Asterisk Based Plant Assistance : Pick Up Its Your Plant Calling

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.

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.

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