Guide & field manual

How to use Plottr,end to end.

From your first pin to planting calendars, AI capture, data export, and wiring real field sensors into your maps. The whole manual — including a curated sensor buying guide — no account required.

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01/Getting started

Getting started

The mental model, the three ways to map your land, and your first ten minutes.

How Plottr sees your land

Plottr maps your property three complementary ways. They build on each other — here's the quick mental model, then how to do each one.

Zones are areas

An outline on the satellite map — a bed, field, orchard, or garden. Zones group everything inside them and remember their history.

Pins are plants

A single plant or tree at a GPS point. A pin inside a zone automatically belongs to it, so the zone's stats and rotation advice include it.

Beds are designs

A to-scale layout of a garden bed in inches and feet, with companion-planting checks — for planning a planting in detail.

Map your land, three ways

Draw a zone

Zones are the backbone of Plottr: everything you map inside one rolls up into it.

What it unlocks

Pins you drop inside are grouped into the zone automatically, by location — no tagging needed.
The zone keeps a planting history, season after season.
Plottr warns you when a crop family comes back too soon (the rotation advisor).
Soil samples dropped inside attach to the zone, and soil tests anchor to it.
Filter the whole map down to just this zone.

How to do it

Tap ✏️ Draw zone in the dock at the bottom of the map.
Tap the map to drop each corner — a dashed outline follows your taps.
Once you have 3 or more corners, tap ✓ Finish.
Name the zone, pick a color and type, and save.

Example Outline your vegetable garden as a zone. Now every tomato and pepper pin inside it rolls into that garden's stats — and next spring Plottr flags it if you try to replant nightshades where they grew this year.

Drop a pin

A pin is a living record of a single plant you can return to again and again.

What it unlocks

Track its species, status (alive, dormant, dead…), notes, and photos.
Keep a timeline of everything you do to it — watering, pruning, harvests.
See a growing-degree-day forecast for bud break, bloom, and ripening.
Log pests, disease, or disorders right on the plant.
Drop it inside a zone and it instantly counts toward that zone's rollups.

How to do it

Tap 📍 Pin in the dock at the bottom of the map.
Tap the map where the plant is — or use ⚡ to drop one at your current GPS fix.
Pick the species, set its status, and add notes or a photo.
Save — the pin appears as a colored plant marker you can revisit anytime.

Example Drop a pin on each apple tree. Months later, tap one to log a spray, check its bloom forecast, or mark this winter's prune — all on that tree's own timeline.

Design a bed

The bed designer plans a planting before you put a trowel in the ground.

What it unlocks

Place plants sized to their real mature canopy, so spacing stays honest.
The companion advisor flags conflicts — and good pairings — as you place.
Keep per-plant history inside the bed, year over year.

How to do it

Tap 🌱 Plot in the dock at the bottom of the map.
Tap the map where the bed's center should sit.
Set the bed's size and shape in the designer that opens.
Place plants to scale — the companion advisor flags conflicts live.

Example Sketch a 4×8 raised bed and drop basil next to your tomatoes — Plottr confirms they're good companions while warning if you crowd the squash.

Your first ten minutes

From zero to a living map

Do these in order and the rest of Plottr lights up around them.

How to do it

Create a property (or accept an invite) — it's the container for one piece of land.
Draw one zone around a bed, field, or garden you actually use.
Drop a few pins inside it for the plants you most want to track.
Tap a pin to log your first event — a planting, a watering, a photo.
Open the Dashboard to watch the totals and timelines start to fill in.

Example Five minutes outlining the vegetable garden and dropping pins on this year's tomatoes gives you rotation warnings next spring, a bloom forecast this summer, and a season-by-season history from here on.

The basics

Properties

Each property is one piece of land with its own pins, zones, beds, and plant list. Create as many as you like and switch between them from the property name in the top bar.

Collaborators & roles

Invite people by email from a property's Settings. Owners manage the property and its members, editors can change anything on the map, and viewers can look but not edit.

Works offline

Drop pins, draw zones, and log events with no signal — Plottr queues your changes on the device and syncs them automatically when you're back online. Perfect for walking the back forty.

