Hasta La Gadget!

While running between booths at Computex earlier this month, we were momentarily distracted by these vegetable boxes (maybe it was lunch time as well). As it turned out, this product was launched by Taiwan-based Home Lohas around the same time as when the expo started. The company pitches its hydroponic gardening appliance — so the vegetables rely on nutritious water instead of soil — as a hassle-free, low-power solution for growing your own greens, plus it’s apparently the only solution in the market that doesn’t need water circulation. With its full spectrum LED light, air pump and timers, harvest time can apparently be reduced by about 30 percent. It’s simply a matter of filling up the water tank, adding the necessary nutrients and placing the seeded sponge on the tray (the package includes three types of organic fertilizers and some seeds).

The only downside is that this system costs NT$15,800 (about US$530) in Taiwan, and for some reason, it’ll eventually be priced at US$680 in other markets. If that’s too much, then stay tuned for a half-size model that’s due Q4 this year.

Filed under: Household

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Source: Home Lohas (Chinese)

I’ve seen some offbeat projects turn up on Kickstarter over the years, but a project that’s there now called Glowing Plants is one of the strangest. You can probably figure out what the project is about simply from the name. The people behind the project want to create plants that glow to provide natural lighting with no electricity.

That sounds like something right out of Avatar. Exactly how the people are genetically creating glowing plants is rather difficult to describe. All you really need to know is that if you choose to back the project over on Kickstarter, you can get seeds to grow your own glowing plants.

The project was initially seeking to raise only $65,000(USD). With 28 days left to go, the project has blown through its goal, raising over $295,000 to date.

A pledge of $40 or more will get you your own package of glowing plant seeds. The specific plant is an Arabidopsis. A $150 pledge will land you an already growing plant. If at least $400,000 is raised, people who pledge $150 or more will get you a glowing rose as well. If you pledge $250 or more, you can get your own DIY kit allowing you to make any of your plants at home glow.

There are some people who are just don’t know how to take care of plants. Or it might be that you’ve got some special plants in your house that need special care. It’s for reasons like that some designers decided to come up with this device, which allows you to detect the health of your plants.

An entry in the LiteOn Design Awards, The Plant Doctor was conceived by Fan Xu and Du Xubing. The device uses integrated sensors and a microcontroller to detect soil moisture, nutrition content, etc. All of this data can be charted on a transparent display so that you can monitor the health of your plants. It’s also supposed to power itself from the electrolytes in the soil. The device will analyze the soil content and process this information.

While there are similar devices on the market already, the Plant Doctor is still just a concept; but I can already see it being used all over the place, especially when horticulturists are trying to grow and care for rare plants. For the rest of us, there’s always this.

[via Yanko Design]

While they might have different upholstery, most sofas and couches look pretty similar. From time to time, though, you come across something very different. This cactus couch is definitely unusual, because cacti usually don’t make good sitting places.

The Canapé Cactus Couch was part of the Isn’t It Romantic exhibition at MAKK in Köln, Germany. The Paris-based Italian designer Maurizio Galante made up a variety of prickly-printed sofas, couches, and ottomans. But rather than using actual cacti, these succulents are printed on “bio-elastic” fabric.

The exhibition runs until April 21, 2013. If he ever ends up selling them, I’m betting they’d be much more comfortable than actual cacti.

[via designboom]

Humans are wasteful. We throw away so much food without a thought as to others who are not so fortunate. Well, I don’t have an answer for feeding the world, but this concept gadget wants to take your waste and feed plants with it instead.

Designed by Fanny Nilsson, the Re-FEED device takes your leftovers and it turns them into plant food by liquefying them. It pumps this goo directly into your flowerpots and it is all done from your countertop. Not bad. Just drop in your scraps and a blade chops up the mix and it is left to compost. Just add water and you have plant food.

Your plants will be very happy and healthy with this device around. Not sure if I would enjoy compost smell on my counter, but I love the idea here. The Re-Feed’s plastic casing has been treated with an odor absorbing compound for the smell, but who knows how well it would work. Hopefully this will make it into production so that plants can eat our garbage, even indoors.

[via FastCoDesign via Dvice]