New Botanicalls kits!
The Twittering-plant Botanicalls project has undergone a revamp, with very nice new kits. These are still Arduino-based but are now pared down to a single green-leafed PCB. The best part of the new design is that the XPort modules and microcontrollers are preprogrammed with the code for a unique Twitter account. That means you can just plug it in and its ready to go, a lot easier than the last rev which required a bit of hacking to work. The kits are also priced 1/3 less. Its cool to see the project get better & better…so I snagged a couple and they’re in the Adafruit shop now!
October 31st, 2008 at 11:07 pm
It would be really cool if such kit used bluetooth or other wireless module, so it won’t require to wire all the plants around the house.
November 1st, 2008 at 8:42 pm
The original version did! But it was much too expensive for a DIY kit. Plus lots of geeks can use this in the office
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:21 am
Hello,
why are all the wireless kits so expensive? Both Bluetooth and ZigBee costs under $3 [1], Atmel has quite cheap IEEE 802.15.4 radios now. Is it possible to build something like Arduino, but under $10 [2] and with ZigBee radio included? For wireless sensor network prototyping board?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee
[2] Ideally, it would cost under $1 because one needs a lot of them. I understand we are not there yet. But why not? Because no one wants millions of motes?
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
it costs $3 if you’re building 100,000. xbee modules go for about $20/ea on the retail market. if you need two that means the kit would cost $100 more after all the markups!