
Please take care of my plant - mooreds
http://www.pleasetakecareofmyplant.com/
======
dirktheman
I made a self-watering flower pot with an arduino, a moisture sensor and a
small pump once. Worked like a charm. Well, until I forgot to put water in the
reservoir, that is. I suppose I could hook it up to water mains, but I
couldn't be bothered.

The plants we have at home are 'trained' properly so they can survive with an
intermittent splash of water every now and then. At the office we have
hydroculture and a gardener that takes care of them.

~~~
shbm
I have a similar setup but it also has an esp8266 hooked up that sends data to
thingspeak. It then communicates with Pushbullet that notifies me to water the
plants.

~~~
dirktheman
I had it hooked up to internet with an ethernet shield so that it tweeted when
the water level was low. That proved to be not very practical, as network
cables are pretty rigid and ugly, and the plant had to be in the vincinity of
a network socket. At that time, I couldn't be bothered anymore and I made
something else.

------
rchrd2
Reminds me of Telegarden by Ken Goldberg in 1995
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegarden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegarden).

~~~
tylerjaywood
This + Twitch Plays Pokemon was what I had in mind when I made this :)

~~~
moomin
The wikipedia entry appears to be spectacularly short of information on the
sheer level of griefing on Twitch plays Pokemon. Just hope that 4chan doesn't
find your plant.

~~~
mrguyorama
Unless his system has vulnerabilities that lead to his personal network or
other information, the worst they can do is dry his plant to death, which is
obviously an expected outcome. I don't think they are that concerned

~~~
moomin
It's more likely to get drowned, but I still feel sorry for the poor plant.

------
evv
That subreddit is super lively.. they've named the plant Jeff!

[https://www.reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant/](https://www.reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant/)

~~~
myrryr
Oh shit, the overwatch players are going come and kill it then.

~~~
ihuman
Why would they want to kill it? I thought if you wrestle with Jeff, prepare
for death?

~~~
squarefoot
Sadly because if something can be abused, it eventually will be.

~~~
tylerjaywood
It's been over a year, the crowd is good

~~~
jcun4128
Throw some ML on there no need for humans

------
blonky
The masses completed a pokemon game. So a plant should be no problem. :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_Plays_Pokémon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_Plays_Pokémon)

~~~
mikenew
The masses have even installed Arch.

[https://www.twitch.tv/twitchinstallsarchlinux](https://www.twitch.tv/twitchinstallsarchlinux)

~~~
barbs
I thought the masses created a botfarm and derailed it by typing profanity or
something?

~~~
ornitorrincos
the botfarm tried to install gentoo

------
perpetualcrayon
I think my approach would be:

    
    
      - take care of the plant as usual
      - accumulate data (ie. data points you're providing to viewers)
      - Now you have a rough idea where the data points SHOULD be,
        and thus can automate the watering.

~~~
colejohnson66
Isn’t that just machine learning?

~~~
freeone3000
I love how machine learning has acquired the 'just' modifier.

~~~
Spivak
It's more a question of why the person wrote out all the steps rather than
saying they were going to use a clustering algorithm.

------
davexunit
Maybe too low-tech for HN, but I just do the watering myself. Using Arduinos
and moisture sensors is a lot of fun, but not practical when you have more
than a couple plants. Most common indoor plants require infrequent watering in
the first place, and when they need it I also take the opportunity to inspect
them for anything that needs to be pruned.

~~~
fhood
Hmm, what if you had a self contained module that used a de-humidifier as a
water source.

~~~
davexunit
Maybe, but to me that's a lot of complexity for such a simple chore. I have
over a dozen house plants and it only takes me a few minutes to water
everything and I find it to be a pretty relaxing activity.

Having strangers on the internet deciding whether or not to water your plant
is a wonderful social experiment, though!

~~~
thecrazyone
Next, someone should do a social experiment to let strangers on the internet
decide whether a person is fed.

This might get way to dark way too fast :)

------
squarefoot
I always wanted to do something like that to let people entertain my cat using
a small wheeled robot as a mouse, then exporting video and direction/speed
controls on a web page.

~~~
petcubeexists
[https://petcube.com/](https://petcube.com/)

------
AronTrask
Prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11896524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11896524)

Mentioned in:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15451442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15451442)

Made by:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tylerjaywood](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tylerjaywood)

~~~
fiatjaf
Also, this same link with this same title was posted maybe 4 hours ago. I was
probably the only commenter and upvoter because the thread seems to have been
deleted, which is against the HN rules.

~~~
detaro
threads with comments can't even be deleted, and it is still there:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15452656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15452656)

~~~
fiatjaf
Thank you.

------
alex_young
Looks like this has been working for over a year according to reddit [0].

