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LG's first indoor gardening appliance helps beginners grow vegetables
LG wants to hop on the vegetarian bandwagon, and it's venturing into unfamiliar territory to make that happen. The company will use CES 2020 to launch its first-ever indoor gardening appliance. The modular device you see at left grows lettuce, arugula, basil and other plants by matching outdoor conditions through time-sensitive LED lighting, air circulation and fine-grained water control. All you need to do is plant all-in-one seed packages (with fertilizer and peat moss) and keep an eye on your crop through a mobile app. Even a "complete novice" could grow a garden with this device, if you believe LG.
Philips seems to be working on more Hue outdoor lights
The Philips Hue smart lightbulb lineup already includes some outdoor lighting, but rumor has it that Philips will introduce more outdoor options, likely at CES. According to a leaked product catalog, found by Hueblog.de, Philips Hue is planning a pretty big expansion of its offerings.
Roomba creator wants to do for gardens what he did for your floors
Let's be honest: while planting your garden can be fun, weeding it usually isn't. Not unless you enjoy crouching down for long stretches, anyway. You might not have to endure the drudgery for too much longer, though. Roomba co-creator Joe Jones and Franklin Robotics are launching Tertill, a robot that weeds your garden all by itself. The machine automatically roams the soil, using sensors to identify small plants (you use collars to protect young crops) and chop them down. It's solar-powered, so you don't have to dock it -- you can even leave it out in the rain.
LG's next robots include an Echo-like assistant
When LG said it was pouring a ton of effort into robots, it wasn't kidding. The electronics firm is teasing a whole lineup of robots for CES, including one that could theoretically replace your Echo speaker. The flagship, the Hub Robot (not shown here), will serve as both a personal assistant and a smart home platform. This doesn't mean that it'll be the robotic butler of your dreams, but you might not have to walk into a specific room to turn on the lights using your voice.
App-controlled habitat grows just about anything in your home
You can already get smart gardening gear and smart aquariums, but wouldn't it be nice if you could get one box that handles just about anything you'd care to grow in or around your home? Jared Wolfe thinks so. His crowdfunded, internet-connected Biopod can nurture many kinds of plants and animals in its automatically controlled habitat. All you have to do is pick the kind of environment you want through a mobile app, and the Biopod can do the rest -- it regulates factors like the humidity, light, temperature and even artificial rainfall. While it won't feed your pets, a built-in camera lets you keep track of what your creatures are doing while you're away.
Sensor-equipped plant pods take the guesswork out of indoor gardening
Have you been thinking about trying your hand at gardening, but lack the green thumb to keep those plants alive? There's a new Kickstarter project that may be able to lend a hand. Plug & Plant is a wall-mounted system of pods that not only neatly organizes the indoor plants, but each one is equipped with Bluetooth room, humidity and light sensors. That tech gathers data from the environment and offers tips for optimum plant growth. A Smart Water Tank also uses the collected info to vary the watering regimen as needed for up to 30 days. Details are beamed to a companion app that displays the stats for each senor independently as well as analyzes the data and providing suggestions for care.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: garden wheels and 3D-printed fashion
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Electric car lovers are waiting with bated breath for the release of Tesla's forthcoming Model 3, but some details about the electric car have been revealed in advance of the release. The automaker has announced that it will offer the Model 3 in both sedan and crossover styles. Tesla is the king of electric cars, but other automakers are nipping at the company's heels. Several reports have surfaced suggesting that BMW is planning an all-electric SUV that will rival the Tesla Model X. Meanwhile, electric vehicle sales are taking off all over the world. A British research firm announced last week that EV sales increased by 366 percent in the UK during the first part of 2015, and major increases have also been seen in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria and China. And in other green transportation news, the Human Power Team at the University of Delft, Netherlands, designed the world's fastest bicycle, which has been recorded traveling 133.78KPH (more than 80MPH).
