Tag: ANAVI Gardening uHAT

Building Smarter Gardens with ANAVI Gardening uHAT and the Yocto Project

If you have ever wanted to turn your Raspberry Pi into a smart gardening assistant, our ANAVI Gardening uHAT is a simple, low-cost way to get started. This open source add-on board makes it easy to monitor and care for your plants with sensors for soil moisture, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and light. Best of all, there is no soldering, special tools, or complicated setup. Just plug the board into your Raspberry Pi with your bare hands, follow the user manual, and you are ready to go. First introduced in 2021 through a successful Crowd Supply campaign, the ANAVI Gardening uHAT is now widely available through distributors such as Mouser Electronics. While the official documentation is based on Raspberry Pi Operating System, the board works with any Raspberry Pi single-board computer and any Linux distribution designed for it. This makes the ANAVI Gardening uHAT not just a hobbyist gadget, but also a versatile tool for anyone experimenting with Internet of Things (IoT), agricultural technology, or embedded Linux.

The Yocto Project Meets Raspberry Pi Gardening

In early 2025, Leon Anavi, the creator of the ANAVI Gardening uHAT, launched a new series of video tutorials on the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded. These tools, maintained under the Linux Foundation, have become the industry standard for building custom Linux distributions for embedded devices.

In episode 10 from September 2025, Leon demonstrates how to enable the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) on a Raspberry Pi and use it with the Microchip MCP3002 10-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) integrated into the ANAVI Gardening uHAT. This allows you to connect analog sensors, such as a capacitive soil moisture sensor, and read their data in real time.

Step-by-Step: Enabling Serial Peripheral Interface with Yocto

If you want to try the tutorial yourself, here is a simplified version of the steps Leon used in the video. These examples are based on the Yocto Long Term Support (LTS) release Scarthgap and use the meta-raspberrypi board support package (BSP) layer.

  1. Enable Serial Peripheral Interface support
    Add the following line to your conf/local.conf: ENABLE_SPI_BUS = "1"
  2. Include required Python packages
    Extend your Linux image with the spidev library (used in the examples), plus some helpful tools: IMAGE_INSTALL:append = " python3-spidev"
  3. Build and flash your image
    Build the core-image-base, flash it to a microSD card, and boot your Raspberry Pi.
  4. Run Python code to read sensor values
    Open a Python 3 interactive shell and use this example code snippet to start reading data from a capacitive soil moisture sensor through the MCP3002 analog-to-digital converter.

Why This Matters

This combination of ANAVI Gardening uHAT and the Yocto Project is more than just a fun do-it-yourself experiment. It is a hands-on way to learn about:

  • Embedded Linux development
  • Custom Raspberry Pi distributions
  • Practical Internet of Things (IoT) applications in agriculture

For hobbyists, it means you can monitor your houseplants or small garden with open source hardware and software. For professionals, it is a chance to explore how Yocto-powered Linux images can streamline development in real-world embedded projects.

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ANAVI Gardening uHAT: Safety First

Earlier in January all ANAVI Gardening uHAT kits were delivered to the Crowd Supply warehouse and soon after that Crowd Supply team sent them to their final destination: our valuable and trusting crowdfunding backers! Thank you again for the support.

ANAVI Gardening uHAT Developer Kit
ANAVI Gardening uHAT Developer Kit

ANAVI Gardening uHAT is a versatile development board, so please follow the instructions below for safe use:

  • ANAVI Gardening uHAT should only be connected to a compatible Raspberry Pi with 40-pin header.
  • Do not expose it to water or moisture, and do not place it on a conductive surface whilst in operation.
  • Do not expose it to heat from any source; it is designed for reliable operation at normal room temperatures.
  • Take care while handling the board to avoid mechanical or electrical damage to the printed circuit board and connectors.
  • Avoid handling ANAVI Gardening uHAT while it is powered on. Only handle by the edges to minimize the risk of electrostatic discharge damage.

In the meantime, there is a work in progress going on the user’s manual which is available at GitHub. We will soon update it. As usual, GitHub pull requests with improvements and fixes to the documentation or the source code examples are always welcome.

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ANAVI Gardening uHAT: Shipping Soon

At the beginning of January all ANAVI Gardening uHAT kits were shipped to the Crowd Supply warehouse. We are happy we managed to do it ahead of schedule. Even Tux, the mascot of the Linux kernel, helped out with the transportation.

In the coming weeks, the crowdfundng orders will be prepared for shipment to backers. A tracking number when the order ships.

ANAVI Gardening uHAT
ANAVI Gardening uHAT

Thanks for your patience and support for this open source hardware project! We hope you will enjoy and have a lot of fun with ANAVI Gardening uHAT!

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ANAVI Gardening uHAT Manufacturing Progress

We have good news regarding ANAVI Gardening uHAT! All boards have been received almost fully assembled from the local factory and we have sourced all required peripherals.

Recently, we received the last batch of assembled printed circuit boards from the local factory. As you can see on the photo, only the EEPROM is missing. We will flash and solder it in-house.

The winter is coming… Grab a ANAVI Gardening uHAT for your Raspberry Pi

We have also received additional peripherals, which will be included in ANAVI Gardening uHAT Starter, Advanced, and Developer kits. On the photo you can see the big packages with analog capacitive soil moisture sensor. Each kit will contain a couple of capacitive soil moisture sensors.

Capacitive Soil Moisture Sensor v1.2

The recyclable cardboard boxes for our eco-friendly packaging have also already been delivered. Another local company here in Plovdiv, Bulgaria will print all stickers for us. We expect them next week.

Our crowdfunding campaign recently ended very successfully but you can still order our open source Gardening uHAT for your Raspberry Pi and be among the very first owners!

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ANAVI Gardening uHAT is now OSHWA certified

A few days ago we received an official confirmation that ANAVI Gardening uHAT has been certified as open source hardware by the Open Source Hardware Association with UID BG000079.

The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) is a non-profit organization that supports the open source movement and maintains an open source hardware certification registry. OSHWA Certification provides an easy and straight-forward way to quickly check if a product complies with a uniform and well-defined standard for open source hardware.

Open source hardware certification guarantees the sharing of knowledge and keeps prices fairly based on the bill of materials of the hardware’s components. ANAVI Gardening uHAT hardware design files are available under CC BY-SA 4.0, which allows you to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

In a nutshell, OSHWA certifies a project as open source based on public access to four elements:

  • Hardware – functional elements of the product
  • Software – code, firmware, or other software involved in the product’s functionality
  • Documentation – including design files, schematics, and instructions
  • Branding – brand names, product names, logos, and product design

The exact certified version of each product receives a unique UID, for example, ANAVI Gardening uHAT is with UID BG000079. The prefix is the country code. We make our open source hardware in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, so the country code is BG. The suffix is a sequential ID number. At the moment, there are 79 certified open source hardware products from Bulgaria. For a comparison, the United States is leading with the amazing 2052 certified products, followed by Germany with 116. Bulgaria comes in at the third place, primarily thanks to our awesome open source neighbors from Olimex.

As a very small company we are all proud to have contributed to the Bulgarian success in this field. Hopefully, the popularity of the open source hardware movement will continue to increase worldwide.

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