How to program your plants to text you when they need water

A great trope of mid-90s psychological action film Leon the Professional was his relationship with his houseplant, which, when we first encounter Leon, is the only object of love in the ascetic assassin’s life.

As a young reporter covering a faraway small town beat and living alone in a modern-day boarding house, we too had a houseplant we watered with deeply personal love. At least until it died. (Then we got a new one.) And that’s exactly the problem the wonderful people of Downtown Brooklyn hackerspace NYC Resistor want to solve for.

Bonnie Eisenman, of NYC Resistor, published a how-to yesterday, called Internet of Dirt: a Texting Plant.

https://twitter.com/brindelle/status/816371336062836737

“This simple project combines a capacitive soil sensor, the WiFi-enabled Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ESP8266 board, Adafruit IO, and IFTTT to set up a system that will text you when your plant’s soil gets too dry. It makes a great intermediate-level Arduino project, or a good introduction to Internet of Things-style projects.”

Check it out