Welcome to the Floranium Project!
Plants are living things. They have a metabolism, adapt to their environment, develop defense mechanisms against enemies and respond to influences of various kinds. Only we can not observe this with our eyes without aids.
In the Floranium project, instruments and procedures are being developed to measure, visualize, evaluate and, eventually, understand plant signals. Please also checkout our German Floranium Website
! NEW ! FLORANION Magic Cone II
The Floranion Magic Cone II is the youngest addition to the Floranium family. With its ground spike, it is simply plugged into the dirt next to the plant, the measuring cable attached to a sheet, connected to the power supply with the USB cable and ready for use.
The housing is made of polylactide, colloquially referred to as polylactic acids or PLA and manufactured by the FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) method.
Polylactide plastics are biocompatible. This means they have no negative impact on life in your environment. We want to make a contribution to nature conservation.
Because of the FDM process of the stacking of transparent PLAs, the Floranion MagicCone II shines particularly intensive and brilliant. In twilight or at night, the light unfolds its full magic!
The Floranion Magic Cone II is not suitable for connecting to a PC. For this option, we recommend the Floranion Discovery.
People say: “Magic Cone II is almost like a peoples magnet. This object catches the interest of many. What we get asked all the time: What do the colors mean? In my opinion, its the emotional expression of a plant” Peter S.
What exactly is a Floranion?
A Floranion is a measuring instrument similar to an ECG (Electrocardiogram), EEG (Electroencephalograph) or GSR (Galvanic Skin Response Meter), but used to measure and visualize voltages and impedance to plants rather than to humans.
This allows plants to observe how they act and react. Either intuitively in the form of a color changing light, or as a signal-trace on the screen of a computer.
FLORANIUM is in the Elektronik Praxis Magazin (German Language only)
The Floranion Discovery
In addition to the luminous color play as a plant signal indicator, the Floranion Discovery can be connected to a PC via USB. Using a standard terminal program like Tera-Term, gtkTerm or Putty, plant measurement data can be recorded and visualized either with the open Source data-set viewing and plotting tool KST or with any other data viewing and plotting tool (Excel, Libre Office Calc etc.).
The Floranion Discovery uses a more powerful 32-bit ARM microcontroller and has a 16-bit ADC. Thus, the measurement resolution of the signal of a plant is much higher than that of the Floranion MagicCone.
To observe signals from plants with a Floranion, it is not necessary to set up an expensive, laborious laboratory. However, it is useful to lock the plant in a cage to shield from interfering signals.
For Experimenters:
The Floranion Shield
If you have Ideas and enjoy to do your own Experiments, you can build your Floranion Version yourself and connect all sorts of other devices that could be controlled by a plant. Try a music synthesizer, RGB room lighting, a motor control or whatever. Also, a TFT display can be connected, with which the signal of the plant can be displayed directly. The software is open source. There are no limits to your imagination!
Please Note: To run the Floranion Shield, basic knowledge of C/C++ programming and electronic circuits are mandatory!
The Floranium Shield was published in the Elektor Magazine 5/2018
Whether indoor plants, tomatoes, lettuce, the grass in the garden or the herbs on the kitchen window … one thing is for sure: watching plants with a Floranion is really exciting and a whole lot of fun!
