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Turn Your House Plants Into Speakers
thermopile writes "According to this story, your everyday houseplants could be turned into room-filling speakers. Called Ka-on ('Flower Sound' in Japanese), the machine consists of a donut-shaped magnet and coil at the base of a vase that hooks up to a CD player, stereo or TV. Prices range from $46 to $460. I don't know about you, but I'd hate getting fragged by that plant over there while playing Doom 3..."
Hmmmm, I wonder what the sound quality is... I recently bought this device, but the sound quality is really poor... nice idea though!
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
Three of Nine
What would that sound like?
Trippy?
Dupe btw
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Déjà vu?
:wq!
Would be really funny to hear how this sounds. Maybe i should get myself one of those? ;) I cant imagine they would be so nice for listening to music on, tho.
This is a report, but not of the same article. You can mention things more than once! :-)
"Later this month, you'll be able to carry on a telephone conversation with a flower with a planned speaker phone model."
So this is indeed new! I would love that. Now I just read Light Fantastic - where Rincewind is convinced the trees aren't talking to him!
Little did he know it was all Ka-on (flower sound) and twoflower could have told him that!
lol zomg rolflmao etc etc.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
This is pretty cool, especially for some geeks that are high on gardening.
Would like to try this myself.
Sunset over the lake, cool mist over the bridge; A leave upon the ripples, the snow reflects its glow.
to talking to plants
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
... those really annoying plants that dance with the music!
But I'm a music producer, quality over novelty.
Edirol MA-20D's for me! Even though they are not any where near as good as the Yamaha NS10's.
Karma whoring
for more accurate sound. Ipod -> FM transmitter -> Tube radio -> Flower...
"The plant is happy listening to music," says Gotoh, showing off a rubber plant hooked up to Ka-on in his Tokyo office. "Gerberas and sunflowers work especially well as speakers."
...
I'm not sure I'll take horticultural advice from someone who has a _rubber_ plant on his desk
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Has anyone studied has this affects the life expectancy of affected plants? I guess it may depend on the music you play. If you play Kenny G, they won't last a week. Celine Dion, maybe 2.
Simpy
I remember some TV show talking about the affects of music on plants. They did slightly better w/ classical, normal w/o music of course and wilted w/ heavy metal. I wonder how a racing game vs. the sims or doom 3 would do.
This reminds me of a couple of short stories by J.G Ballard. One of them, Prima Belladonna, is about a guy who runs a shop selling plants specially bred to be able to "sing". I thought it was quite a cool premise, the idea of your house being filled with music produced by plants, sitting there humming to themselves all day long. Now, this isn't quite as cool as that, but still...
Something... just something... tells me that this isn't going to catch on. The fact that its both Japanese and relatively useless is a hint.
I quote from the original -
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday July 21, @02:44PM from the listening-to-foghat-on-your-ficas dept. Kerhop writes "People who like talking to their plants can now enjoy a musical accompaniment, thanks to a Japanese invention that turns petals and leaves into amplifiers. Several others are also reporting details of how it works."
On second thoughts - this plant as speaker idea is not so hot either....
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
Does the sound power depend on the size of the plant ? It could be interesting to try that on trees, I just imagine putting up a festival in my garden and using the two trees I have as baffles...
Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another? - Bertold Brecht
I am absolutely amazed that they named it in honest-to-god pseudo-Chinese rather than calling it 'furauaa saundo' or something.
Next, they'll start naming things in actual Japanese. Oh, wait, that would require attention to aesthetics and meaning rather than to sounding cool and vague.
Bring back Heian period Japanese, say I.
PS I am not a crank.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
...and now they talk back :-)
Just because you can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't.
Here you can see some pictures:
http://www.lets-direct.jp/fsp/fsp3.htm (Mostly pictures of flowers in a vase).
I wonder if the last vase is really seven times more expensive than the first one.
Me
I am actually quite interested in this thing. The big question is what plant species have the best acoustics (i never thought id say that). Would it be better to have a plant with large leaves, small leaves, one stem, bushy, or do flowers sound better. If someone knows something about this please share. And I wouldn't consider this a mere novelty. In the narrow sense, yes it it to people like me but for what I think is the targeted demographic, people who own a hackey sack (or frisbee) collection, whittle wood, are always wearing a "Phish" t-shirt, and watch "willie wonka and the chocolate factory" on a weekly basis, having a musical plant is a major advance in critical technology. Unfortunately, the marketing strategy failed to notice that the young and avid gardeners of modern society don't keep their house plants lying around the house, out in the open where any one can find them, like say, the police. I think that once some acoustic testing gets done I'm gonna have to invest everything I Have in the bonzai tree industry. Once the word gets out about the acoustics I'll be making a nickel for every tree manufactured and assembled in factories nation wide. But seriously, what factors would make the difference for better sound?
...but $300 bucks is a little much for flower speakers. I don't see it catching on except with maybe the Ikebana crowd.
