French Firm Announces Flower Power Gadget

At black thumb gardener we have one or two visitors who aren’t master gardeners  and this new Flower Power gadget may be the fool-proof way to keep them from killing their plants.

Check out the video here.

Parrots latest invention was unveiled at CES 2013 a few days ago. If you don’t know what CES is let me explain. CES is a convention held by the consumer electronic industry where companies unveil the latest and some times greatest new technologies.

What is Flower Power And What Will It Do?

This new gadget is simply a data collector for you your plants. With sensors on board that collect information about sunlight, soil moisture, temperature, and soil nutrients. This information is collected and sent to your Apple iOS device, even alerting you when one of the fields falls below ideal conditions. I couldn’t find any information on whether this device would support android or other operating systems at time of the products roll out, but it usually follows shortly after.

Flower Power Gardening Sensor

Things I Really Like About This Idea

A plant library of 6,000 plant to choose from allows you to select the exact conditions the sensor should be striving for. 6,000 isn’t anywhere near the number of plants propagated by gardeners around the world but it should be enough to get settings close enough to what you’re looking for. The push notifications are automatic pop ups on your mobile device alerting you when one of the measured conditions fall below the tolerance. These push notifications are so important as so many people who try their hands at gardening start with the best intentions when they buy new plants but fall forget to take care of them. There’s no forgetting with push notifications, gardeners will have to directly ignore reminders to them. The battery life on this device is a real selling point for me as well. 6 months of battery life mean I’m only changing it twice a year or if it’s a plant in a container and I over winter it indoors I’m only changing the batter once a year. The device works outdoors, if they had made this only compatible with indoor plants I would have been so disappointed.

Things I Don’t Like About This Idea

This list will be much shorter then my likes list. The device communicates through Bluetooth and unless there’s been some huge advances in Bluetooth technology then you’ll have to walk fairly close to this device to have it sync to a mobile device. While the Bluetooth range isn’t an issue in indoor plants so much a vegetable garden in distress on the back corner of my property might not get the help it needs because I wouldn’t get the alert.

My one concern for the product probably could have been fixed by having wireless technology inside of it, but either way it won’t stop me from picking up one of these Flower Power devices to test out. Unfortunately there’s no release date yet the company is only saying “coming soon in 2013″ but you can submit your email on their website and be alerted as soon as Flower Power becomes available

Tell us what you think about this new device below, will you try it out?