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant/comments/4utcv2/t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant/comments/4utcv2/today_is_wednesday_july_27th_do_you_want_to_water/)

------
jake1317
I'm really happy this exists

------
Tepix
This project could be turned into a programming competition:

Start with (ideally) identical plants and conditions. After one year, find the
program that did the best job (judging by the resulting plant).

Next: Adapt the code for different types of plants/flowers.

~~~
yodsanklai
Not everything can be automatized though. I believe a good gardener need
constant interaction with the plants. I grew a few cannabis plants and I had
to learn a lot in order to do it well (and I think I only scratched the
surface). Watering is the easiest thing to do, but you also need to be able to
provide the right nutrients, constantly check your plants for diseases or bug
infections, and provide the right care if needed. Besides, even seeds from the
same strain can evolve differently. Indoor growing is even more fascinating as
you have even more control on your growing environment (you can even choose
your light spectrum). Growing a plant is a great scientific experiment, it
covers a lot of fields.

~~~
lozenge
In that case the computer's task could be persuading humans to perform the
things it's unable to.

~~~
jamesleonard
That exists already.
[http://www.getgardenspace.com](http://www.getgardenspace.com)

------
auvi
Does anybody know what moisture sensor he's using?

~~~
AceJohnny2
Yeah, he said it was something like:

[https://www.amazon.com/Moisture-Humidity-Compatible-
Atomic-M...](https://www.amazon.com/Moisture-Humidity-Compatible-Atomic-
Market/dp/B00TMD43BS/ref=sr_1_cc_3?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1507756372&sr=1-3-catcorr)

See his comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15453547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15453547)

------
welder
This was posted in response to Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15452631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15452631)

------
gerdesj
That plant is in good shape now but needs rain water, not tap/faucet.

~~~
zackbloom
Why? I've never heard that.

~~~
TomMarius
Not sure about the US but in some places in Europe tap water severely lacks
minerals compared to rain water.

~~~
SEJeff
Definitely not the case in the US. Our water is full of minerals which is
often a serious issue as it makes showers very hard to clean. It also means an
increase in kidney stones (my mom just went through this and the reasoning
from the doctor was all of the minerals in the water so she used a "zero"
pitcher to filter it all out)

~~~
noitsnot
Saying the U.S. here is probably a bit of a generalization. I've lived in a
few states without a very hard to clean shower or kidney stones. Don't get me
wrong, I wouldn't drink tap water now, but I did for over a decade before the
bottled trend.

~~~
rconti
I gotta believe that drinking tap water is really low on the list of reasons
people get kidney stones. I'd think drinking virtually anything OTHER than
water is a more likely cause..

I still drink tap water regularly although I lean towards the fridge water
dispenser and the cooler at work because I like cold water.

~~~
SEJeff
Kentucky's bluegrass area (where my mother is) is entirely lime stone. Lime
stone happens to dissolve trivially in water along with anything held in it.
This was _literally_ what the doctor told her and isn't hard to believe[1].
From that article, """Median values of TDS were found below the SMCL of 500
mg/L, but outliers were common, especially in the Bluegrass (Figure 34)."""

She has to get one of the Zero filters[2] which removes virtually all TDS[3]
and measures it using a little TDS meter. Parts of the bluegrass are super
high (> 500 TDS) and they happen to be in that part. I believe it is very low
in most the united states for sure, but not where my family is from (I live in
Chicago currently) :)

[1]
[http://water.ky.gov/groundwater/Documents/BMU2_NPS_report3.p...](http://water.ky.gov/groundwater/Documents/BMU2_NPS_report3.pdf)
[2] [https://www.zerowater.com/](https://www.zerowater.com/) [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_dissolved_solids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_dissolved_solids)

------
neelkadia
I made similar thing; "Take care of my Rat(Flash)" also it's open sourced!
www.neelkadia.com/feedmyflash

~~~
thecyborganizer
This seems ethically dubious at best, and inhumane at worst.

~~~
neelkadia
We feel ya bro! Still here on my right shoulder, eat peanuts and looking at
your comment.

PS : It's all between me and flash.

------
JepZ
I hope he uses that project to train a neural network that can takes care of
his plant in the future ;-)

------
thinkMOAR
The pi could use a little speaker and play some music for the plant? :)

~~~
davidkuhta
Well on that subject, what would be the ideal plant playlist?

"I Heard It Through the Grapevine" \- Marvin Gaye

~~~
kaybe
Of course this has been researched!

