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Wireless Wine Monitoring

Posted by michael on from the other-kind-of-wine dept.

Wynken de Word writes "An article in Canada's Globe and Mail says 'vineyard owner Don King is coaxing 30,000 plants to grow grapes of exactly the right colour, size and sweetness to produce great ice wine and other fine vintages...with the help of judicious watering, a knowledge of the age-old art of viniculture -- and electronic sensing devices linked together in a wireless network.' Using an Intel-based TinyOS and TinyDB, multiple sensing devices monitor grape micro climates and help determine irrigation and frost patterns."

5 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. oh YES!! by purduephotog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As an avid wine consumer (not the french word;P) you can have no idea how happy this makes me. My cellar is currently stocked with ~130 bottles, mostly from SE Australia (Cabs) and quite a few from upstate NY where I live. Managing the microclimate to produce consistent wines is far more important than trying to hit a home run. I shy away from buying multiple cases of wine until I sample several different bottles of the same year, just on the chance that I got lucky.

    Now if I only owned a larger back yard.....

  2. Don King.. by Blaster+Jaack · · Score: 5, Funny

    owner Don King is coaxing 30,000 plants to grow grapes of exactly the right colour, size and sweetness

    because of legal issues they had to replace the word boxers with plants

  3. Wireless wine by oniony · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can't say I've ever known a wine with wires.

    Seriously though, as more product based (manufacturing and farming) companies turn to wireless technology the potential for disaster grows. Someone spoofing these plants' state could seriously write-off the crop. I'm counting the days until I see the first wireless industrial sabotage.

    --

    Powered by onion juice.

  4. Re:Don't know by HowlinMad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While I understand your concern, I do not think this will be such a problem. There are plenty of other factors, such as soil composition (nutrients et al.), pollution, and even the amount of sunshine it gets. There may be more, or less sunny days. I think this will help in getting more quality grapes out of a crop than it will for making a grape that tastes exactly the same year to year.

    Of course, I just might be full of it.

    --
    Great Linux Site
  5. Re:Price vs Quality by schlach · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is hilarious. A first for Slashdot: the high-brow flame war.

    Let those suits tell us we're a bunch of unsophisticated cretins now. =p