You’ve heard the myth that singing to your plants helps them grow better. Unless your singing sounds like a caterpillar chewing, your plant probably isn’t reacting. But serenading your plant could help its growth anyway, since you’re probably paying pretty good attention to your plant’s soil moisture and leaf health while you sing to it.
Sing to your plant to automatically water it
Because plants need our love — and water
Because plants need our love — and water
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
This mini sprinkler system waters your plant when you sing. So now you can concentrate on your plant’s health and happiness while the watering happens automatically. Plus, you get to perfect your cover of pajama-clad cover of “That’s What I Like.”
Ready to build your own sound-sensitive sprinkler system? Directions below.
Materials
- 3V Aquarium Pump like this one
- Korg CA40 Chromatic Tuner or similarly powered tuner with LED signal lights
- Particle Photon
- Transistor
- Flexible plastic tubing
- Small clip (to attach tubing to plant)
- Small breadboard
- 5 M-M jumper wires
- Wire stripper
- Soldering iron + solder
- Heat shrink or electrical tape
- Screwdriver of appropriate size for taking apart your tune
How to build it
Take apart your tuner and check it out. On the Korg CA40, there is a solder pad near the center LED that we can take advantage of. This solder pad is part of the trace that brings current to the LED. By hooking it up to the Photon, we should be able to detect and record when the tuner is trying to turn on that light — in other words, when we are singing in tune.
Photo by Christine Sunu
Photo by Christine Sunu
Cut 3 M-M jumper wires in half and strip the exposed ends. Solder the stripped end of one wire to the exposed solder pad. Wrap the exposed end of another wire around the negative terminal of the battery case and solder it, and do the same with another wire on the positive terminal.
Photo by Christine Sunu
Now it’s time to check out your aquarium pump. It’s possible that the ends of the wires here are already the right size to fit into your breadboard, but if you want a more snug or secure connection, this is a good time to extend each wire by soldering on a cut jumper wire. Wrap the exposed soldered spot with electrical tape or slide on some heat shrink to keep these spots from touching each other. Put some plastic tubing on the outflow valve of your aquarium pump and test it to make sure it works.
Photo by Christine Sunu
Photo by Christine Sunu
Set up your Photon and flash this code to your device...
Photo by Christine Sunu
...And wire it all together! Wiring image below.
Drop the aquarium pump into some water (making sure that no exposed wires go in the water) and clip one end of the aquarium tubing to a sturdy part of your plant or to your plant’s pot.
Sing to your plant!
Photo by Christine Sunu
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