Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

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Bwired
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Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by Bwired »

plant sensor

Wireless sensor
measures sunlight,
soil moisture,
temperature
and fertilizer

Not much extra info yet, looks only bluetooth (parrot of course :-))
of course with Apple App
Could be interesting!

http://www.parrot.com/flower-power/
pot2.jpg
pot2.jpg (63.18 KiB) Viewed 49868 times
jeroen_
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by jeroen_ »

That looks cool indeed, and definitely one of the 'want to have' kind of sensors. Bluetooth means more noise on the 2.4Ghz band though, then again wifi is on 5Ghz for some time already anyway.

For power consumption reduction they appear to use the new Bluetooth 4.0 BLE, they state "Bluetooth Smart Ready Smartphones", thus that is likely it.
And of course for "our" purposes we rather see those things talk to a central box, which should not be too tricky given the right bluetooth stick ;)

Lets see when the thing comes out, how much it costs and how compatible it becomes, should not take too long, it is not like bluetooth is a secret protocol ;)

Btw: a sticky item or wiki with a list of sensors (oregons for temp/hygro), these kind of things, light switches etc, and then the controllers that go with them would start to be very useful....
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by jeroen_ »

(Meh, a double post)

And a bit of google later, Engadget announced it already with more details:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/parr ... nt-sensor/

the official PR blurb mentions:
"Data for each is transferred over Bluetooth Smart (low consumption) to Parrot Cloud, analysed by dedicated software and sent to a compatible Smartphone or tablet."

Oh no, does really every company want to collect stuff in the "cloud" (plugwise and now recently PS4 is also going that route) ?....

There is even a vid:

AshaiRey
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by AshaiRey »

Voor de hobbyisten onder ons is er deze link http://sbolt.home.xs4all.nl/groeneVinger.html
Ondertussen alweer een oudtje trouwens
Bram
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by jeroen_ »

And another Flower/Planet sensor setup, which has quite a few more sensors and does WiFI from their measurement box: BitPonics http://www.bitponics.com/
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by Rutger »

My home automation blog: https://rutg3r.com
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by Rutger »

You can buy this product at the moment.
My home automation blog: https://rutg3r.com
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by wwolkers »

wow, 49 euro's...

That's quite a lot if you ask me.
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by jeroen_ »

Seems there is a Hong Kong sensor being resold a few times. The thing is 433mhz, though if RFXCOM is able to decode is something to find out only by trial and error.... I am soon going to found out as I ordered the distrelec ones (W263 + 4x W235), and as a control point I'll soon have a Parrot one too...

The point of posting this is mostly to point out that even these cheapo HK rebadged items are being sold quite pricy on the market and to make a little feature/comparison; actual 'what the...' will follow when I have them.

The OEM: http://www.ansen.com.hk/productlist.php?id=14 "LCD numeric" model (Ventus W263 base + W235 sensor and other names): "LCD striped" model: Btw the following looks a lot like Oregon Temp sensors:
http://www.inovalley.co.uk/Sensor-for-SM121.htm?pid=162

The Parrot is quite expensive at 45E/65CHF/sensor and thus per plant, I assume the Parrot is a bit more professional, quality wise though and the software will make it quite a bit more useful too.

Next to that feature comparison (parrot vs HK-thingy):
  • * Bluetooth Low Energy vs 433mhz (whatever protocol format they use).
    * BLE - have to be close, 433mhz - maybe RFXCOM picks it up
    * Light sensor: Y, N
    * Soil Temperature: Y, Y
    * Soil Humidity: Y, Y
    * Soil Fertilizer: Y, N
    * Extensive plant library: Y (in app), N (manual has a short list though)
    * Pre-made App: Y, N
    * On-sensor LCD: N, Y
The prime advantage thus of the HK-variant is thus that it might be picked up by RFXCOM, if that is the case one can actually input that data easier into a computer and integrate it into a domotica system; BLE is mostly too short-range to make that useful in a house-hold setting. But, 45/plant is still pricy...