[https://dengarden.com/gardening/the-effect-of-music-on-
plant...](https://dengarden.com/gardening/the-effect-of-music-on-plant-growth)

------
ttyphns
I think this is over engineering. It is cool, but I am not sure if it is
practically needed. 1\. If you come back home everyday then you can yourself
check the watering requirements. 2\. If you go out for a couple of weeks, you
could ask/get from somewhere the watering requirements of the plant and then
give it water at fixed intervals. I think that will work too. 3\. The amount
of time you spent on doing this, in that time you could honestly learn about
watering requirements of plants. And that is something different to know
compared to knowing how to write cool code.

~~~
trzmiel4
Perhaps the point of all this was not watering the plant, but the engineering
itself? Looks like a very fun and inspiring thing to do, I'd love to do some
of that one day just to learn the electronics.

~~~
131012
The social experiment is also very interesting in itself.

------
satanic_pope
Coolest thing I've seen in a while :)

~~~
gargarplex
I'm scared, have you even seen plants vs. zombies? Hoping Open AI takes a
serious look at this one. [Levity -> Serious]: Imagine that this was applied
to animals or even humans?

------
deusofnull
are you associated at all with Nest? also, this is really cool. good tutorial
model for automated growing perhaps.

~~~
tylerjaywood
I am not, but I do very much like the nest cam.

------
n_t
how do you measure the soil moisture? I didnt see anything in supplies and
both graphs didnt had anything.

~~~
matt4077
Others have linked the gadget he's using. But I'm wondering if a scale would
work at least as well. They might be cheaper/more precise/not subject to local
variations in the soil.

~~~
cycrutchfield
And when the plant grows?

~~~
korzun
> And when the plant grows?

Great question. I build something similar without a moisture sensor, the key
to obtaining proper data is to know (and control) the exact amount of water
you elect to distribute.

The self-learning (ghetto A.I) software that I wrote would try to predict the
next (optimal) watering event. You can start to tell how much weight the water
adds and how fast the plant consumes it after a couple of iterations. Plus the
soil will usually outweigh a plant by a considerable margin.

~~~
jcun4128
Ghetto A.I. haha TM

Some interesting things to look into maybe? Temp, humidity, pressure, maybe
put the plant in a transparent pot and flash a light through it (what?)

I don't know I've connected a solar cell to the web and have been gathering
data cool to see/check while at work.

------
erdle
the best time to water your plants is in the morning ...

~~~
tylerjaywood
Make a feature request !

------
IvanK_net
This sounds like the most hypocrytical thing to do. Killing dozens of plans
just to keep one small plant alive.

Rainforests are being destroyed to mine different metals. We need oil to
create plastics. Coal is burned to generate electricity to run factories.
After your devices were made in Asia, they must be transported across the
globe on huge ships burning diesel fuel. People are ready to sacrifice such
ecological damage just to have a small toy in their apartment. I hope that you
realise, that having a small plant has no contribution to the environment.

~~~
Quarrelsome
don't start with the moral consistency, you'll just make yourself sad. Its not
really possible to live in the modern world and be consistent like that.
Almost every act you do here destroys the planet. To remain ethically
consistent requires either living on a kibbutz or an incredible depth of
research about every aspect of your existence that consumes so much of your
time that you become drastically less efficient then the people that don't
care and drastically outnumber you.

For example: every time you take time out to save remember the student flat my
brother once lived in where they didn't bother de-frosting the freezer and
just left it open, forever trying to freeze the world. We try to save water in
our house yet three doors down the guy who washes his car leaves his hose
running for ~30 minutes every now and then. How can I hate the people of the
world that do that when its permitted as a norm? When the developing world has
a burgeoning population poised to make those same mistakes again? Its a very
sad problem of scale. I'm not saying don't try, more just try not to mad at
people when our culture enables it so.

Let this person have their silly blog. The problems are so fundamental in our
society that this represents some of the least harm. We should focus on
regulation and culture instead. For example the 40% of food waste that the EU
practices is an example of an institutional problem worth the effort because
the gains are immense.

~~~
IvanK_net
I am not saying that you should kill yourself to preserve the environment :D
But the question is if each act, that you do and destroys a planet, is really
worth it. I think, that governments currently don't give it an adequate
attention by creating proper laws, so it is up to people to think about it.

Here in the EU, you have to pay for the electricity and for the water, so
people are not keeping freezers or taps open. You have to pay for the food as
well, I never heard about your 40 %.

~~~
Quarrelsome
The 40% is to keep supermarkets stocked. Isn't it weird that in supermarkets
you can always get what you want? That availability MEANS that there is a huge
amount of waste because when someone doesn't buy it, it spoils (this is why
France passed the law to force supermarkets to give food to the homeless). The
40% was from an EU report into it a couple of years ago. AFAIK we still (we
definitely used to do this, not sure if we still do) dump excess agricultural
output into the freaking ocean as opposed to crashing the international
markets by dumping our surplus there. All of that waste is INSANE.

It doesn't matter if you have to pay for electricity and water because you can
easily earn enough money to leave both the lights and taps on all day. That
doesn't make it right.

