going on, so you can actually address it.
Or perhaps you are an advanced grower, with a large tent or greenhouse. Daily, you walk and examine your plants, checking for signs of stress or pests. The more plants you have, the more chances something goes amiss and needs your attention. Your systems for lights, pH, water may be automated but they still need you: your vision and your experience.
The Solution
Now imagine a service that takes a photo, analyzes the state of your plant's health, and produces a structured response that your control systems can use to act autonomously. Not an app that gives you a diagnosis and leaves you to interpret it. Not a ChatGPT wrapper that overpromises because it was never trained on actual plant data. Rather, an essential part of your growing ecosystem—running continuously, alerting you when something is amiss, and providing enough information for your other systems to auto-correct.
Why I Built It
I tried the apps. I tried uploading photos to ChatGPT. The apps gave me generic advice. The AI chatbots hallucinated confidently—telling me I had calcium/magnesium deficiency when it was clearly light burn. None of them were trained on actual cannabis data, and it showed.
So I built my own. I collected thousands of real plant images, labeled them, trained models specifically for cannabis diagnostics. Not because I wanted to start a company, but because I wanted something that actually worked for me and others like me.
What PlantLab Is
This is PlantLab: an AI trained specifically on cannabis plants to identify health issues with speed and accuracy. I built and trained these models myself, on real plant data, because I wanted the tools I use in my own grow to actually work. PlantLab gives you an expert eye on your grow 24/7, producing output that your automation systems can interpret and act on.
Your Data, Your Privacy
Your images are not stored. Your data stays yours. And if you need it, PlantLab can run completely offline and on-premise, for air-gapped environments where privacy is non-negotiable.