Lets see soon (likely in the next week, or otherwise the week after that due to travel), if we can pick the HK-variant up with RFXCOM.
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by Mangegbg »

Does the cheap one work with rfxcom?
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by Bwired »

No, check the rfxcom devicelist, its not on there.........yet
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by Bastiaan »

Please ask Bert in The Rfxcom forum. Not sure he sees this thread. Although overly busy, he also surprised us with more supported devices last month :)
I would love to replace my expensive Gardena sensors with those HK versions.
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by jeroen_ »

As I had both the Parrot and the el-cheapo ones for a while now, but holidays and not being here to actually play/look at them kept me from actually 'reviewing them', here is a little summary:

Parrot:
+ measures: water level, fertiliser, temperature, sunlight
+ add water and the sensor directly notices this and informs the base, hence sensors in the toys work pretty good
+ In-app database is very extensive (probably the best thing about the app actually)
- The app requires a connection to the Parrot "cloud" to calculate your data - requires internet connectivity (turn it off in your celldata, it does not need to talk to them everywhere you go etc)
+ Can avoid the cloud with for instance: https://github.com/sandeepmistry/node-flower-power
and thus just read it from your Linux box etc. This does mean you don't get to use the nice App though and thus the DB.
(I still have to integrate that into my monitoring system)
- BlueTooth LE (Low Energy) which is not 'real' bluetooth, and is quite short range; hence have to be close to it (~4 meters) to be able to get the readings onto your iThing (or Linux box with BLE)
- with app: need to look at app once in a while or allow it to notify you (and thus suck up battery, and have bluetooth turned on, which I refuse due to security issues with that, hence turning it on once in a while, and thus forgetting about the app)
+ without app, thus using node-flower-power + integration in your system: pretty great as then you get central notifications, no need to turn on bluetooth on your iThing etc.
? I did not test it outside, thus no idea if it would survive snow; I can easily believe it survives rain though.
+ due to Bluetooth LE near unlimited sensors as the address space is very big (only tested one though, will likely get a few more later though)

El-Cheapo:
+ measures: soil temp, air temp, soil humidity
- does not measure: sunlight, fertiliser
- does not work with RFXCom at the moment (I'll contact them about this, should be possible in theory, will send them a few sensors if they want to check it out; I have not been able to see any output from the rfxcom related to it, but did not look too closely)
+ range is great, have the base in the livingroom and it sees the sensors 15m away through concrete walls and an elevator
+ add water and the sensor directly notices this and informs the base, hence sensors in the toys work pretty good
+ sensors work in and outside, even in rain and snow (and we got -14 C and ~50cm of snow here a few weeks ago and they survived)
+ base has watering alarms, which can be deactivated between 22:00 - 07:00 to avoid waking you from sleep.
+ base can be put in 'cycle' mode to see all sensor's measurements (water level
+ base has overview of all sensor's waterlevels
- up to 5 sensors only (we got quite a few more plants than that ;) )
- only 5 humidity levels: dry, sorta wet, kinda wet, wet, very wet (more might be hidden in the device data though)

From putting both devices next to each other the measurements where mostly the same (very small differences). Of course the El-cheapo does not see fertiliser.

The Parrot is effectively also a good UV/sunlight sensor (unlike the Oregons which report little variations), which is a nice thing, as in combo with the node-flower-power you can use this to trigger your lights on/off ;)

Hence, the combination of them is pretty good: you apply the Parrot to a plant for a while to see what makes the plant happy, add an el-cheapo monitor too to compare the results; when you know the water levels that that plant likes and the amount of sunlight etc.

Lady-happyness-factor with these toys: high.

Which is a good thing too ;)
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by jeroen_ »

Got a quick reply from Bert who pointed me at http://www.domoticaforum.eu/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=7749 (Alector Plant Sensor) aka http://www.thermometershop.nl/product/a ... 300/49210/ which is exactly the same thing.

Unfortunately, as per that thread, "the modulation type cannot be received", as such, we are out of luck on integrating that into our systems.
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Re: Parrot Flower Power plant sensor

Post by Bastiaan »

Thanks for the info, very nice to know!

Bastiaan
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