Muninn, your guide

The raven on the map is Muninn. It offers companion-planting, soil, and rotation tips as you work, and you can chat with it for help. Turn it off anytime in Account → Preferences.

Plans at a glance

Plottr's whole mapping core — pins, zones, beds, the plot designer, the planting calendar, the soil log, reminders, and exports — is free forever for one garden. Two paid tiers add depth when you need it.

Free

One property, the full mapping core.

Pins, zones, beds & the plot designer
Planting calendar, soil log, reminders
Offline use + full data export

Pro

For the serious single grower.

Unlimited properties
Every AI feature, plus sensor & NDVI intelligence
Integrations: webhooks, iCal, the REST API
25× the photo storage

Business

A per-seat workspace for teams.

Everything in Pro, pooled across properties
Operations suite: tasks, sprays, harvests, inventory, labor
Compliance PDFs + custom roles
Owner & editors are seats; viewers free

02/The map & dock

The map & dock

Every capture mode, plus the power tools that keep a big property manageable.

Every capture mode

The dock at the bottom of the map holds 4 modes plus a ⋯ More button for the rest. Tap a mode to switch into it, tap it again to go back to viewing. Long-press (or right-click) any slot to customize which 4 modes live in the dock. View-only collaborators don't see the dock.

Drop a pin at a tapped GPS point

Voice

Hold to talk; AI drafts pins/events/samples

Combo

Photo + voice in one round-trip

Identify

Identify a plant with your camera

Draw zone

Outline a zone polygon

Plot

Place a designed bed at a GPS point

Soil sample

Drop a soil sample at a GPS point

Health scout

Log a disease, pest, or disorder at a GPS point

Field walk

Big-button session with screen-on + GPS tracking

Overlays

Upload + position drone images

Select

Tap pins to gather them for bulk actions

Rapid plant

Sticky template + shutter trigger for fast planting

Measure

Tape measure — distance + area, nothing saved

Power tools on the map

Beyond dropping things, the map helps you find, measure, and manage at scale.

Search, filter & cluster

Find any plant on a crowded property in seconds.

What it unlocks

Slice pins by status, category, zone, planted-date, or free text.
Dense areas fold into a cluster badge and fan back out as you zoom.
Filter down to a single zone and the rest of the map steps back.

How to do it

Open the search / filter controls from the map toolbar.
Combine filters — e.g. dead pins in the orchard planted before 2024.
Tap a cluster to zoom into it, or tap a pin to open its sheet.

Measure distance & area

Read a length or an acreage without committing a permanent zone.

What it unlocks

Live distance + area in your ft/acre or m/ha units.
Keep a measurement by saving its outline as a real zone in one tap.

How to do it

Pick the Measure mode in the dock.
Tap points to trace a line or polygon.
Read the running total, then save it as a zone or clear it.

Overlays & drone imagery

Lay your own imagery — including a stitched drone orthomosaic — over the satellite.

What it unlocks

Drag corners to align, dial rotation, sweep opacity to blend.
Layer multiple overlays and toggle each on or off.

How to do it

Choose the Overlays mode and upload an image.
Drag the corner handles onto matching ground features.
Adjust rotation and opacity until it lines up.

Offline tile pre-download

Warm the satellite map before you lose signal on the back forty.

What it unlocks

Cache a property's bounding box across the zoom levels you pick.
The map and pickers keep working with no connection — writes queue and sync later.

How to do it

Open the offline / cache controls for the property.
Pick the zoom range to store.
Let it download while you're still on wifi.

Bulk select & edit

Change many pins at once instead of one sheet at a time.

What it unlocks

Tap pins, drag a box, or freehand-lasso to gather them.
Change status, move to a zone, reassign the plant, or delete — in one atomic action.

How to do it

Switch to Select mode in the dock.
Gather the pins you want.
Pick a bulk action and confirm.

03/Field logs

Field logs & records

Everything you log threads onto a subject's timeline and the property Activity feed.

How it all links together

One subject, one timeline

Every record you keep attaches to a pin, zone, plot, or single placement — and rolls up automatically.

