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..."

Comments

Just what every household needs..

[somersault]

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!

Marijuana Plant

[Himring]

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...."

tag: sensless

[Anonymous Coward]

tag this one as "senseless"

jeez...

Re:tag: sensless

[joaommp]

I was trying to think of some very intelligent or funny comment about this article.

I got nothing.

--
got to go now, my cactus is twitting.

This is nothing

[Malevolent Tester]

We've got vegetables and fruits doing development.

Rather than have the plant call you...

[sacremon]

...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.

Re:Rather than have the plant call you...

[sacremon]

The actual mission is to improve the communication between human and plant. Who knows what would happen if you'd make the plants independent from the humans..

Ah, hence the slippery slope. Eventually someone will figure out a way to get plants to post to Usenet, and from there you'll get a bunch of pistil porn and flame wars about the size each other's e-stamen...

Hard plants

[ChromeAeonium]

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.

I've heard of...

[techpawn]

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...

Arduino is a great platform

[Biotech9]

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?

Re:Arduino is a great platform

[evanbd]

Certainly, though the details depend on the kind of light; since you say a dimmer, I'll assume you mean a normal 120V incandescent. It would be easier with LEDs or low voltage DC lights, harder with fluorescents.

Warning: this is a high voltage circuit. Don't kill yourself, observe normal precautions, etc. Mistakes might well fry you or the circuit. Also, in an effort to keep this as simple as possible, the wiring will not be to code -- as in, both sides of the light bulb will be potentially "hot", so you could electrocute yourself from *either* contact on the socket, not just the central one. The zeroth thing to install in this circuit is an appropriate fuse and a main power switch. A GFCI outlet wouldn't be a bad idea.

One other poster suggested a triac, but those might be a bit of a pain to work with. An easier answer might be the following. First, you need an isolated DC power source for the controller -- anything coming through a transformer is fine, but from eg a computer power supply is not fine. Next, you put a full-wave rectifier in front of the light bulb, so that it's effectively running on DC voltage (it's varying amplitude, but all the same polarity). Verify that the light bulb lights up at full brightness at this point.

Next, connect the minus end of your rectified light bulb supply and your circuit ground together. You now need a power N-channel MOSFET. It should have a voltage rating of at least 200V and a current rating several times the nominal bulb current (eg 60W bulb at 120V = 0.5A, use a MOSFET rated for at least 5A surge currents). The source connects to ground, the drain connects to one side of the bulb, and the gate connects to a pin on the microcontroller. Add another rectifier diode from the transistor drain to the rectified positive voltage, oriented so it normall doesn't conduct -- this is a freewheel diode to make sure that any inductive load the bulb presents doesn't hurt the transistor. (When you turn off the bulb very rapidly, current will continue to flow briefly, possibly overvoltaging the transistor. It shouldn't actually be an issue, but it might be, so add the diode.) Lastly, the other side of the bulb connects to the rectified wall current.

You should now have an electronically controlled light bulb -- when the gate voltage is high (roughly 4-8V, the 5V from the controller will work fine), the bulb should be on; when it's low (pulse width modulate the bulb -- basically, turn it on and off quickly, about 1000 times per second should work well. To control the brightness, simply vary how long it's turned on. So a "dim" setting might be on 200us, off 800us, and "bright" might be on 800us, off 200us. Fully on and fully off are easy.

Lastly, get a simple 5V relay capable of switching the light bulb on and off, controlled by the microcontroller. Any time the light bulb is completely off, turn it off with both the relay and the MOSFET. When the bulb is off, both sides of it are hot and a hazard; the relay fixes that. Be sure to include a freewheel diode so the relay coil doesn't damage the microcontroller.

This circuit will cause electrical noise; there's some chance some electronics operating near it will be unappreciative, but it shouldn't be too bad.

Hopefully that's easy enough to understand. Email me if you have questions.

They don't want water....

[idiotnot]

'cause water is from the toilet. Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

Re:Just say NO

[techpawn]

1) Tabletop home aeroponic "herb garden"

I actually have one of those in my apartment. It's really neat. The light is on an 8 hour timer and the water pumps up into the sponge the different plants are growing into. It adds a unique aesthetic to the apartment as a whole and the artificial sun works better than an alarm clock sometimes both on when I should head to bed and get up.

It will be nice to have fresh herbs.

Demanding...

[wonderwidget]

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

Re:Demanding...

[RockMFR]

ferti1izer enlarge stem 2 to 4 inches! 06:39 PM

Re:Yeah, like my plants need to remind me to water

[ChromeAeonium]

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.

The Exciting World Of Plants!

[Quiet_Desperation]

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?

Re:What is a "ethernet shield"??

[anotherone]

Arduino is an open hardware project. It consists of a base board with certain capabilities, and you can buy (or build) "shields" to add capabilities to the basic package. The ethernet shield for example adds ethernet capabilities to the thing.

LSoH

[Hillgiant]

Feed me Seymour! 11:47am February 25, 2008 from basement.

Insanely expensive, not "open source"

[SuperBanana]

The Adafruit "shield" uses a $50 (yes, $50) Xport module, which is anything but "open source".

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.

For cats, too.

[autophile]

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

Re:Yeah, like my plants need to remind me to water

[ChromeAeonium]

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.