Slashdot Mirror
Plants Use Twitter to Tell You to Water Them
ptorrone noted a Make article about twittering your plants just in case you need that sort of thing in your life. And you do. He says
"The gang from Botanicalls used one of Adafruit's new open source hardware ethernet shields for Arduino (open hardware too) to make some plants talk — and now you can too! That's right, having your houseplants Twitter you when they need water and more! You can see what one of the plants is doing now..."
Their very own highly opinionated /. troll, complete with an infinite supply of hot air, a built in watering reminder, and an obstinate refusal to just die. If you want to make sure that the watering reminder works you must make sure not to leave any Microsoft related products around though, otherwise the ranting could distract him for days!
which is totally what she said
Says,
"Dude, roll me...."
"Dude, nice roll. Not too tight on ends or loose in the middle."
"Dude, you're burning me now. Huh, huh, huh...."
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
tag this one as "senseless"
jeez...
"You can see what one of the plants is doing now..."
oh.. it's slashdotted. Damn ner.. HERDS!!
We've got vegetables and fruits doing development.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
Most of them are already dead!
I'm a student. I write iPhone apps.
Feed Me Seymour!
...why not have it hooked into a watering system directly? That way all you need to do is make sure the reservoir has water in it. Seems a lot less intrusive, and you don't have any potential phone bills from your plant.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
They used an ornamental pepper and a pothos? They're simple, just water them every week or so. What would be impressive is if they worked a system for a hard plant, like a Pseudolithos, that would take humidity, time of year, soil type, ect. into consideration when telling you when to water.
People talking to their plants... but their plants talking to them? What is this Soviet Russia?
If my plants start talking to me it means I need to go away for a little vacation...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
I've got no electronic/IT background at all (I'm a lab tech), but even I could mess around with an arduino and get it to work. My GF is using one in an art project to have bag that analyses RFID tags from supermarket food and change the appearance of the bag depending on how ecologically you shopped.
I'm thinking of trying to use an arduino and my home music/movie server PC to make a cheap version of Philips 'Wake up light'. I was thinking of using it to control a stepper motor hooked up to a dimmer switch, but maybe someone here (with real electronics knowledge) can hint at a better way to do this?
My plants are made of plastic you insensitive clod!
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
Okay, today I saw in order:
1) Tabletop home aeroponic "herb garden"
2) Upside down hanging "tomato" grow bags
Now this?
'cause water is from the toilet. Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.
*IT department* "Hey, what are these... 'plants'... doing in our server room?" -"Uhm, yeah, well..."
Here be signatures
Well, you're doing it wrong, then!
From Twitter
URGENT! Water me! 06:29 PM February 22, 2008 from web
Water me please 06:27 PM February 22, 2008 from web
Yeah, that's just what I need - a needy plant pinging me every couple minutes.
When are you coming home! 06:31 PM
Does this vase make me look fat? 06:32 PM
Why are you ignoring me?!? 06:32 PM
We need to talk. 06:35 PM
You know what you did! 06:36 PM
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
As if millions of twitters suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Great new book on Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
If you can't grow anything, I suggest you get an Opuntia. I haven't watered a few of mine since early December, and they're fine. Of course, the glochids will make your life miserable if you touch them, but they're still pretty cool and most species are fairly easy to grow (not all easy though; O. microdasys and some others can be hard). As long as the soil drains and drys quickly, you don't overwater it, and it gets enough light, pretty much anyone can grow one. If you can't grow an Opuntia, you probably can't grow anything. Everyone on Slashdot should have an Opuntia.
Frankly, if you really need an internet service to tell you to water your own plants, there really is no hope for you.
Worst title I've seen in years... I'll let other people make the jokes
Except this one: Perhaps they should have named it 'Erris'
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Are you keeping edible varieties? And if so, how often do you harvest?
I've got a couple of cacti at home, but none at the office. The only plants in my cube are cuttings from our leased philodendrons, and a lonely aloe plant grown from cuttings of the one that lived with me at my last consulting job.
If there's a castle floating upside down in the sky, then there's a castle floating upside down in the sky.