What it unlocks

A pin's sheet shows its whole timeline — plantings, waterings, harvests, sprays, photos, notes.
Zone and plot timelines aggregate everything that happens inside them.
The Activity feed is the property-wide audit log: '<who> <did what> on <which subject>'.
Photos taken on any record are one tap from the row they belong to.

Example Log a spray on the orchard zone and it lands on the zone's timeline and the Activity feed — and, with REI/PHI set, it blocks harvest tasks until the interval closes. No double entry.

Keep records as you go

Reach these from the menu (☰). Each one ties back to a pin, zone, or bed, so the record and the place it happened never come apart.

Activity

A running audit feed of every change on the property — who did what, and when.

Tasks

To-dos with due dates and reminders, optionally tied to a plant or zone — and spawnable from recurring templates.

Sprays

A spray/application log with active ingredient, rate, and target; REI/PHI windows auto-block harvest until they close.

Plant health

Log a disease, pest, disorder, or abiotic issue with photos and track how it progresses — Claude can suggest a diagnosis.

Harvests

Lot-tracked yields that roll up per zone or species across seasons.

Inventory

Seeds, amendments, and supplies on hand — with expiry alerts and consumption from applications.

Equipment

Tractors, sprayers, and tools with a per-asset maintenance ledger.

Labor

Clock time against a zone, task, or property and roll it into labor-cost reports.

Soil tests & samples

Drop soil samples in the field, then attach them to a lab report — Plottr OCRs it and charts pH, organic matter, and NPK over time.

04/Planning & AI

Planning & AI

Plan the season ahead, and let Claude help where it actually saves you time.

Plan the season

Know exactly what to plant, and when

Plottr learns your land's frost dates from a decade of local weather, then lays every crop's windows across the year.

What it unlocks

A 'plant now' strip of what's in its sow or transplant window this week.
A colour-coded year timeline + month grid for ~120 crops.
Tune frost dates, tracked crops, and per-crop days-to-maturity.
Subscribe as an .ics feed and get a weekly window-opening email.

How to do it

Make sure the property has a pin or zone so Plottr knows where you are.
Open the Planting calendar from the menu.
Customize frost dates and which crops you track.
Add the .ics feed to your calendar app, or turn on the reminder.

Example Open it in March and it tells you to start tomatoes indoors this week and direct-sow peas — no zone lookup, no spreadsheet.

Plan ahead

Planting calendar

A decade of local frost dates turned into start-indoors, direct-sow, transplant, and harvest windows for ~120 crops. Subscribe as a calendar feed.

Crop rotation

Warns when a crop family comes back to a zone too soon and suggests rested families to plant next.

Phenology forecast

Per-plant growing-degree-day milestones — bud break, bloom, ripening — projected from local weather, with chill-hour gating for perennials.

Reminders

Lifecycle care reminders by plant or category, delivered as a daily email digest and push.

AI capture & insight

Every AI feature is confirm-before-commit — Claude drafts, you approve. They share a monthly budget on the Pro plan, and most are reached from the map dock or a plant's detail sheet.

Voice & combo capture

Hold to talk (or snap a photo + talk) and AI drafts pins, events, and soil samples for you to confirm.

Plant ID

Identify a plant from your camera and drop a pin from the result, with an iNaturalist fallback for the long tail.

AI bed design

Ask the bed designer to suggest a full planting layout for a goal like pollinator garden or three-sisters.

Yield prediction

Project a zone's harvest from its plantings, history, soil, weather, and phenology — with a confidence chip.

Muninn chat

Ask Muninn about your property; it reads your data and your uploaded reference docs, and proposes work you confirm.

Sensors & automations

Stream in-field readings, set threshold alerts, and run rules that create tasks or send alerts. The Attention feed surfaces what needs you — see the Sensors & hardware tab.

06/Sensors & hardware

Sensors & hardware

Stream live field data into Plottr — what it powers, what to buy, and how to connect it.

How sensors connect to Plottr

Plottr stores and reasons over readings — it doesn't talk to your hardware directly. Anything that can send an HTTP request, on its own or through a gateway, can feed it.

