I would love to get a cell phone warning from a cold frame: "You should have opened the vents wider before going to work, Rick! It's a steam bath in here." Or, once I knew which pot or tray dried out first: "Water me! Water me, you dummy! Whaddaya think I am, a cactus?!?"
Less welcome but equally helpful would be a wakeup call if the temperature was dropping rapidly and/or approaching freezing too early in the night. "It might not be too late to throw a blanket over me!"
Running the user interface through cell phones with text messages and apps, seemed like a good idea. I'm glad this company is thinking along those lines.
Hmm, thank Google, someone named "Clover" has done this already with "Arduino".
http://www.treehugger.com/clea...
I've often thought that, after I retire, I might look into the cheapest possible way to automate a big cold frame or small greenhouse with microcontrollers and relays. Vents and fans and heaters. Maybe drip irrigation. I'm sure those already exist for commercial greenhouses, at astronomical prices.
Electronics have gotten so cheap that a waterproof casing would cost more than the chips. Power relays for fan and heaters, solenoids for water valves, and waterproof 120 V AC outlets outdoors, would each cost more than the electronics.
I wonder if there is a uniform "building code" for 120 V AC in buildings that aren't residences. Or would it have to be designed to satisfy all the most finicky states (and hence unaffordable anywhere)?
A marketing expert might point out that most people who care enough about their plants to buy the product and heed its warnings, probably already learned how to do without it after losing a few dozen or a few hundred plants, years ago!
