Member Avatar for Lisa Hoover

You have to give Japan-based IT company KAYAC Co., Ltd. points for creativity. Many IT-centric businesses have a tech worker bee or marketing guru maintain the company blog, but KAYAC handed the keyboard over to a Sweetheart Hoya. In case you're not a botanist, that's a rare and beautiful succulent plant native to Thailand and Indo China.

Special sensors gather environmental data from the plant, named Midori-san, which records information such as humidity, temperature, and nearby human activity. The information is fed into a "plant interface system" that translates it into pre-written Japanese sentences and the occasional pun, which then appears on the company blog.

"Midori-san started blogging about a week ago. So far, the plant’s highly structured posts summarize the day’s weather, temperature and lighting conditions, describe its overall physical condition, tell how much light it received via the user-activated lamp (see below), and explain how much fun the day was. Each post also includes a self-portrait photo and a plant-themed pun (in Japanese), which Midori-san likely did not write."

The plant is housed at the bowls Donburi Cafe under its own fluorescent light. Internet visitors can activate the lamp remotely via a special widget, and will be rewarded with a real-time view of Midori-san and an appreciative note of thanks.

Though the idea of a blogging houseplant may seem a bit corny, the company says they're hoping to encourage people to look at the environment in a new way. I'm sure extra PR for the IT company doesn't hurt either.

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As noted, experiments that turn plant signals into readable posts are a clever way to make sensors and environmental data approachable; 's quip about job security is a fair joke, but these projects are primarily outreach/demonstration pieces rather than replacements for human writers.

If someone wanted to build a similar demo, start with reliable, well-supported sensors: a combined temp/humidity/pressure module such as the BME280 and a digital ambient‑light (lux) sensor like the BH1750 are small, inexpensive, and easy to integrate. (learn.adafruit.com) For moisture sensing, prefer capacitive or purpose-built soil modules rather than bare resistive probes — continuous powering and frequent readings accelerate electrode corrosion, so power the probe only when sampling and calibrate to your potting mix. (learn.sparkfun.com) For networking and local processing, low‑cost Wi‑Fi modules in the ESP family (ESP32/ESP8266) are a convenient choice. (espressif.com)

Design the data pipeline as: read → filter/calibrate → map to a short templated sentence → log → publish. Use a lightweight flow/automation engine to glue pieces together (Node‑RED is purpose-built for wiring sensors, transformations and APIs). (nodered.org) Publish via a platform API (WordPress and similar systems expose REST endpoints for programmatic post creation). (developer.wordpress.org)

A tiny example template (start simple, then iterate):

if (soil_pct < 30) -> "Thirsty today."
else if (lux > 3000) -> "Bright and happy."
else -> "Calm and steady."

Finally, protect the plant and the system: throttle any public actuator (lamps, sprays), require authenticated control, log interaction history, and document device behavior. Follow basic IoT security and documentation practices as a minimum. (nist.gov) Start with one camera + one sensor and local logging, refine thresholds and cadence, then add posting and public controls once the hardware is stable.

Member Avatar for Techwriter10

Very cool, Lisa, but let's hope this isn't a trend or we will be out of business soon. :-)

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