That's really cool, and similar to something I was thinking of doing. However, I'd probably just use this nifty little board as it has the AVR and Ethernet already on it: http://shop.tuxgraphics.org/electronic/eth.html?id=24ad20#article06061smd
-- Mike
Am I the only one who had no idea what this article was talking about? I had never heard the word "twitter" before, except possibly as a verb that small birds do, so the entire summary made absolutely no sense to me..
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/
called "Twatter"
So now all that needs to be done is write a stage play based off of a plant that constantly says "Feed me" and we'll be made men!
Twitter is down, like, half the time.
How long until the first lawsuit from a disgruntled plant-owner whose plant died because he was waiting for a tweet that never came?
(Note for the humor-impaired: I keed, I keed!)
Read my blog.
I've been considering getting one of these for use as a build tool.
Eons ago, Slashdot had an article on using lava lamps as part of your build control process. The idea was that if the build broke, the lava lamp of the developer who broke was switched on. Since lava lamps take a while to get going, you had about twenty minutes or so to fix the build before everyone started noticing what was going on.
Now I thought about doing the same with an Ambient Orb. A spot of searching suggests I'm not the only one who thought about this, but I ran into two problems straight off - the ambient orb doesn't work in Europe, and you need to post data to an external web site whereas my stuff is internal only. So that's a dead end.
Enter Arduino. There are sites on the web showing how to create a glowing orb using an Arduino-based device connected via USB. Now if I had that, I could write a small app to interpret cruise control output and then have the globe start glowing orange for, say, failed unit tests or red for 'this build is dead'. Green or blue for 'everything is fine'. I'm pretty interested in doing this project, as ever it's a question of time, but I can easily see the benefits of it.
Cheers,
Ian
When I read that some geeks had found a way to get plants to "twitter" them, I feared the worst. Thankfully, "Twitter" is apparently just a universal instant messaging service.
Feed me, Seymour!
6am: Huh?
7am: Photosynthesizing
8am: Photosynthesizing
9am: Photosynthesizing
10am: Photosynthesizing
11am: Photosynthesizing
noon: Photosynthesizing
1pm: Photosynthesizing
2pm: Photosynthesizing
3pm: Photosynthesizing
4pm: Photosynthesizing
5pm: Photosynthesizing
6pm: Photosynthesizing
7pm: The dark! The dark! Oh woe! Do not go gentle into that good night! Rage, rage against the dying of the light!
8pm: no activity
9pm: no activity
10pm: no activity
11pm: no activity
midnight: no activity
1am: no activity
2am: no activity
3am: no activity
4am: no activity
5am: no activity
6pm: Huh?
If you can't grow anything, get an artificial plant. Or switch to collectables.
I've been in embedded HW/SW for 35 years. "Ethernet shield" - what is that???
reorder Brawndo when I run out?
This is not your plant talking, but the moisture sensor.
HOWEVER, maybe you could also get your plant talking to you... Russian scientists, then in the US the guy who supplies lie detector devices and consulting for the CIA, FBI, etc. have developed sophisticated equipments to pick up signals from plants and they were quite surprised to "hear" what the plants were able to "tell" them... I don't have access to the book, etc. right now to provide links, but it's a fascinating story.
You have to watch them. If you have one in your bedroom, you'll notice that instead of the sunlight, such plants grow towards your pillow or where you normally sit at your computer.
Even plant zombies like brainzzzz.
If my plants need to twitter me to ask for water, I've got bigger problems...like "what happened to all the water in the aquarium?" and "are my fish only good for fertilizer now?" (pair of amazon swords and a half dozen tetras sitting on my desk).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Feed me Seymour! 11:47am February 25, 2008 from basement.
-
Feed Me!
Have gnu, will travel.
Netting it out: wireless sensors have been important and become more important with communications clouds. Applications for agriculture generally, including vineyards (where microclimate sensing sorts out good from great) and organic production (where pest management and nitrogen fixing have play).
Other "stuff" includes aquatic studies, or smart environments where Acme Farm Roombas navigate fields automatically with, say, groundhog zapping water jets. An early test relied upon GPS and gyroscopes for locational awareness of "automated tractors which could not "detect all obstacles". Wireless sensors could improve efficacy. Calling Cyberdyne!
And those whiny Ficus can go back to state government lobbies where they belong.
Verizon: Latin for "poor rural service".
