How to Get Your Plants to Start Tweeting

Story by

Courtney Boyd Myers

Courtney Boyd Myers is the founder of audience.io, a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London based technology startups gr (show all) Courtney Boyd Myers is the founder of audience.io, a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London based technology startups grow internationally. Previously, she was the Features Editor and East Coast Editor of TNW covering New York City startups and digital innovation. She loves magnets + reading on a Kindle. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter @CBM and Google +.

This morning, San Francisco based blogger Brit Morin caught our attention with this DIY Self-Tweeting Plant Kit.

Developed by SparkFun, the Botanicalls Kit connects house plants to Twitter so they can tweet as soon as they need water. That’s right, now you will be pinged with guilted tweets from your terribly neglected tomato plants. The kit comes with an Arduino microcontroller, an Ethernet module and two probes to insert into the soil to monitor moisture level. This is what the kit looks like:

The project has caught the attention of dozens of blogs and even the MoMA in New York City. The Botanicalls Project, developed by designers and developers Rob Faludi, Kate Hartman, and Kati London, has been admitted to The Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture’s permanent collection alongside the Eames chair, the BIC pen, Frank Lloyd Wright and Starry Night. This is what it looks like it in action:

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Did you ever think you could start growing social media savvy plants? Suddenly, Fido’s whimpering seems terribly stone age…

The kit is all yours for just $100, and can be bought here. Got a green thumb and want to read more? Check out this nifty post: 20 other Geek Gadgets for Growing Plants Indoors.