Twitter with Your Houseplants

Twitter with your houseplants on your iPhone!

I’m sure you’ve heard the old wives’ tale that talking to your plants will help them thrive.  But did you know that your houseplants can now talk to you to tell you what they need?  That is if you are like me – one of the millions of people that use Twitter.  Be forewarned, however.  The next time you allow your plant to wither and die, it may be able to say, “I told you so,” before you dump it in the yard debris.

Twitter is both a social networking and “micro-blogging service.  Its free to use and – I must warn you – addictive.  In 140 characters or less, you can broadcast to the world what you are doing.  Anyone can see your “tweets,” unless you make them private.  Once you start following people selected as your friends, you will get regular updates on what they are doing (depending on how often they tweet).  As summarized on Wikipedia:

Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or through applications such as TwitterMobile, Tweetie, Twinkle, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, Facebook, and Twidget, a widget application…. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. By September 2008, Twitter had ‘well over 5 million visitors.’

So what does a web-based application have to do with watering your houseplants?  Thanks to the inventive work of several students at NYU, your plants can “tweet” you when they need attention.  Have these brilliant minds created plants with little typing fingers and tiny keyboards?  Hardly.  What they have invented, however, is a system that uses: (1) sensor probes inserted into the soil; (2) a microcontroller that translates data that can be sent over the Internet through an embedded ethernet connection; and (3) your plant’s own Twitter account (probably with a catchy name like Marigold1972 or Irisiwasinhawaii).

What would your houseplant tweet to you?

Known as “Botanicalls,” the ability to twitter with your houseplant is still fairly limited to those that know how to solder and program the microcontrollers to expand the plant’s “vocabulary.”  Once you get the hang of it, however, your little green friends can both beg and thank you for water and attention.  Perhaps its a good gift idea for your empty-nester neighbor, or the crazy cat lady down the street?

Translate your plant’s tweets into a foreign language, if you wish.  Advanced techies can even tweak the circuit so that all your houseplants can tweet you!  People who are obviously desperate for friends have even started following their friends plants on Twitter.  Really.  Its got to be a pretty lonely life if you want to get updates like… “there is a bug on my leaf right now,” or “I don’t look good in yellow.”

For me, I think I’ll keep my relationship with my foliage one-sided.  I’m not ready to Twitter with my houseplants.  But if you promise you are not tall, green and leafy, I may follow your tweets….