At the end of each week it says "feed me more gas". And if I dont it makes aloud sputter and stops moving.
At $150.00 per unit (cost of materials) it is cheaper to just let your plants dies and replace them like I do. Or you could just buy plastic plants...
My plant's name is Audrey.
And she says, "FEED ME!"
spam be far behind?
So. $10 for the circuit board, $50 for the module, and then another $30-$40 for the Adruino board.
That's $100 not including shipping...plus the cost of a wall-wart power supply ($10+), ethernet cable ($10-20) and an ethernet port (a couple more dollars- you can get hubs pretty cheap these days)
You could easily hit $150-200 on this project for just getting to know that 2 of your plants need water, something you can figure out by sticking your fucking finger in the soil each morning.
Please help metamoderate.
If you've got no electronics experience, DON'T USE a triac!
A triac is an extremely fast electronic switch which is used as follows:
1) You monitor the AC current. Specifically, you notice when the sine wave crosses zero volts (120 times a second).
2) You then turn on the AC power sometime *after* the zero crossing occurs, but before the next crossing, where you turn it off again.
With the right timing, you let only a portion of the AC current through, which results in less power - effectively dimming the light. For instance, if you turn the triac on 50% into the cycle, only half the current gets through. The other half was blocked during the time the triac was off.
Microncontrollers are very fast, and can easily adjust the "turn on" time with great precision, giving the appearance of smooth dimming.
The problem with triacs is that you have to connect to the AC system. This is not very difficult, but there's a ton of extra information you need above and beyond the electronics in order to do it safely.
For instance, you need an opto-isolator to separate the AC wiring from the low voltage microcontroller wiring. This prevents the system from catching fire if there's ever a problem. It also prevents the system from becoming dangerous if there's a problem. You roll over in the morning and hit the switch - only to find out it's now connected directly to the AC lines due to some fault.
Connecting hobbyist (ie - non UL approved) circuits to your AC will also void your insurance if there's a fire (I think that's the case). This is why wall warts are used everywhere: the supply is itself UL approved, and the device is far away at the end of a long wire.
A better solution is to use an X-10 module to control the light. It's got a triac inside it and it's already UL approved, so they've done all the work for you. You can get a TW-523 interface, which is essentially a serial port interface to X-10 and hook *that* up to whatever micro control system you want to build. This has the advantage in being able to control any light in your house, even more than one.
Hooking a motor up to a dimmer switch is also an excellent solution. You will understand the mechanism, can see that it works, and it's effectively insulated from the AC lines.
Good luck on your project.
Wake up. 5:30 am
I said, wake up. 5:31 am
Feed me. 6:30 am
Feed meh! 7:30 am
Feed me again. 7:40 am
No, not that, get me treats. 7:41 am
Feed me. 8:00 am
URGENT: Litterbox is full. 8:15 am
Piss off. 8:30 am
URGENT: Litterbox is rank. 8:31 am
Hey, where are you going? 8:32 am
Why are you going out the front door? 8:33 am
Feed me? 8:34 am
Feed me? 8:36 am
(sleeping) 8:38 am
(sleeping) 12:01 pm
(sleeping) 4:30 pm
(sleeping) 6:00 pm
HI! HI! WELCOME BACK! PET ME! 6:02 pm
Feed meh. 6:03 pm
URGENT: Litterbox is REALLY rank. 6:04 pm
I did not knock that over. 6:05 pm
Why you always can has blame me? I are too cute. 6:06 pm
Piss off. 6:10 pm
(sleeping) 6:11 pm
(sleeping) 9:00 pm
(sleeping) 12:10 am
Knockin' stuff off the countertops. 1:05 am
(sleeping) 2:00 am
Towards the Singularity.
If you can't grow anything, grow weeds. Why, do you ask? Simple. They are tough sun of a guns. I am now testing the hardiness of some weeds from my garden. I devoid them from light and water but the tough suckers simply won't die. And I have been doing this for more than a week.
Weeds, because they simply don't die.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Now if we integrate that with an IM-like notification system we make real life one step closer to strategy games. I can already imagine how it looks like when you come back from a holiday and you forgot to check the "repeat assignment" box when you told your son to water the pants if neccessary:
"2008-08-12 17:49:50 [PLANT WATERED] The Coleus needed water and has been watered by Zachary."
