Twenty years of measuring what a tree is doing

The work began with a question about whether a living tree could power the electronics used to observe it. Sponsored research at MIT documented a sustained potential between the xylem of an intact tree and its soil, and identified the mechanism behind it.

Two US patents followed, then hardware: energy-harvesting nodes and a wireless sensor network built to survive under a canopy without mains power or line of sight. Federal agencies deployed it.

VoltreeAI takes the same measurement and treats it as data rather than as a power source. The instrument is the point.