Re:DIY Kit Allows Plants To Tweet When They’re Thirsty
by gte910h on Saturday January 07, 2012 @12:37PM
(#3437496)
Many plants are greatly over-watered.
Electronics such as this are usually asleep, drawing tiny amounts of power (we had one in a shipping container that needed it's battery changed no more than 18 months).
Re:DIY Kit Allows Plants To Tweet When They’re Thirsty
by groggles on Saturday January 07, 2012 @12:52PM
(#3437540)
A decent watering schedule is not an overwatering schedule. Watering plants properly is not a difficult activity.
Further even assuming that it is very low power, just the energy and materials used to construct it blow away any notion that it is green.
This is an anti-green product. It is using products made via energy and chemical rich processes, then vampiring power, to solve a complete non-problem. It is novel, and it's right for HN, but the GP's point is completely on the money.
Re:DIY Kit Allows Plants To Tweet When They’re Thirsty
by icebraining on Saturday January 07, 2012 @01:35PM
(#3437673)
Well, even if a fixed schedule isn't adequate, a single (as opposed to one per plant) device that you can use to manually (with a led instead of a full on IP device) evaluate if the plant needs watering and that uses no power between usages would be much "greener".
Nevertheless I like the build, although something using ZigBee would be more handy, unless you only have a couple of plants, otherwise the cabling might become unwieldy. And I wonder if there could be some way of extracting energy from the plant itself, making it self sustainable...?