"2008-08-12 17:49:50 [CHILD HAS COMPLETED ALL ASSIGNMENTS] Zachary has completed his assignments. His assignment queue is currently empty."
"2008-08-14 06:21:32 [PLANT NEEDS WATER] The Coleus's soil humidity is low. Watering is neccessary."
"2008-08-14 22:35:27 [PLANT NEEDS WATER] The Coleus's soil humidity is critical. Without immediate watering the plant will wither."
"2008-08-15 04:33:08 [PLANT HAS WITHERED] The Coleus has withered from lack of water."
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Are they asking for Brawndo?
Jamey Kirby
It's not plants telling when to get watered/fed etc. It's humans simulating (guessing) what plants need and "imposing" it to plants.
If you read the book "The Secret Life of Plants" (or get a chance to watch the movie - "perhaps" can be found online) things may look different under that aspect.
It was actually tried - as documented in this book - to put sensors on plants and let THEM trigger when to get watered or to get light. Source: Reports of the USSR Academy of Sciences for 1959, "Kamaranov" published "The Application of Automation and Cybernetics to Plant Husbandry".
One of them (O. ficus-indica) is edible, but since I just got it about a year ago as unrooted pads, really I don't know how often it will set fruit. If you really want to know, you can ask people wiser than myself on this forum or this one. If you didn't already know, you can also eat the young pads of some Opuntia species, provided you've passed them under a flame to burn off those darned glochids.
For office plants, I'd suggest getting something cooler than a philo to keep your aloe company, like maybe a nice Haworthia (an Aloe relative). I've never tested this out, but they are supposed to be able to thrive in relatively low light conditions, like an office, and thanks to their small size, they're space conservant. My favorite member of the genus is H. limafolia (especially the rarer nigra and varigate forms). An office cactus might become light stretched and sickly unless you've got a corner cube with a window, but it never hurts to try. There are lots of cool and moderately easy things to try growing; my personal favorite are succulent members of the Euporbia genus, and the Haworthia mentioned above, but there are also nice genera like Echeveria, Crassula, Gasteria, Aeonium, Senecio, Pachypodium, Kalanchoe, Aloe (there are way cool things out there besides aloe vera), and in the cactus family, Mammillaria, Lobivia, Austrocylindropuntia, Tephrocactus, Oreocereus, Myrtillocactus, Hylocereus, Pereskiopsis, and many others.
All those genera have some species that are easy to grow, provided they're kept dry between their weekly, biweekly, or monthly waterings, depending on species and season (except Pereskiopsis and, to a lesser extent, Hylocereus, jungle cacti that don't mind being wet). If they're too wet they will rot, the number one killer of potted cacti and succulents. If you decide to try your hand at them, don't worry if you rot a few; everyone does. Many of them can be found at your local Lowes, Home Depot, or Wal-Mart, probably in crappy soil with a flower glued to them dying from lack of/too much water and not enough light. Worst case scenario you're out a few bucks, best case you've made yourself a lifelong friend.
They might need to be rotated between work and a window at home every now and again, depending on how much much light they're getting, but I guarantee your cube will look better if its loaded with spiky, colorful, and otherwise strange plants that look like they came from another planet.
I got this thing hooked up to my plant and it actually started singing:
Better wait a minute.
Ya better hold the phone.
Ya better mind your manners.
Better change your tone.
Don't you threaten me son.
You got a lot of gall.
We gonna do things my way.
Or we won't do things at all.
Ya don't know what you're messin' with.
You got no idea.
Ya don't know what you're lookin' at
When you're lookin' here.br Ya don't know what you're up against,
No, no way, no how.
You don't know what you're messin' with,
But I'm gonna tell you now!
Get this straight!
I'm just a mean green mother from outer space
and I'm bad.
I'm just a mean green mother from outer space
and it looks like you been had.
I'm just a mean green mother from outer space,
So get off my back, 'n get out my face,
'Cause I'm mean and green
And I am bad.
This thing must be malfunctioning somehow... I wanted to talk to my roommate about it, but she's been missing for a couple of weeks.
This setup + twitter + internet controlled watering/lighting system = remote weed growhouses with minimal work. NICE!