Growing food with robots.

About

Gentlebotz is the story of a decade of building robots that grow food. It began on Kauai, where James Brake, looking for an affordable way to eat healthy, built a garden that could take care of itself. That became GrowBot: a solar-powered hydroponic planter that waters itself from a garden hose, uses a camera to set its nutrient dose, and emails its owner a photo of the garden every day. There’s no digging, no weeding and no pH testing.

From a 2015 Indiegogo campaign through 2023, GrowBots were designed, 3D-printed, routed and assembled in-house, and grew everything from kale and chard to chili peppers and strawberries. The work continued at Gentle Machines (2023–2025) with networked microcontrollers, a plant-watching camera and pumps built to run whole greenhouses automatically.

This site collects the photos from that journey: the gardens, the harvests, the workshop and the hardware. Each one comes with the history behind it.