If, like us, you’re terrible at gardening, then you’ll like the sound of this: a plant pot that monitors the health of your shrub, automatically waters it when it needs some sustenance, and tells you when you need to move it into and out of the sun. This is everything that the new Parrot Pot does, and it’ll even tell you exactly how your plant is surviving over Bluetooth.
The successor to the Flower Power, the Pot has the same sensor suite — soil moisture, fertiliser quality, ambient temperature and light intensity — but also integrates a 2.2-litre water reservoir and four tiny jets in the pot’s rim, which you can manually or automatically water your plant with. The automatic mode can be set either to promote maximum growth or just to maintain a plant’s current levels, which Parrot says also acts as a convenient holiday mode to conserve water while you’re away.
The real appeal of the Pot, though, is in the fact that it will learn how much water your plant needs in whatever environment it’s in. A couple of days and a few watering cycles later, all the Pot’s sensors will work out the optimum moisture level for the soil, whether it’s in (literally) freezing or Death Valley desert heat. And then your phone will tell you whenever you need to refill the water reservoir, add fertiliser or do a little bit of preventative pruning.
Those Bluetooth smarts come courtesy of Parrot’s Flower Power app, which gives you a fitness tracker-style dashboard that shows you temperature, sunlight, fertiliser and water status, with a catalogue of over 8000 plants with bespoke maintenance advice and food and fertiliser recommendations for each. It’ll also handle up to 256 Pots at a time, which is more than enough considering a single one will cost you $229.99 in Australia when it launches in October. [Parrot]
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