Botanicalls gives your plants a voice

Not since Audrey the talking plant from Little Shop Of Horrors exclaimed “Feed me, Seymour!” have we heard of talking plants. Though, Botanicalls brings us one step closer to having flower-to-person communication (F2P?).

Botanicalls is essentially a soil moisture sensor implanted in your flower pot, made with only two nails and a circuit, which sends information about the plants vitals from an arduino board which then passes the information to an Xbee network. A Xport is then used to send information and alerts through PHP to a mySQL database and to Asterisk, which then forwards a phone call to the plants owner, alerting them of the plant’s needs.

For each plant there is a acceptable moisture level set, which when becomes too low, sets off the Bontaicalls system when checked back with other averages. While it all seems rather complex for the sake of gardening, we suppose some peoples green thumb needs some reminding.

— Andrew Dobrow

Project Page [botaniCALLS, via InvetorSpot]