That’s right, everyone is joining Twitter – even your plants.
Botanicalls forges a new channel of communication between humans and their plants and strives to improve inter-species understanding. When your plant needs water, it will post an update to Twitter letting you know that it is thirsty. It will even tweet a thank you message after you water it. Check out some tweets by a Botanicalls enabled plant @Pothos.
Botanicalls comes in a DIY kit that contains approximately 30 pieces and requires some soldering skills. Don’t stress if you aren’t a tech nerd, there is a step by step assembly guide available online. The ATmega328 microcontroller comes pre-programmed, but you can customize it with your own messages. The only things you need to provide are a plant, a network connection through an ethernet cable, and a power outlet.
After you are done building, the kit will manifest itself into a leaf-shaped electronic chip with two metal prongs. Place the prongs into the soil of a plant and let his voice be heard.
Everyone has a friend (maybe it’s you) who is a certified plant killer. I think you know the type; whenever you visit their apartment, there is always a row of brown, ailing plants on the windowsill. Botanicalls is the perfect product for people who are unsure of how to properly care for a plant. You don’t need to research appropriate watering schedules for your botanic baby, you can just follow its tweets.
Botanicalls is a collaborative project created by Kate Hartman, Kati London, and Rob Faludi. It was originally developed while the three were studying at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Are you tech savvy and want to try it out? The Botanicalls Kit is available for purchase on SparkFun for $99.95.
Source: Spark Fun & Botanicalls
Follow Krystal Persaud on Twitter: 
This should not be considered a green product. However novel it may be, it is very wasteful. It’s not hard to keep a plant properly watered without resorting to a device made of mined materials, energy expensive construction and probably chemical rich as well. Then drawing power (any small amount is still more than zero) to notify that a single plant needs to be watered.
Cool, but by no means practical.
I like it, but at the same time, meh!!
I’m assuming it’s for those who have one, maybe two, precious plants, rather than dozens.
It appears it is for indoor use only (I make this assumption from the ‘ethernet cable and power outlet’). What about one with “WiFi and Solar powered”? Then I could stick in the vegie patch and wait for a tweet rather than getting my finger dirty testing soil moisture levels. (I kid!)
Really enjoyed this blog post. Fantastic.