The Living Pharmacy That Nearly Died: How a Low-Cost Microcontroller Revived a Village's Herbal Garden

In many villages across Indonesia, a corner once built with great hope—the family medicinal plant garden, or TOGA—often lies neglected. This was the case in Lasem Village, Gresik Regency, where the garden’s planters were cracked, weeds grew wild, and the medicinal rhizomes withered due to inconsistent watering. The problem was not a lack of awareness among the residents, but a lack of time. For families already stretched thin by economic pressures, the simple routine of watering plants three times a day became an easy task to postpone indefinitely.

Recognising that many community empowerment programmes fail because they rely on the unrealistic assumption of abundant free time, a team from the University of 17 August 1945 Surabaya tried a different approach. Instead of merely providing new seeds or counselling, they deployed a low-cost ESP32 microcontroller with built-in WiFi, paired with a small water pump, to create an automatic irrigation system. The device waters the plants three times daily, synchronised via the existing local WiFi network, requiring no additional expensive components.

The results were immediate: the once-disorganised plant racks were restructured following urban farming principles, and residents were freed from the daily chore of manual watering. Crucially, the team focused most of their energy on training a group of residents, who named themselves ‘TOGA Cadres’, to maintain the system. They were taught to read the device’s indicators, clean the pump of moss, and understand basic electrical safety in damp conditions. A simple guidebook was left behind to ensure the knowledge truly transferred from the university to the community, fostering long-term independence.

The experience in Lasem offers a broader lesson for community service projects across Indonesia. Many grassroots problems do not require complex technology or large budgets, but rather a keen eye to identify the exact point where residents ‘run out of time’. By shifting the routine burden to affordable technology while ensuring residents retain control and knowledge, similar initiatives—from nutrition gardens to waste banks—could avoid being abandoned once the initial ceremony’s momentum fades. True community health independence cannot be achieved with a single planting event; it requires something that keeps working long after the cameras have left.