Streamline Canopy for greenhouse and indoor growers
Canopy uses the LiDAR scanner in an iPhone Pro to record each plant’s height and growth rate. After every walk it shows you the plants falling behind and the spots that need replanting, while there’s still time to act.
Walked 12.4 m · Cover 41%
Nobody measures 400 plants by hand. You check a few with a tape when there’s time and judge the rest by eye. A plant growing at half the rate of its neighbors looks normal for weeks, and an empty slot hides under the leaves next to it. By harvest, the gap shows up on the scale.
Canopy measures every plant on every walk and tracks each one week to week. Stragglers, gaps and uneven beds show up early, when you can still do something about them.
Measured by hand on a busy morning: 5 of 66 plants
Measured with Canopy: 66 of 66, on every walk
40¢
of every expense dollar on U.S. fruit, nut, vegetable and greenhouse farms goes to labor. Across all farms it’s 15%.
Source 1: USDA Economic Research Service$18.58
an hour, the average U.S. field worker’s pay in April 2025, before payroll taxes and benefits.
Source 2: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service53%
of the cost of greenhouse lettuce is labor in Cornell’s model. Each head sells for $1.35 and clears 26¢.
Source 3: Cornell University56%
of the cost of an acre of field romaine is harvest, packing, cooling and selling. At $24 a carton the acre clears $3,595; at $20, $195.
Source 4: UC Cooperative Extension and UC Davis Agricultural and Resource EconomicsCornell’s greenhouse model budgets 32 hours of work for every 1,000 heads, about 2 minutes a head from seeding to the box. A 20% rise in labor cost cuts that farm’s yearly profit by 42%, from $33,333 to $19,382. In UC’s field romaine study, hand harvesting and packing alone run $8.00 for a carton of 36 hearts.
With margins that thin, an hour spent counting heads, or guessing what will be ready for a buyer, comes straight out of profit. Nobody publishes how long that takes the average grower, so the calculator uses your numbers.
Canopy won’t cut a single head. It gives you the count of record for every bed and how fast it’s growing, so the harvest crew and the buyer get a number instead of a guess.
Example numbers to start. Put in your own beds, your pace and your labor cost.
By hand
234 hours a year
4.5 hours a week to get through 5,400 heads, or $4,348 a year in labor. At Cornell’s 26¢ profit a head, that’s the profit on 16,722 heads.
With Canopy
20 minutes a week
Walking time for the same beds at Canopy’s pace of about 1 foot a second, not counting the walk between beds. You get every plant’s height, growth rate and the empty slots, not just a count.
Walk the house and mark where each bed starts and ends. The phone remembers the room, so you don’t need QR codes, stakes or printed markers. From then on it knows which bed you’re standing at.
Hold the phone over the bed, or sideways along a tall row, and walk at a slow, steady pace. Each plant’s height appears over it as you pass. Go too fast and the phone buzzes.
Tap Save. Each bed gets a plant count, median height and growth rate, plus a list of slow growers, missing plants and empty slots, with the exact spot for each.
Every iPhone Pro since the 12 Pro has a LiDAR scanner. Canopy combines it with Apple’s AR tools and on-device processing to measure plants while you walk.
LiDAR scanner and ARKit depth
The LiDAR scanner, the small dark circle next to the cameras, times pulses of light as they bounce off leaves and soil. Canopy turns that into each plant’s height above the soil, to the nearest half centimeter, and its canopy area.
A slow plant isn’t “somewhere in Bed 4.” It’s slot 12, 3.3 meters from the start.
ARKit world maps
Map a house once. After that the phone recognizes it by its walls, posts and pipes and knows which bed it’s over. No QR codes or stakes.
3-D scene reconstruction
While you walk, the phone builds a 3-D model of the floor from many angles, so heights start at the real soil line, not at the lower leaves.
Haptics and on-device speech
The phone buzzes if you walk too fast and again when a bed is done. Start a walk with the Action button or by saying “talk to Canopy.” Speech is processed on the phone.
Camera control
Canopy locks white balance and exposure for each walk, so grow lights don’t throw off the camera and this week’s walk compares cleanly with last week’s.
On-device storage
Measuring, storage, charts and answers all run on the iPhone, so a metal greenhouse with no bars is fine. A full season of walks opens instantly.
Requirements
An iPhone 12 Pro or newer on iOS 17 or later. No drones, rail cameras, sensor networks or servers. iPhones without LiDAR can view history and use Ask, but can’t measure.
