Two people, one workbench, a lot of soil.

A sensor for our own beds

Fieldbench is our two-person hardware studio in Halden. Ines Marr handles the electronics. Tomas Kell handles the enclosures and the app. We share a workbench, a vegetable plot and the job of finding out why a prototype stopped working overnight.

We built Stake because the surface of a bed kept fooling us. A dry crust could hide damp soil below it. After rain, the top could look wet while the roots still needed water. We wanted readings at two depths so we could decide where to put the hose before watering everything again.

Stake is 28 cm tall, with a glass-filled nylon body. Two moisture pads sit at 5 cm and 15 cm depth, beside a soil temperature sensor. It reads every 10 minutes. A screw-on solar cap charges a small rechargeable cell that lasts about three weeks without sun. You check the readings on your phone over Bluetooth Low Energy.

What the prototypes taught us

Our first bench probe took a reading in November 2025. In spring 2026, we put 40 prototypes into 12 gardens. The first cap cracked in frost. The second enclosure collected condensation. Bluetooth range fell short behind sheds. Those failures gave us specific things to change and check again.

We ordered enclosure tooling in July 2026. This October, an engineering validation build of 200 units is under way. Radio certification is planned for December, followed by a production run in February 2027. We plan to ship reservations in April 2027. The remaining dates depend on the checks ahead, and we will update the timeline if they move.

A phone, without an account

We will not require a subscription or an account. The phone app is free and works offline when you are near your Stakes. Readings stay on your phone unless you add the optional Base, a plug-in Wi-Fi bridge for checking beds away from home.

How we decide a stage is done

Each stage needs a written result we can compare with the next build. We use the same three checks below, and keep a stage open while a failure remains unresolved.