MIT's light-up robot garden teaches you how to code
If you're teaching kids how to code, what do you do to show that software makes an impact in the real world? MIT has a clever idea: a robot garden. The project lets you control a grid of Arduino-linked "plants" through programming that makes them blossom and light up in pretty (and occasionally mesmerizing) ways. It'll even teach the virtues of distributed computing -- you can tell these leafy robots to bloom or change color in algorithm-driven sequences. The garden is just a demo for now, but it'll eventually turn into an easy-to-replicate curriculum for students who'd otherwise have to settle for seeing their results on-screen. [Image credit: Jason Dorfman, CSAIL]
Edyn's smart gardening system gives your plants exactly what they need
Smart home gardening devices frequently tell you that your plants need a little TLC, but they don't always deliver it; you frequently have to bring out a hose or watering can. If Edyn successfully funds its smart garden system, you may not have to trudge out to the backyard quite so often. The core is a WiFi-connected sensor that detects both the soil quality and ambient conditions, cross-checking those against your choice of greenery. If the sensor decides that your plants need some hydration, Edyn's iOS app automatically tells an optional smart valve to deliver just the right amount of water-- yes, you can be waste-free and lazy. Both the sensor and valve combine solar power with lithium-ion batteries, so you don't have to worry about watering on cloudy days.
Parrot Flower Power review: Can technology give you a green thumb?
Sure, you've heard of the connected home, but what about the connected garden? If you're someone who manages to always kill your plants, Flower Power, a new gadget from Parrot, might sound like just the thing. The $60 Bluetooth-connected device aims to turn your black thumb green by sending you daily push notifications about your garden's health. The small sensor can provide up-to-the-minute reports that can ensure everything from your potatoes to your petunias are getting exactly the right amount of sunlight, water and even fertilizer. So, is the tiny gadget what your garden needs?
Google's Arduino-based ADK powers robots, home gardens and giant Labyrinth (video)
Sure, it looks just about like every other Arduino board found at Maker Faire, but this one's special. How so? It's Google-branded, and not only that, but Google-endorsed. Shortly after the search giant introduced its Android Open Accessory standard and ADK reference hardware, a smattering of companies were already demonstrating wares created around it. Remote-control robots? Check. Nexus S-controlled gardens? Check. A laughably large Labyrinth? Double check. It's already clear that the sky's the limit with this thing, and we're as eager as anyone to see 'em start floating out to more developers. Have a look in the gallery for close-ups of the guts, and peek past the break for a video of the aforementioned Xoom-dictated Labyrinth. %Gallery-123306%
Timelapse Garden Video Camera keeps tabs on plant growth / death
For those of you looking to prove just how green your thumb really is, have a gander at the Timelapse Garden Video Camera. Offered up at the always intriguing Hammacher Schlemmer, this weatherproof garden tool engages in the tedious task of taking snapshots of your flora in customizable intervals and then weaving them together into a single 1,280 x 1,024 AVI video. The lens can focus as close as 20-inches away, and with the bundled 2GB USB flash drive, upwards of 18,000 photos can be stored at a time. Amazingly, we're told that it can operate for up to four months using four AA cells, and it even turns itself off at night and back on in the morning in order to not waste capture space and battery life. It's shipping now to hedgers, groundkeepers and everyday plantsmen for $159.95.[Via OhGizmo]
MIT dreams of fully autonomous greenhouse, will definitely make it happen
You know what's hard to find these days? Consistency and reliability -- in anything, really. But we've learned that when MIT touches something, it not only gets done, but it gets done right. Thus, we're absolutely elated to hear that a few of its students have dreamed up a fully autonomous greenhouse, utilizing real plants, sensors and gardening robots to ensure the greenest, most healthy crop possible. In fairness, we've already seen oodles of robotic plant tending apparatuses, but this is just something special. Thus far, gurus have used "re-imagined versions of iRobot's Roomba" in order to tell what a plant needs and then respond accordingly, and apparently, things have been going quite well early on. Check out a demonstration vid just past the break.[Via MAKE]
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR: New Noble Garden Achievements
More patch 3.1 information, this time the Noble Garden achievement revamp. Noble Garden is an Easter like celebration, complete with eggs and all other sorts of festivities. The event has been rather mundane in the past, especially compared to some other events like the fire festival or Halloween, but that appears to no longer be the case.You might be wondering why the Playboy Bunny is displayed as this article's image.Well, one of the achievements for the Noble Garden is to "Use Spring Flowers to place rabbit ears upon females of at least 18th level." And that to me just screams getting the title "Hefner," and I mean, Kendra was 18. So it's all good.The list of Noble Garden achievements after the break.
World of WarCrafts: Garden art
Every Thursday, Shelbi Roach of The Bronze Kettle guides you in creating WoW-inspired crafts using real world mats with World of WarCrafts.If you're looking to enhance your home away from Northrend, you might find these WoW-themed glass and brass garden sculptures to be right up your alley! Constructed with solid brass, these stakes are said to be wind and water proof. FeralGlass offers a variety of punctuation, including yellow, gold and blue question and exclamation marks.