What it unlocks

A live per-zone sparkline and full reading history for each sensor.
Min/max thresholds that raise a breach badge and a push the moment a reading goes out of range.
A spot in the unified Attention feed, with acknowledge / resolve / mute.
For a soil-moisture sensor bound to a zone: the reading flows straight into the irrigation advisor's water budget (compare or anchor mode).

How to do it

In Property Settings → Sensors, register the sensor — give it a name, pick its kind, and bind it to the zone, pin, or plot it lives in.
In Account → Developer, mint a personal API token with the sensors:write scope.
Point your device, gateway, or no-code bridge at POST /api/v1/sensors/ingest with that token as a Bearer header.
Readings stream in — watch the sparkline fill, then set min/max thresholds to turn it into alerts.

Example A soil-moisture probe in your tomato bed posts a reading every 30 minutes. Plottr charts it, warns you when it dips below your threshold, and — because the sensor is bound to the bed's zone — folds the live reading into the irrigation advisor instead of relying on the weather model alone.

Open the Developer & API docs →(sign in required)

What to stream, and what to buy

One card per kind of reading Plottr accepts, with what to look for and a couple of starting points. Soil moisture comes first — it's the one that drives the irrigation advisor.

Prices are rough US ranges as of mid-2026 and move constantly — ballparks, not quotes. Plottr is hardware-agnostic and isn't affiliated with, paid by, or endorsing any brand named here; these are starting points, not recommendations. The one hard requirement: the device — or its gateway — has to be able to send readings to Plottr's ingest API. Anything locked to a closed vendor app with no webhook, MQTT, or API export can't feed Plottr.

Soil moisture

soil_moisture · %

The headline sensor — volumetric water content in the root zone. Bind one to a zone and it drives the irrigation advisor.

What to look for

Capacitive, not resistive — resistive probes corrode in weeks.
Reports volumetric water content (%), and ideally lets you set soil type for calibration.
A connectivity path you control: LoRaWAN with webhooks, Wi-Fi, or raw GPIO you read with your own board.
Buried-grade housing (IP67+) and a multi-month battery if it's wireless.

Starter picks

Capacitive probe + ESP32 (DIY)~$10–35 + board

Cheapest path; you flash it to POST readings directly to the ingest API.

SenseCAP S2104 / Dragino LSE01 (LoRaWAN)~$90–180

Battery-powered, long-range, pairs with a gateway → webhook. No DIY soldering.

Soil temperature

soil_temperature · °F

Root-zone temperature — gates germination, microbial activity, and when the soil is workable in spring.

What to look for

Usually bundled into the same probe as soil moisture — buy them together.
Stainless or epoxy-potted tip rated for permanent burial.
Range that comfortably covers your winter lows.

Starter picks

DS18B20 waterproof probe (DIY)~$5–15 + board

Rock-solid digital temp sensor; one wire to your microcontroller.

Combined LoRaWAN soil probeincluded w/ moisture

Most wireless soil sensors report moisture + temperature in one reading set.

Soil EC (salinity)

soil_ec · dS/m

Bulk electrical conductivity — a live proxy for salinity and fertilizer concentration in the root zone.

What to look for

Quote-grade only if it's temperature- and moisture-compensated (raw EC drifts with both).
Often the third reading on a moisture+temp+EC combo probe.
Match the dS/m range to your soils — saline ground needs more headroom.

Starter picks

SenseCAP S2105 / Dragino SE02-LB (LoRaWAN)~$130–220

Moisture + temperature + EC in one buried node; compensated readings.

Soil pH

soil_ph · pH

Continuous root-zone pH. Most growers log pH from lab tests instead — a continuous probe is for high-value or research beds.

What to look for

Continuous soil-pH probes are pricey and need periodic recalibration — be sure you need live data first.
If you don't, just record pH from your soil-test reports (Plottr's soil-test feature already charts that trend).
Look for a documented calibration procedure and replaceable electrode.

Starter picks

Dragino LSPH01-style LoRaWAN soil-pH probe~$150–300

Wireless continuous pH where a bed justifies it.

Lab soil test (no hardware)~$15–40 / test

The pragmatic default — snap the report and Plottr OCRs + trends it.