TFA said 10-50W.
Can your iPod handle that?
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Look at the flower arrangements. They're comprised of small flowers accompanied by big, flat leaves. My guess is that the leaves generate most of the sound, while the flowers generate most of the press.
to the flower arrangements pictures.
Turn cockroaches into USB Flash memories?
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
Relatively useless products can be a big hit... in Japan!
You think this'll ruin the Vogons' perfect stereo arrangement when they come and blow up the earth for that new intergalactic bypass?
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I hooked this up to a bowl of petunias and the speakers blurted out "Oh no, not again."
I figure if I knew why it did this I'd know a lot more about the nature of the universe.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
my speakers just died.
;)
And the way my plants hold up, i'd have to buy new
speakers every two weeks.
When I was in college we made an acetylene torch play music.
We put tungsten electrodes at the top and bottom of the flame, applied a large bias voltage along with the signal, and injected ions.
One of my buddies found the recipe somewhere. I've never seen it before or since but it's pretty spectacular.
Wasn't some book and film of this title which claimed scientific evidence that playing certain types of music and talking to your plants would make them grow better. Stevie Wonder even made the electronic soundtrack. Maybe they are all smoking grass.
Yesterday IBM announced they were open sourcing their voice technology, and already today, we've got a talking plant implementation!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
All well and good (plants liking music), but what would be long term effects of exposing plants directly to all vibrations (esp. if you like high volume)
I for one wouldnt connect my award winning lily to it.
(Afterthought) Got to check warranty for something like:
"Company is not liable for any damge sustained by the plans due to the use of this equipment."
...linux on a dead badger, used as an mp3 player... especially if you consider flower's smell can cover the dead badger's stink
--
"The crux of the biscuit is the Apostrophe(*)" - FZ
I read about a True random number generator, then I half expected a doom 3 demo, than I saw the "I don't know about you, but I'd hate getting fragged by that plant over there while playing Doom 3"
I put 2 and 2 together and in true orwellian fashion thought that they had hooked a plant up to a doom 3 bot and had somehow got it learning the maps and killing people!
madness.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
then couldn't they also be used as microphones? Speakers are usually microphonic; stick a set of headphones in your mike socket next time you're stuck without a real mike in your NetMeeting sesh.
something useful. you call this weather?
consult with/trust in yOUR creators... rescuing planets/populations since/until forever. see you there?
This is definitely a repeat story ...
And I do believe within the last few months.
--The Dude
Honestly, that has to be the most unfunny attempt at humor I've seen yet on Slashdot. Unbelievable.
Imagine playing Zero Wing with plant speakers. To hear a flower saying to you:
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
That would be bizarre.
It's funny cos it's true! Good one, mate :-)
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Maybe you could combine the two ideas and produce a burning bush that talks.
This is a new one for slashdot - a plant nerd! :)
is having those plants say "Feed me, Seymore, feed me" :)
Privacy is terrorism.
So what are plants which commit Sepukku after listening to the backstreet boys called?
Banu
In mother Japan, flower speaks to YOU.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
"Don't waste your time or time will waste you" -MUSE
I just got this new geranium and you've gotta hear it? Sweet treble, clear midtones, and WICKED bass!
So now, instead of having to talk to your plant, your plant will talk to you???
(Maybe you need watering once in a while too.)
The grandparent was mind blowingly stupid; yes, even more mindblowingly stupid than Greenpeace itself. However, because there's no "mind blowingly stupid" mod option, mods have to take the closest fit -- I would have chosen "redundant" or "overrated" myself, but what are you going to do?
Well, it's a dirty little secret I'm sure they'd like to keep under wraps, but some Greenpeace activists actually eat plants! Stop the slaughter! Kill yourself!
Seriously, kill yourself. Not because of the rights of plants, but rather because the threat of you reproducing, however slim, and introducing yet another idiot into the world makes my head throb with pain. Alternatively you could sterilize yourself, but you painting the walls with your brains would make me feel so much better. Please?
If you need help regarding how to tie the rope, or which end of a gun to swallow, please let me know!
Is to make myself into a speaker. I mean, think about it. Nervous about a presentation? You can lip sync it, and hope no one notices that sound is coming from your pores instead of your vocal chords. Or, upon the instance of your death, you could "talk" to the living...I know that -I- would be freaked out.
It had to be said.
Although I am dubious about the long term effects of Billy Idol (or KISS for that matter) on my potted pansies. (Potted....nevermind...)
RMW
'The inventor of the gadget, Keiji Koga, said: "We are finally able to experience plants and flowers with all five of our natural senses."'
I'm guessing this guy's never slept in a tall pine forest. The sounds are amazing.
What a relief!!!
/. was going to fall behind the times, and stick with actually reporting news. But thankfully, the editorial board appears to have gotten together and come up with something as cutting edge as the old school guys-- infinite loops of old news (or "olds").
