Botanicalls in Russian
My friends over at Botanicalls have been getting a lot of press including a very nice piece in Reuters. Recently there was also a writeup in a Russian paper which I attempted to translate. Here is a link to the original article. I want to thank my dad for helping me with the hard words. He said the words I didn’t know were old ones no one uses anymore. That was nice of him.
Flowers Tamagotchi
Frequently during vacation season, when the wives leave for a week to visit the relatives, their loving husbands forget to water the flowers. And if the much loved matriarch returns from her vacation to the sight of the dead flowers, a fight is unavoidable. To help the very busy husbands not forget about their daily chores, the american company Botanicalls has developed an electronic system with which the flowers can themselves call the head of the house to remind him that it is time for the flowers to be watered. The system is made up of several components that are either placed in the soil or on the leaves of the sensitive flowers. During this period it is important to tell the Botanicalls System which flowers it will be caring for. With the help of computer sensors that measure ground and air moisture and compare those values with expected values. All this information is sent to a single computer processor. If the computer decides that the flowers needs some attention, it will call on the designated phone number of the flowers’ owner. If the owner does not answer the phone, the flowers’ computer sends an SMS message and an email message to the owner. Over time these communications will become more insistent and it will become impossible to overlook the flowers. After the flowers’ owners finally waters the flowers, he will receive a thank you call from the flowers. Watering flowers becomes a game similar to the Tamagotchi. The Botanicalls system will soon be available not just for one flower but for a whole winter garden or green house. Furthermore the system can be used on small farms to control soil temperatures in greenhouses. The price of the product and when it will come to market has not been announced.
