It's Your Plant Again. Pick Up The Phone!

As promised, here's a Q&A with the co-founder of Botanicalls, a not-yet-ready-for-primtime product that enables houseplants to call you on the phone when they need attention. Of course they can't really call you, but four NYU grad students - among them, Kati London - have concocted a way to simulate a call.

Wake Up! Pay Attention! FEED ME!

photo by Sai Sriskandarajah

KL: Kati London, welcome to TP. Mind explaining how and your co-horts, hahaha, have gone about giving plants a voice?

Kati: We wanted to do things as cheaply as possible, so we created a simple circuit. We start with rudimentary sensors that determine soil moisture levels in a given plant. We add little photocells to determine the plant's light levels. We connect those sensors to a little chip set with thresholds.

KL: Oy. Thresholds?

Kati: Yeah, like "I need water but it's not urgent". Or, "Hi, I'm desperately in need of a drink". Or, "Thanks for watering me but now there's water left in my dish. Could you empty it?"

KL: A pain-in-the-ass plant. I love it. Go on.

Kati: OK. The little chip is connected to a wireless radio, which is connected to a master radio, which is hooked up to the internet via an ethernet cable. Now the plant's communicating directly with a webpage. The webpage is Asterisk, an open-source phone system, which launches a call based on the info it receives from the plant, in a voice that's been pre-recorded.

KL: Pre-recorded by what, or whom?

Kati: Friends, actors, folks who we thought reflected the biography of each plant.

KL: So the scotch moss is represented by someone with a Scots accent, that kind of thing?

Kati: Yeah. The scotch moss is hysterical. We wanted to be playful and give people who are afraid to stick their fingers in dirt a way in to the plant world.

KL: I was gonna ask, isn't observation enough to see that a plant's dying for a drink?

Kati: People will flat ignore plants in their space. They're on their blackberries, their cellphones, they're online. We wanted to give the plants a similar platform in which they could communicate.

KL: So basically you're seducing people with technology to make them look at what's right in front of them.

Kati: And being funny at the same time.

KL: So what phase of development is Botanicalls in now?

Kati: Two things. We're working on a DIY model which could be ready this fall, and we're fine-tuning codes for plants in the same room so they can talk to each other. Let's say I'm a fiddle-leaf fig and I need light and I can't get it. I can ask the other plants in the same room with me if THEY have light. If no one else has light, I can deduce that it's either nighttime or cloudy. But if I notice that the spider plant has LOTS of light, I can call and say, "Move me next to the spider plant!"

KL: So where do you think this former graduate school project will take you guys?

Kati: We're interested in creating a sustainable brave new world - not only ecologically, but financially. We'd like to make these DIY kits so we can get feedback and make them lucrative.

Ultimately, though, in all my work, I'm looking for ways to give living creatures a voice that is not otherwise heard.

11:59 AM ET | 07- 2-2007 | permalink

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