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New device allows thirsty plants to Twitter for water

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 27, 2009 at 6:17 am

From Clean Technica:

Go on, admit it – how many times have you forgotten to water your houseplants? Maybe you’ve even left some of them so long they’ve withered away to nothing. In fact, the chances are that if a plant could talk the thing they’d be most likely to say would be WATER ME!

Well, thanks to a new device, your long-suffering plants will now be able to do just that. What’s that you say – a talking houseplant? Well, not exactly, but thanks to researchers at New York University’s interactive telecommunications program plants will now be able to to tell owners when they need water or if they’ve had too much via the social networking service Twitter.

The device, called Botanicalls (video), is made of soil-moisture sensors, connected to a circuit board, which measure moisture levels and communicate the information to a microcontroller.

According to co-creator Rob Faludi, “Obviously plants can’t talk or Twitter directly, so we have to help them along with that. There are settings in the software that allow you to set what kind of plant you’re using and also adjust for characteristics of the soil, different soil has different qualities.”

Read more from Clean Technica by clicking here.

March 27, 2009 · Filed Under Great Green Ideas

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