When the moisture in your plant soil drops below a certain level, the "feed me" LED starts to blink. Comes with moisture sensor on wires with varying lengths, requires a watch battery. Ideal for office environments where more than one person might be in charge of feeding a plant.

Pop versions with waving arms / white flag to be affixed to the side of a pot are also available.

Tamagochi Version [thanks to centauri]: Affix a little Tamagotchi-like screen to your flower that tests a variety of factors (ie moisture, light, nutrients, ambient music, plant EM radiation?) and animates a little character appropriately. When your little character is happy, your plant is happy. When your character dies, your plant is soon to follow. Perhaps E.T. would be an appropriate icon. Or the Lorax. Or an ewok.

Later versions will allow the characters of two different plants to fight each other. The loser gets bleach in his pot.

Maybe the sensor has an IP address, and the Tamagochi is on your screen, freeing you from having to actually look at the plant. Or, a suggestion lifted from the article Cosma points to below, the plant sends you email to remind you to feed it.
-- jutta, Apr 04 2000

(?) Wired Urban Forests http://home.pacific...idianNote00050.html
"It's about French people installing wiretapping devices inside the trees of Paris," to quote Bruce Sterling [cosma, Apr 04 2000]

(?) bird shaped plant moisture meter http://www.bestbuds...oduct-id/37996.html
bird shaped plant moisture meter [csea, Oct 17 2006]

If they made them with ET, I'd kill off the plants myself to watch that annoying little toad die...
-- StarChaser, Apr 06 2000


If you're going to hook it up to a sensor, why not just hook the sensor up to a sprinkler?
-- bookworm, May 01 2000


bookworm: If I wanted the plant to get water whenever IT wanted instead of whenever I wanted, I would just leave it outside.

StarChaser: What's so annoying about ET?

Well...?
-- centauri, May 02 2000, last modified Jul 25 2000


Baked.

My mother has had one for many years. It is a little bird with electric prongs sticking through the feet. when the resistance is high due to dry soil (moisture = conductivity) the bird chirps a couple times an hour.
-- JRandMoby, Mar 05 2002



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