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..."

Comments

Afroman's HD speakers

[ryg0r]

Thats what it reminds me of.

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.

You might make your plants sick...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You might make your plants sick...

[hussar]

I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary. My roommate in college set one of his plants atop one of the large speakers we had in the living room of our apartment. It was fed a fairly eclectic blend of classical, hard rock, American folk, new wave and punk. The plant grew to almost surround the speaker, and when we moved out, we had to cut it away from the speaker. (My roommate found another speaker to set it on in his new place. The plant continued to thrive.)

Re:Sound quality ?

[Anonymous Coward]

But was this meant to be funny? (it's score 3, right now.)

I remember a project in the 60's that used a vibrating pad so deaf kids could hear through their skull.

With cheap gear like this available now, you can experiment broadly. Turn it loose on deaf hackers. They may start making tunes to share on them.

And with trees ?

[fib2004]

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...

Looking for a good plant to play Bob Marley

[RobsterCraw]

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?

Column of fire

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If they can be used as speakers...

[uberchicken]

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.