start & parts

Welcome to the Botanicalls Twitter Kit site!

Botanicalls Twitter lets plants reach out for human help! It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates to your mobile phone. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love.

The Botanicalls Twitter kit includes all the hardware you need to create a networked communication system for your plant. A moisture sensor placed into the soil will send information to simple electronic detection circuitry you solder together yourself. Twitter updates are then sent out via an onboard Ethernet connection to the Internet, where they can be viewed online or routed to your mobile phone. Previous soldering experience is not required, and complete instructions are available online with detailed photos showing each assembly step.

The Botanialls Twitter kit contains an Arduino microcontroller board, custom moisture sensing system, Ethernet adapter, 120V wall-wart power supply, USB cable for programming and a short length of Ethernet cable. You'll need a wired Internet connection, and of course a fabulous plant!

Parts

a) USB A to B cable       b) wire      c) wire for nails       d) two galvanized nails      
e) one 2N2222A transistor      f) two 100 Ohm resistors       g) XPort      h) Adafruit XPort Shield Kit
i) Ethernet cable      j) Arduino USB board      k) Proto Shield Kit      l) Shield Stacking headers     m) 9V DC power adapter

Other things you'll need:

soldering iron
solder
helping hands
computer with ZTerm or HyperTerminal and Arduino
Twitter account
a fabulous plant!

If you have questions, email: support [at] botanicalls [dot] com. (You can find the older Botanicalls Twitter DIY directions here.)