Pothos on Twitter
It seems that nearly every day someone is figuring out a way to plug another object of their into Twitter. It’s pretty interesting to watch, because creativity can run wild when you put your mind to figuring out ways that an object can send a 140-character message to you.
This latest one is very simple, but pretty unique:
Kate Hartman and Rob Faludi of New York University decided to make a system that allows a plant to tell its owner, via Twitter, that it needs water.
The idea is actually a continuation of an older idea from 2007, where Hartman and Faludi made a system that called its owner over the telephone:
Each plant had a ‘voice’ to match the plant type, such as the Scottish moss, which had a Scottish accent.
However, the equipment to give a plant a telephone was expensive, which made it prohibitive to market. Thankfully, their telephone-enabled plant was the only one in existence, because the long-distance charges from their Bonsai “phoning home” could have easily added up. (Hey, *I* thought it was funny…)
When the Twitter craze begun, Hartman and Faludi realized that they just found the perfect way to make their “communicating plant” work. The equipment is inexpensive, and the Twitter interface allows programmers to easily send messages to others. The Twitter Botanicall kit was born.
Currently, there are 3,169 people following Pothos, so the concept has definitely interested a lot of people. Hartman and Faludi have also sold around 100 kits, each of which come as a box of electronic components that you assemble and solder yourself. It reminds me of the Radio Shack electronics kits I used to play with when I was a kid. (Ok, ok… I STILL play with them, but this time I’ve upgraded to using programmable microcontrollers.)
I think there is a great market out there for these odd Twitter-enabled devices, and we are going to see a lot more of them in the future. My only concern is this: will Twitter be able to afford the cost of being used as an alert service for everyone’s personal device?
So, here’s today’s question:
What item of yours would you like to see joining you on Twitter? (Mine is an oil change alert sent by my car).
-Kris