Overview

IoP is an Internet of Things project and interactive experience that enables plants to tweet their needs on Twitter and to build relationships with their caregivers. My teammates and I developed this project in Makeathon, which is an annual event at NC State University.

Ideas

Tweeting plants tell you when and what they need to keep gardening efficient and fun. This project was inspired by the Open Algo project from MIT Media Lab. We realized that maintaining plants can be very expensive for universities. We wanted to put plants online to attract people to water and take care of them through interactive experiences.

Implementations

As a demo, we picked one potted plant and connected it to a moisture level sensor. The sensor was connected to a virtual server that sent its readings to the cloud. The readings trigger different pre-made tweets to update people on the status of the plants. The followers are the actuators that respond to the tweets.

Reflections

I learned the importance of diversity in this project. We are a team of four with different majors, skillsets, and personalities. Read our story -- Internet of Plants: Students Win with Social Media.