Engineering log

The camera called it female, ten days late

The detector wasn’t built yet. It is now.

Last week I wrote that my camera had the pixels to see a plant’s sex and my software was throwing them away. The detector wasn’t built yet.

It is now. On day 84 it started checking the hourly close-up of the top of the plant.

13:05: pistils present. Same answer at 14:05, 15:05, and every hour through 19:05. After the seventh, the hub wrote FEMALE into the grow’s record on its own. Nobody typed that row.

Seven small close-ups of the top of a cannabis plant, labelled hourly from 13:05 to 19:05, each with the score 1.0 beside it. Below them a line reads: 19:05, pistils present, confidence 1.0, seven of 7.
The seven hourly close-ups from day 84, with the check’s score under each.

I had called it by eye ten days earlier.

IG-036Ten days late, by design
Day numbers are the grow's own.
YouDeviceVerdict
1234
day 7074788286
1 day 74 Called female by eyeA first pistil is under three pixels wide in this camera's view. A person looking closely will always be first.
2 day 84 13:05 Pistils present — the first hourly close-up of the top of the plant
3 14:05 – 19:05 The same answer every hour, six more times
4 day 84 19:05 After the seventh, the hub wrote FEMALE into the grow's record on its ownNobody typed that row. A tuft of pistils is something a model can stand behind; a single hair is not.
Trained on the hourly close-ups the hub used to delete. What it has not yet done is look at a plant with no pistils and stay quiet — half the test, and from regular seed the half that matters.
A person saw it first; the machine wrote it down second, with seven hourly reads behind the row.

That gap is by design. A first pistil is under three pixels wide in this camera’s view. A tuft of them is something a model can stand behind. So it will always trail a person looking closely.

It was trained on the hourly close-ups the hub used to delete.

What it hasn’t done yet is look at a plant with no pistils and stay quiet. That’s half the test, and from regular seed it’s the half that matters.

A person saw it first. The machine wrote it down second, with the record to show for it.

The seven close-ups, 46 seconds: youtu.be/UYE5SZb09aU

First published on LinkedIn, 6 October 2026: the post.

Also read: The best picture was already on the machine · The whole run, as the device recorded it · The chatbot was never in the tent