Weather station array

air_temperature · °F

A weather-station array — one purchase that streams air temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed & direction, solar radiation, and barometric pressure.

What to look for

A documented data path: a 'custom server' / webhook upload or an open API — NOT app-only.
Solar-powered, all-in-one outdoor array so you mount and aim once.
Each channel maps to its own Plottr sensor kind (air_humidity, rainfall, wind_speed, wind_direction, solar_radiation, barometric_pressure) under the same station.

Starter picks

Ecowitt GW1100 gateway + WS90 array~$130–200

Posts to a custom server you control; a tiny bridge reshapes it to the ingest API.

Ambient Weather WS-2902~$150–200

Popular all-in-one with an accessible data feed.

Leaf wetness

leaf_wetness · %

How long foliage stays wet — the single best early-warning input for fungal disease pressure.

What to look for

A flat dielectric 'leaf' sensor mounted in the canopy at leaf angle.
An analog or digital output your board (or an ag node) can read and forward.
Often sold as an add-on channel to a LoRaWAN or research weather node.

Starter picks

Dielectric leaf-wetness sensor + logger~$30–120

Pair with an ESP32 or a node with a spare analog channel, then POST it.

CO₂

co2 · ppm

CO₂ concentration — mainly for greenhouses, high tunnels, and grow rooms where enrichment or ventilation matters.

What to look for

True NDIR sensing (a real CO₂ measurement), not an eCO₂ estimate from a VOC chip.
A way out of the device: an export API, local network access, or a DIY board.
Auto-calibration you can disable if the space never hits fresh-air baseline.

Starter picks

SCD41 NDIR module + ESP32 (DIY)~$25–55 + board

Accurate NDIR sensing for the price of a hobby board; you control the POST.

Aranet4~$200–300

Polished NDIR monitor; pull readings via its API/integration into a bridge.

Light / lux

light · lux

Light intensity — supplemental-lighting checks indoors, or shade/exposure mapping outdoors. (For crop science, PAR is the better-but-pricier cousin.)

What to look for

A digital lux sensor (e.g. BH1750) is plenty for relative light logging.
If you need photosynthetically active radiation, budget for a dedicated PAR/quantum sensor.
Outdoors, house it so direct rain and bird droppings don't skew it.

Starter picks

BH1750 lux module + ESP32 (DIY)~$5–15 + board

Trivially cheap relative-light logging; one I²C sensor.

Quantum / PAR sensor~$100–300

When you need real µmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ for crop-science decisions.

Custom

custom · your unit

Anything else — tank level, flow, pump state, a sensor Plottr doesn't have a named kind for. Register it as 'custom', set your own unit, and Plottr skips range validation.

What to look for

Use when no built-in kind fits; you own the meaning and the unit string.
Readings still get a sparkline, history, thresholds, and the Attention feed.
Anything that can format an HTTP POST qualifies — a relay, a PLC, a script.

Starter picks

Any HTTP-capable device or scriptfree

If it can POST JSON with a Bearer token, it can be a Plottr sensor.

Gateways & getting data flowing

The bridge between a sensor and the ingest API. Pick whichever matches what you already run.

LoRaWAN gateway

Long-range, low-power radio for battery field sensors. A single gateway (Dragino LPS8v2, RAK7268-class, ~$100–200) covers a property and forwards to a network server.

Network server → webhook

The Things Network (free community) or a self-hosted ChirpStack receives gateway traffic and fires an HTTP webhook per uplink — reshape that into a Plottr ingest POST.

Wi-Fi station bridge

Wi-Fi weather stations (Ecowitt-class) can post to a 'custom server'. A tiny bridge (a few lines of code, or Node-RED) translates that payload to the ingest API.

MQTT / no-code bridge

Already publishing to MQTT? Pipe it through Node-RED or n8n to POST each message. The n8n community node ships a ready Plottr action.

Home Assistant

If your sensors already land in Home Assistant, a REST-command automation forwards the states you care about to Plottr on a schedule or on change.

DIY microcontroller

An ESP32 or Pi reading the sensor directly is the cheapest, most flexible path — a dozen lines of code to HTTP POST a reading with your token, no gateway required.

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