EasyBloom USB stake sensor now shipping, plants celebrate
Well, wouldn't you know it? That PlantSense prototype we peeked around this time two years ago has seemingly found the fundage to start up production, and at long last the revamped product is available for you to purchase. Now christened EasyBloom, this USB stake sensor analyzes important data when stuck in soil for 24 hours, after which it uploads the data to your PC (via USB) for determining whether or not a flower / tree / etc. should be planted there. Additionally, it can "diagnose what is wrong with an ailing plant," and it can even dole out a recommended list of which plants would be suitable for your environment. Sure, $59.99 may seem like a lot of green to toss out for something such as this, but it sure beats purchasing new flora every fortnight after you murder yet another round.%Gallery-35468%
Solar-powered, glowing flower pot does just that
There are all sorts of ways to tech-up your plants, be they fake or real. In this case, Firebox's solar-powered pot takes in the sun's energy during the day in order to glow at night. A solar cell is placed in the sun and connects to a ground spike with a 9.8-foot wire which then powers the color-changing flower pot. Could be an interesting -- or gaudy -- addition to your yard depending on your scheme. Available now for about $40.[Via Pocket-Lint]
PSN gardening game to exercise green thumbs
There's nothing we enjoy quite as much after a long evening of gaming than tending to our resident houseplants, one of which teeters on the edge of death while the other, greener replacement waits for when the original inevitably shuffles off its leafy coil. Now, however, it seems that players in Japan may soon be able to take on this diversion with controller in hand as well, as Famitsu has revealed a new PSN title from SCEJ and movie house Premium Agency called Shikitei (literally translated as "Four Seasons Garden"), that premises to let us plant a garden and watch it grow.Watch being the operative word here, as it seems that even virtually Sony doesn't trust our green thumbs, the report revealing that the game, or "environmental simulator" according to IGN, will focus more on letting players design gardens before letting the program have its way with them. In fact, according to producer Rie Nakamura, the title will include no gaming elements at all. Fun! Still, for all of its hands-offness, Shikitei will include elements such as custom soundtracks, as well as the ability to take a stroll through the virtual eden, no doubt offering solace in the fact that this is one garden that won't meet an untimely end at our hands. At least until we turn off the power.
Putting "non-MMO" gameplay into an MMO game
Massively's own Michael Zenke just doesn't seem to quit thinking about MMOs-- not only is he writing for us here, but he's also posting very intelligent stuff on other sites about MMOs, and even over the Christmas holiday, on his own blog, he's turning out insight about MMO design. His latest post is about a game I love, Viva Pinata for the Xbox 360, and how developers can use the lessons learned in both casual and more complicated "empire-building" or "garden growing" games like that to inform MMO gameplay.The thing that Viva Pinata does best, in my opinion, is that it creates a living breathing world easily and with a relatively transparent interface. Create some worms (sorry, "whirlms"), give them a house, and all of a sudden you get birds. House the birds, and more animals appear-- there's the sense that you're not so much playing as interacting with a real world around you. And that is something that is very easily translatable to MMOs-- I feel like I keep bringing it up, but Pirates' concept of "stored labor" gives me that same sense of "waiting to push the button" that Zenke talks about. And he also mentions the achievements and the gift system that extend VP's gameplay, and it's definitely true that those kinds of things can push MMOs forward as well.It's probably true that the next big MMO won't draw their influence from an MMO at all-- it'll be the kind of game that brings not only hacking and slashing to the massively multiplayer table, but these other kinds of deeper gameplay as well.
The Apple crop circle
Reader Marc sent us pictures and video of his "Apple garden," which appears to be a large Apple logo on his spacious lawn in Jersey, just off the coast of France. At first I thought it was just a cutout of the grass, but his picture gallery shows that it's growing, so it must be seeded that way. Interesting. Does whoever plays (is that lacrosse?) on the field mind?Marc also tells us the airport is nearby, and so he says it's something for travelers to look at as it goes by. He's planning to do a flyby with a paraglider, and maybe even some timelapse footage of the thing growing. Cool stuff. For some reason, I can't help but think of crop circles while looking at this, and that makes me think of Close Encounters: "This... means something."