Row 4
House 2 · 64 plants · walked today
Growth
1.3cm/day+0.1 since Oct 24
Needs a look
Slot 17 · 9.9 m
0.4 cm/daySlow grower · row 1.3 cm/day
Slot 41 · 24.3 m
0.5 cm/daySlow grower · row 1.3 cm/day
To replant
Slot 29 · 17.1 mSlot 60 · 35.7 m
Growth rate per slot
slow below 0.8 cm/day
Median height · 4 walks
121.5 → 139.5 cm
Example data from a demo farm
Centimeters per day for tall rows, or canopy spread per day for beds and young plants, each with a ± range. See which beds are pulling ahead and which are stalling.
Plants growing well behind the rest of their bed, each with where to stand: “Slot 17, 9.9 m from start.” A plant is only judged after 3 walks over a week, so one bad reading can’t flag it.
A plant count from every walk, every empty spot with its distance from the start of the bed, and flags for plants that went missing or are new. Built for running the farm, not for compliance reporting.
Median height over time, stretch after flowering starts, the date a bed should reach your target height (“60 cm by Nov 3”) and how even the canopy is. Spin any bed in 3-D and tap a plant.
Type or tap a question and Canopy answers right away with a short summary and a table from your own walks, including which walk each number came from. It reports measurements. It doesn’t guess at causes or give growing advice.
Each week, tap Write with Apple Intelligence and the phone turns the week’s numbers into a plain-language report on the device, with every figure taken from your walks. Requires iOS 26 or later.
AskAnswers from your walks
Example data
| row | cm/day | plants | walked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Row 6 | 0.9 | 61 | Oct 26 |
| Row 4 | 1.3 | 64 | today |
| Row 5 | 1.4 | 62 | yesterday |
From your walks · House 2 · latest walk of each row
Each plant is rated High, Medium or Low. Low readings are counted but never used for growth rates or flags. Check 3 to 5 random plants with a tape after a walk, and Canopy shows you its own error on your farm.
Canopy doesn’t touch irrigation, climate or lights. It measures and reports, and your team makes every change.
There’s no server, no account, no tracking and no network code in the app. Walks, photos and measurements stay on the iPhone and in your own backup until you choose to share them.
Canopy’s plant count is for running the farm. Your seed-to-sale system stays the record for regulators.
Growers shouldn’t need a lab, a drone program or a data team to know how their crop is doing. Canopy starts with the phone already in the greenhouse. The same plant-level data is what a neighborhood farm would plan from: what’s growing, what’s ready and where hands are needed.
Height, growth and slow growers for every bed and row, from one phone.
Every walk adds to each plant’s history, so growth, counts and gaps are one question away.
Neighborhood farms and kitchens that grow for what people will actually eat. In development, starting in Bozeman.
From every plant to the next meal.
Read the vision for neighborhood farms and kitchensAn iPhone 12 Pro or newer, on iOS 17 or later. Those models have the LiDAR scanner Canopy measures with. Canopy is tuned on the iPhone 18 Pro. Other iPhones can view history and use Ask, but can’t measure.
Nothing. There’s no server, account or monthly bill, and no sensors, cameras or drones to install. A tape measure helps when you set up your beds and for occasional spot checks.
Yes. Measuring, storage, charts and Ask all run on the phone, so it works in a greenhouse with no bars.
Anything grown in beds or rows: leafy greens, fruiting vegetables, herbs, seedling trays and, where legal, cannabis. Walk beds and trays from above, and tall or trellised rows from the side.
Heights are shown to the nearest half centimeter, measured from the soil. After a walk, Canopy picks 3 to 5 plants at random for you to check with a tape, then shows its own error on your farm. Low-confidence readings never trigger a flag.
A plant growing at less than 60% of its bed’s median rate. A plant needs 3 walks over at least 7 days before it’s judged, and a bed needs 6 such plants before it flags anything.
Not in this version. Canopy measures height, growth, counts and empty slots. Keep scouting as you do today; Canopy tells you which plants are falling behind, so you know where to look first.
No. Canopy is an operating tool. Its plant count is for running the farm, and your seed-to-sale system stays the record of truth.
Never. Canopy is read-only. It measures and reports; people make every change.
No. Early-access growers get a setup guide written for growers, not programmers. You map each greenhouse once, and after that you just walk.
Canopy is in early access for greenhouse and indoor growers with an iPhone Pro. Tell us what you grow and roughly how many beds, and we’ll get you set up.