The point is that if we start calling other people hypocrites that road leads
to the realisation that everyone in the west is a degree of hypocrite. We're
in this together to a greater or lesser extent.

~~~
IvanK_net
I expected you to show me a link to this 40%. I guess it is the food that is
not even harvested from fields. I realy doubt that 40% of food in the
supermarkets is thrown away.

It does matter a lot if electricity and water is free. It would be wasted much
more if it was free.

I think it is important to call people hypocrits to make them think about what
they do. We are in this together, so we must explain stuff to one another.

~~~
lemondrops
[https://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/food_waste/stop_en](https://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/food_waste/stop_en)

------
pipio21
In my opinion not a very good idea.

You could spend way less money using humidity sensors and capillarity, which
is the best way to water plants.

I have my plats watered this way, an arduino knows the humidity of plants and
water deposit levels and just fills the deposit, or calls me if there is an
emergency(something is wrong and deposit is empty or too much humidity).

My plants(including trees) are wealthier and stronger than ever, even better
than drip irrigation.

The problem with capillarity is that the level of the deposit controls the
pressure so it has to remain the same.

~~~
bentaber
Not a very good idea? Even if it's not the simplest scientific solution for
the success of the plant, it's still a fantastic idea.

The beauty, and intrigue, of this solution is the community that is formed,
enabled by the use of technology, to solve a problem together collectively.

~~~
rootlocus
> The beauty, and intrigue, of this solution is the community that is formed,
> enabled by the use of technology, to solve a problem together collectively.

How is this problem solving? They're basically voting whether or not the plant
gets watered a day. A simple humidity sensor / specialized algorithm for the
plant type could make better decisions.

~~~
colejohnson66
Kids learn robotics by building little robots that drive in circles. Just
because something is trivial to you doesn’t mean it is to everyone else. And
even if there’s an easier way, you learn by building. You don’t just learn a
programming language by reading the docs...

~~~
rootlocus
I wasn't talking about the author of the experiment. I was talking about the
people who are "solving a problem" together. They're not solving a problem,
because there is no problem. They're participating in a social experiment.

------
bspn
I once agreed to take care of a friend's plant while they were overseas - it
was a terrifying day-to-day experience. Don't ask your friends to look after a
plant.

~~~
barbs
How so?

~~~
thephyber
sarcasm?

It's tough to take care of a human infant or a puppy. It's extremely easy to
care for a fish or a plant.

Then again, some people can't even be responsible for themselves.

~~~
bspn
No, it was genuinely stressful! I forget the name of the plant now, but too
much sun and it would die. Too little sun, same result. Move it the wrong way
and, yep you guessed it, death. And that's before we even get to the watering
requirements!

~~~
Spare_account
We have one plant in our household, no other plants have survived. It lives in
my living room and I have no idea what kind of plant it is. It had long thin
leaves, each one is about 10 to 15cm long and 1cm wide and long thin woody
stems.

We water it randomly, at one stage we estimate we forgot to water it for
around 6 months. Other times due to a lack of communication we have both
watered it multiple times in a week. It appears to be invulnerable to poor
watering discipline.

Currently it is living in direct sunlight but it has lived in permanent shade
for a extended period as well.

I don't know why I'm telling you this, it probably doesn't help knowing that
your friends has high maintenance plants when there are invincible ones like
ours in the world as well.

~~~
watwut
I want your plant. If you figure out how it is call, then I am buying only
those in the future. At this point, I am mass plants killer since they all
died eventually under my watch.

~~~
claudius
I have a rubber tree (ficus elastica) and it seems quite invincible. Got it
from my grandmother about 15 years ago, it spent three years in my dad’s
smoke-filled room and has moved three or four times. Right now there’s direct
sunlight in spring and fall and a radiator right next to it in winter.
Watering is so-and-so, easily lasts a week to a month without any water.

If I forget to water, some leaves will turn yellow but quickly recover once
water is available again.

Oh, and it had half of it sawn off at one point because it grew too large, the
other half is now also a very presentable little plant.

------
jpm_sd
hmmm, time to register pleasetakecareofmykids.com

~~~
freeflight
How about pleaseplaywithmycats.com? Audience controls robots to play with
cats. As ridiculous as it sounds it would probably be immensely popular, tho
animal rights groups would go nuts.

~~~
Kiro
Why would they go nuts? Haven't seen a single backlash against the many sites
out there already doing this.

~~~
freeflight
Some animal rights groups can be quite touchy, I don't think there'd be a lot
of forgiving PR if a stranger uses a remote-controlled bot to injure/kill a
cat over the Internet.

I never thought this would already be an actual thing, could you give me some
links?

------
kayamon
I can't accept this kind of responsibility.

~~~
linker3000
I bet you also decline the 'bag for life' in the supermarkets.

------
cellover
I would love to see the same thing with "Please take care of my planEt"!

