I love to garden, though I will admit to having killed some beautiful plants in my yard simply because I forgot to water them or I didn’t realize they were getting too much sunshine.
Parrot’s Flower Power is a wireless plant sensor that measures in real time how your plants are doing and uses Bluetooth to send the info to an app on your iPhone or iPad.
The device is designed to blend into your garden, unlike the earlier Easy Bloom Plant Sensor, which resembled a fake flower. You can “plant" it in the soil in an indoor plant or outdoors, and it will measure how much sun your plant is getting or needs, how much moisture there is in the soil, whether you need to fertilize, and so on.
The sensor takes a few days to determine the plant’s needs, so while you can use one Flower Power for all your plants, you do need to let it spend time with different plants to get a real sense of your overall plant health.
Data is stored in the device’s flash memory until you’re in Bluetooth range and it can connect to your app. You can then review the data and go get that bucket of water for your thirsty plants. The app has a library of more than 6,000 plants, shrubs and trees along with additional info and advice on each plant.
Parrot says you’ll get about six months of battery time from the included AAA battery. The Flower Power is available starting in November for $59.99. The app isn’t up and running yet, so look for a review of the Flower Power when we can fully test its green thumb capabilities.
