Quick Start: Add Your First Plant

What you need

• A smartphone (iOS or Android) with a camera — or a desktop with a webcam
• A Wi-Fi connection the first time you open the app

No hardware is required to get started. Sproutcast runs entirely in your browser as a progressive web app.

Step 1 — Open the app

Go to app.sproutcast.io and tap "Add to Home Screen" when your browser prompts you. This installs the PWA so it works offline and feels native.

Step 2 — Onboarding wizard

The seven-step wizard asks you:

1. What kind of grower are you? (Hobby houseplant grower, herb garden, outdoor beds, research / phenotyping)

2. Your grow space name — just a label, e.g. "Kitchen shelf"

3. Your first plant's name and species — try to use the Latin binomial (e.g. *Dahlia pinnata*) for accurate lookup later

4. Growing method — soil, hydroponic, aeroponic, or aquaponic

5. When it was planted (optional — enables the growth-rate pipeline)

6. Which health checks to run — Sproutcast selects sensible defaults based on your plant type; you can customise later

7. Cloud sync — choose local-only or link to a Sproutcast Cloud account

Tap Finish and your plant is created.

Step 3 — Take a capture

Open the Capture tab (camera icon). Point your camera at the plant and tap the shutter. Sproutcast sends the image through the on-device vision pipeline and returns results in a few seconds.

Tip: Good lighting makes a big difference. Natural side-light or a daylight LED panel gives the colour pipeline the most accurate readings.

Step 4 — Read your first result

The Dashboard shows:

• Plant area (% of frame occupied by foliage)
• Chlorophyll index (a proxy for leaf greenness and nutrient status)
• Turgor pressure proxy (leaf edge sharpness, indicates hydration)
• Dominant hue (useful for spotting yellowing or browning trends)

These numbers will mean more once you have a few captures to compare. Give it a week.