Over the past couple of years, my social media feed has been filled with friends becoming plant mommies and daddies during the pandemic. Of course, I tried to do a bit of greening my apartment but very minimally since I knew my capability or, rather, lack of capability of taking care of plants. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, both plants died. Now, if I had some physical and digital tools to help me out, I probably may have done better.
Designer: Hatch Duo
If something like the Krado Plant Sensor actually exists, then maybe my poor two plants had a better chance of survival. It’s the hardware component of the Leaflet Plant Care System, whose main purpose is to help people grow healthy plants. The sensor is something you put in the soil with your plants, and it will be able to transmit information to the mobile app so you will be able to adjust how you’re taking care of them.
The plant sensor is able to monitor things like soil moisture, ambient temperature, humidity, and light. These are critical factors that will affect the health of your plants, and if you’re like me, that’s pretty clueless about these things, then it might give me helpful information. The app connected to it will also give you actionable guidance based on these factors like buying and shipping fertilizer, potting soil, pesticides, etc.
The sensor itself looks like a thermometer but with a leaf at the top. There are different colored lights that may indicate specific conditions that will alert you (well if you’ve memorized what the colors stand for). In terms of sustainability, it is 100% 3D printed and it also uses the latest additive manufacturing practices. Another added bonus to this is that all the information collected through the sensor will contribute to botanical research. The research will tell us what’s the best environment for specific plans to grow.
I don’t know if having this sensor will definitely improve my still non-existent plant growing skills. But it might actually let them live beyond the average of two weeks life cycle that they get with me.
