Technology now makes it possible for your plant to contact you via Twitter. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love.
The technology comes from Botanicalls, a company formed by graduates of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program which invented the kit that enables plants to communicate with their owners by telephone and the internet.
The Botanicalls Twitter kit sells for $149 from Adafruit Industries and includes all the hardware you need to create a networked communication system for your plant. A moisture sensor placed into the soil will send information to simple electronic detection circuitry you solder together yourself. Twitter updates are then sent out via an onboard Ethernet connection to the Internet, where they can be viewed online or routed to your mobile phone.
Once you have the software installed and your plant networked, the system code provides five different status updates, based upon current conditions:
1) When the moisture level of the plant’s soil drops below the satisfactory threshold, it will send a status update that the plant needs to be watered.
2) If the soil moisture drops below a critical level the plant will twitter that it is urgently in need of watering.
3) Any rapid rise in soil moisture will be detected as a watering event. The plant will then determine if the soil moisture has risen to the desired level for a proper watering. If it has, then it will twitter its thanks.
4) If a watering event occurs, but the soil moisture has not reached the desired level, the plant will twitter to report that it was watered, but not sufficiently.
5) Likewise, if a watering event occurs, but the plant was not in need of water yet, the plant will twitter to complain that it is being over watered.
We’re not profiling the Botanicalls solution because we’re fanatical about plants – at our local store, you can buy a lot of plants for $149. However, this is a great example of thinking outside of the box to really leverage Twitter.
What about other applications along the same lines? How about a security system for your home or office? Or a system that reports the mood of your pets or if they simply need their water bowl refilled? I’d really like my refrigerator to tell me when we’re out of beer…
The other question is how this kind of application could leverage the unique benefits of twitter as opposed to a simple text message system?
btw, if you still don’t believe this exists (I didn’t), see the New York Times profile from last year.
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