 "Gadgets for the garden")
The future is knocking at the door of home gardening. And, if some do-it-yourselfers have their way, there is no aspect of nature that can't be improved with a rechargeable motor and a sensor or two. Picture a houseplant that, when you're away, meanders through your rooms like a cat following a sunbeam. Or one that posts a request for water on Twitter.
Take, for example, the VegiBee. Bill Whaley, a former department store executive living in St. Louis, says he invented the device after a disappointing tomato yield. Whaley concluded that the problem was pollination, and quickly set out to improve on the bees, which were clearly remiss. Looking a little like an electric toothbrush, the VegiBee's wand is held close to a flower on a tomato plant. The tiny vibrations - 44,000 a minute - gently shake the pollen into the plastic spoon that comes with the package. You dip the female part of another flower into the pollen. Vibrate, dip, repeat. It does the trick, Whaley says. His harvest increased 38 percent and he recently put a rechargeable model on the market for $50.
Gardeners love to dig in the dirt, but how can it be completely savored, you may ask, without spreadsheets full of sweet data? Garden stores have answered that call with an array of gadgets that test soil for moisture and acidity levels. The Rapitest 4-Way Analyzer, for instance, not only measures moisture and pH levels, but also determines whether to add fertiliser and what the sunlight level is in a particular spot in the garden. It's about $30 online or in stores. Or try a digital rain gauge. Digital gauges used to be so expensive that only true weather zealots bought them. "But they've gotten cheaper and cheaper as time went on," says Matt Glenn, vice president for business development for Headwind Consumer Products in Syracuse, Neb. These rain gauges are impressive. They are wireless and track rainfall by the day, week, month or year. They also have thermometers for indoor and outdoor temperatures.
Why stop there? Once you have data, why not share it on a social network of other like-minded gardeners?
Enter Future Tech Farms, the high-tech gardening brainchild of Brian Falther and his business partner, Austin Lawrence. The two mechanical engineers are trying to develop a network of indoor gardening pods, hooked up via phone or home Wi-Fi, to a social pod network, which would share information on the most effective growing conditions. "The whole goal is to create a food production format for the world that is ecologically sustainable, energy sustainable and carbon neutral," says Falther. The small self-contained pods would collect data on water temperature, light, pH levels and such.
Outdoors, gardeners are constantly battling voracious creatures. It never fails that, just when you're ready to pick that perfect tomato, a squirrel snatches it away. But there is some high-tech help for that too. The Garden Defense Electronic Owl, made by Easy Gardener, is placed on a fence post, and when a sensor in the battery-operated plastic bird detects a woodland creature, the owl's head turns to fix the intruder with a murderous stare intended to frighten it away.
Stephen Verstraete, a sculptor living in Belgium, designed a do-it-yourself garden robot. "I don't have green thumbs. All my plants always seem to die," he says. So when he was asked to create robots to roam around a technology convention in Amsterdam last year, Verstraete built robots that detected sunlight and moved house plants to the light.
"I wanted to make them as cheap as possible and easy for anybody to make," he said. "I made mine with stuff lying around, but if you want to buy everything new, I guess the cost will be a minimum of $15," he said. He lists the parts at instructables.com/id/Plant-Host-Drone/
Botanicalls, a collaboration among artists and technologists, has designed a do-it-yourself kit with a sensor that goes into the dirt to measure moisture. When it gets too dry, the plant posts, "Water me please." And it will send out a polite thank you when you respond. "We didn't want it to be like that person who only calls when he wants something," says Robert Faludi, a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York. The kit is for sale atbotanicalls.com/buy/ for $100.
Take, for example, the VegiBee. Bill Whaley, a former department store executive living in St. Louis, says he invented the device after a disappointing tomato yield. Whaley concluded that the problem was pollination, and quickly set out to improve on the bees, which were clearly remiss. Looking a little like an electric toothbrush, the VegiBee's wand is held close to a flower on a tomato plant. The tiny vibrations - 44,000 a minute - gently shake the pollen into the plastic spoon that comes with the package. You dip the female part of another flower into the pollen. Vibrate, dip, repeat. It does the trick, Whaley says. His harvest increased 38 percent and he recently put a rechargeable model on the market for $50.
Gardeners love to dig in the dirt, but how can it be completely savored, you may ask, without spreadsheets full of sweet data? Garden stores have answered that call with an array of gadgets that test soil for moisture and acidity levels. The Rapitest 4-Way Analyzer, for instance, not only measures moisture and pH levels, but also determines whether to add fertiliser and what the sunlight level is in a particular spot in the garden. It's about $30 online or in stores. Or try a digital rain gauge. Digital gauges used to be so expensive that only true weather zealots bought them. "But they've gotten cheaper and cheaper as time went on," says Matt Glenn, vice president for business development for Headwind Consumer Products in Syracuse, Neb. These rain gauges are impressive. They are wireless and track rainfall by the day, week, month or year. They also have thermometers for indoor and outdoor temperatures.
Why stop there? Once you have data, why not share it on a social network of other like-minded gardeners?
Enter Future Tech Farms, the high-tech gardening brainchild of Brian Falther and his business partner, Austin Lawrence. The two mechanical engineers are trying to develop a network of indoor gardening pods, hooked up via phone or home Wi-Fi, to a social pod network, which would share information on the most effective growing conditions. "The whole goal is to create a food production format for the world that is ecologically sustainable, energy sustainable and carbon neutral," says Falther. The small self-contained pods would collect data on water temperature, light, pH levels and such.
Outdoors, gardeners are constantly battling voracious creatures. It never fails that, just when you're ready to pick that perfect tomato, a squirrel snatches it away. But there is some high-tech help for that too. The Garden Defense Electronic Owl, made by Easy Gardener, is placed on a fence post, and when a sensor in the battery-operated plastic bird detects a woodland creature, the owl's head turns to fix the intruder with a murderous stare intended to frighten it away.
Stephen Verstraete, a sculptor living in Belgium, designed a do-it-yourself garden robot. "I don't have green thumbs. All my plants always seem to die," he says. So when he was asked to create robots to roam around a technology convention in Amsterdam last year, Verstraete built robots that detected sunlight and moved house plants to the light.
"I wanted to make them as cheap as possible and easy for anybody to make," he said. "I made mine with stuff lying around, but if you want to buy everything new, I guess the cost will be a minimum of $15," he said. He lists the parts at instructables.com/id/Plant-Host-Drone/
Botanicalls, a collaboration among artists and technologists, has designed a do-it-yourself kit with a sensor that goes into the dirt to measure moisture. When it gets too dry, the plant posts, "Water me please." And it will send out a polite thank you when you respond. "We didn't want it to be like that person who only calls when he wants something," says Robert Faludi, a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York. The kit is for sale atbotanicalls.com/buy/ for $100.
©2013 The New York Times