If you’re going to be a tech geek, you might as well garden like a tech geek too. And while nothing beats the Click and Grow when it comes to geekily tending to a plant, this Koubachi WiFi Plant Sensor sure isn’t that far off.
Rather than automate taking care of your plants, the contraption leaves the actual watering and fertilizing to you. However, it takes the guesswork out of knowing exactly when you need to do something by constantly monitoring your flora, then alerting you when your favorite pot of Venus Flytrap needs to get its feeding.
The WiFi Plant Sensor looks like the smashing end of a golf club with a short rod (around 6 inches or so) that you’re supposed to jam into the soil right next to your plant. When set up, it keeps a real-time reading of soil moisture, air temperature and light intensity in the area, data from which is sent to your home network and picked up by Koubachi’s iOS app (or the web app if Apple’s not your friend). The app will take care of the calculations and recommendations, telling you whether the plant requires watering, misting or fertilization (or human sacrifice, if you have one of those demon plants — just kidding, I’m the only one who has those).
Since the sensor isn’t weather-proof, it can only be used for indoor plants, but it will work on practically any soil type. You will also need to tell the system what kind of plant you have the sensor monitoring, as it’s not sophisticated enough to figure that out on its own. It runs on a pair of AA batteries (no word on how long a pair will last, though, so make sure you check periodically).
Currently available strictly in Europe, the Koubachi WiFi Plant Sensor retails for around $140. It won’t hit US shores until 2013.
Update: Its now available worldwide.