Comments on: Kickstarting an Internet-of-Things for your garden

By: Nora Cumming

Nora Cumming — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 14:01:00 +0000

uh…..I’ll use it.

By: Ariel Martín Pérez

Ariel Martín Pérez — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:33:00 +0000

This project reminds me so much of Re:Farm the City a couple of years ago, only that Re:Farm was supposed to be self-sufficient and this one relies on a central server to check out the plant’s hydratation (other than you have to water plants yourself). Some explanatory link (their website is unfortunately down): http://www.cityfarmer.info/2010/02/11/refarm-the-city-a-low-tech-living-project/

By: eselqueso

eselqueso — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 06:48:00 +0000

I will say it again. Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD. This makes my brain hurt, and makes me seethe that people are funding it. The whole point of gardening is to get in touch with nature, not to fucking social network with it.

By: sirgoofs

sirgoofs — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 05:29:00 +0000

Also, the developers have managed to devise a “platform” to replace exactly the experience which true gardeners seek and covet- that which comes from nurturing and caring for another living being. Now we can safely redirect our nurturing and attentions back to the artificial intelligence that distracted us from the dumb and boring old biological world.

I believe it’s quite possible that we are witnessing the genesis of a different form of life…Hal, open the bay doors…

edit- plus, who wants to look at those ugly-ass plastic tampons sticking out of the dirt?!

By: blueelm

blueelm — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 04:23:00 +0000

Actually the auto watering makes me think more of “There will come soft rains” here.

By: blueelm

blueelm — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 04:17:00 +0000

No. This is designed for people like me, because the first thing I thought is OMFG now even plants are going to be emailing me and wanting stuff. I’m already frustrated that not all of my calendars sync so i’m constantly having to spend one day a week making sure I log reminders and appts in the same place as meetings. Case in point, Thursday, I double booked. My solution is not to have plants. Then they can’t die, but the thought of another thing sending me an alert just made me headdesk. The thing is, if it did I would probably water it. I can see myself being like “Ok, I’ll put the plant watering in for 6:45 tomorrow morning because there’s no way I can make it across town from here and still be in barre class tonight.”

The thing I can see this being fun for though is some kind of obsessive documentation of the needs of various houseplants and/or some kind of installation piece where participants can watch plants dying or surviving in remote locations through a visual interface.

Actually….

By: 3William56

3William56 — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 04:05:00 +0000

Great. Now a tomato can email me wanting stuff done and a triffid can have a twitter feed. Progress!
Ray Bradbury’s “The Murderer” becomes more prescient every day.

I remember when humans were the superior beings on this world. Now we can be told what to do by peas, ignored by express elevators and door locks, prank called by spambots, loans refused by spreadsheets, our economy trashed by high frequency trading mainframes and prosecuted by digital cameras on the side of the road. The robot apocalypse happened – it was just achieved through email and twitter feeds, not miniguns and terminators.

Consider Asimov’s laws of robotics vs. a smartphone refusing to make a phone call because you don’t know a PIN.
Law #2 was never an option.

By: misterhorsey

misterhorsey — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 03:29:00 +0000

This does seem to me a peculiarly useless. Those who need a device like this to remind them to water will ignore the device as consistently as they will ignore a plant’s need for water.

Those who don’t use such a device use their hands to test moistness of soil and tend to water their plants from time to time to ensure they don’t dry out and die.
Seems like a lot of innovation and ingenuity misdirected towards fixing a ‘problem’ (ie, monitoring and water plants), that isn’t really a problem at all. Rather, its part of the pleasure and work involved in having plants that is the whole point of having them!

By: gwailo_joe

gwailo_joe — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 03:16:00 +0000

What?!? You have GOT to be kidding…I love my plants. I water my plants.

And By God if I over or under moisturize the soil than so be it: I don’t need some ugly hardware to tell me what is what.

(make it look like a little ceramic frog and we can talk…)

By: crummett

crummett — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 02:24:00 +0000

This looks like a solution looking for a problem. Aren’t there already automatic watering systems? Why do I need to be alerted when my plant is thirsty? Especially if it’s going to water itself anyway? But I’m not a gardener. Maybe there’s a very reason for this, other than being kinda cool.