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..."

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.

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' [amazon.co.uk]. 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:Just say NO

[techpawn]

1) Tabletop home aeroponic "herb garden"

I actually have one of those [aerogrow.com] 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.

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 [answers.com] 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.