/. to IE or anything.
The trad news media has already gotten completely away from actually reporting news; they focus solely on making up news, editorializing, scare tactics, depression inducement, and happy happy joy joy stuff.
I was afraid
Or is it just Alzheimers?
Either way, the result is a trend in recycling (always a good thing, yay!); I predict that within 3 weeks the percentage of recycled stories to worthless "news" will be about the same as Firefox usage to IE usage.
Not to compare the current
Yeah, this is offtopic. But so is running so many reruns on an alleged news site.
Finally the single life isn't too bad. Atleast I can talk with my plants and they can respond back to me. No one in my neighborhood can call me a nutjob anymore.
I smell mass-internet conspiracy. Look, its not a bad thing, trying to show the environmentally friendly side to tech. I greatly welcome it but we have this story and the OLED following it above here on slashdot. This crap on i4u. Plus, The OLED PDA there too. FREAKING DEALNEWS has the SuperFlower P/S giveway deal, (hey dont enter i was jus showing, i wanna win!).
But yesterday it was all doom and gloom with the tech sector research going to China, IT jobs plummetting, Toshiba ditching the NA market.... Ok is it Bush or the Internet Illuminati Collective responsible for the maniacness going on out there?!?!!!
...and it should be known by now
... in his first Star Wars trilogy. *spoiler alert* except they were used for microphones instead. Cool concept.
Slow news day?
Wait till someoone, tries to hook this up to one of these, then they will be in for a world of hurt.
i swear they came out with this shit sometime in 2002 or 2003
I don't mind getting fragged by the plant so much, I just wish it wouldn't laugh at me every time.
"Day of the Triffids"... heheh
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I'm a geek, and my mom's birthday is in a few weeks, so this looks cool to me. Where can I get one of these? The main site is in japanese, and I can't find any other distributors.... Political Geek Idea: Run the upcoming debates with different candidates speaking from a Burning Bush and a Pencil Cactus respectively.
Speakers, bah! I'm looking for a way to turn plants - say, all the trees in my garden - into microphones, so I can eavesdrop (leavesdrop?) on people who might be plotting against me. Anyone who knows how to do this should email dsidious@imperialpalace.coruscant.gov.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
So now I have to worry about watering my speakers before they die?!
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
"but nerds are my mortal enemies"
-Homer Simpson
"Not recommended for fruit-bearing plants."
"Not again."
Boy, would that be a great practical joke on your stoned roommates.
Pot plant: "Hey. I think you've had enough, eh?"
Stoned roommate: "HOLY SHIT!"
If he/she thinks the pot plant was actually talking to them, they just might take it as a sign they need to stop smoking pot :-)
Please help metamoderate.
It certainly sounds like a fun idea to try this. You could see what plants work the best; e.g. if leaf length would improve bass response (like blowing on a grass leaf), or if it would just rupture the plant tissues at each leaf's resonant freq.
Maybe this wouldn't work well at all; a plant with many different branch/leaf lengths might be similar to having a tweeter, mids, and a sub, or would the different branchs just cancel each others' signal out.
I don't know about keeping the bugs off though. How do they know that ants don't like Duran Duran (or maybe they'd prefer the mellow sounds of Lionel Ritche... hmm)?
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
I would think adding a coil and a magenet to anything would allow you to convert it to a speaker as long as it is somewhat rigid. Try connecting a small DC motor to your boombox, I used to when I was a kid.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
... that standard apartment-lease agreements will now prohibit ownership of those giant-leaved "elephant-ear" plants?
go ahead & moderate me -1 redundant, the article posts have been lately.
Yes, I have RTFA. Yes, I have a girlfriend. Yes, I'm new here. And no, I don't want a free iPod.
Wait til Bill Maher and Ingrid Newkirk hear about this. They'll jump on the PETP bandwagon and send the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine 3 (a front group for PETA) and the North American Earth Liberation (a terrorist organization) a bunch of money to quickly denounce this terrible abuse of plants.
this is a dupe article.
Teh original post is here
sigSEGV - doy!
Prior art.
From the article:
Later this month, you'll be able to carry on a telephone conversation with a flower with a planned speaker phone model.
You can do that now, if you take the right drugs.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
is not that awesome now,
I mean those talking trees ain't that special anymore
Next Japanese invention will let them walk
10W-50!?! -- That's a pretty thick viscosity.
"Feed me, Seymour!"
there will be no effective way to tell if someone is insane... saying your plants are whistling show tunes may actually be a factual statement.
All the torrents you could want.
i wonder if you can get high if you set up a certain plant as a speaker lol.
www.angelfire.com/dc2/stockman/index.html http://www.FreeFlatScreens.com/default.aspx?refer
would this give my plants cancer?
Wouldn't this thing cause all kinds of problems?
How much magnetism does it take to make a plant vibrate?
Dosent sound very realistic, "seem like there doing a little dance" cant say i beleave them