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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..."
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.
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.
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?
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.