this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation
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My hobbies mostly sit at the intersection of plants and electronics/programming esp. microcontrollers and managing fleets of them.
Im obsessed with making things grow and relatively simple types of automation can make a huge difference to a plant. A trickle of water applied at the right frequency can turn an unforgiving sun-scorched balcony into a garden.
Im currently working on prototypes of a device destined for mass production. It’s a power unit for a temporary immersion bioreactor used in plant tissue culture. The benefit of my approach is that the power unit can work with almost any growing container and the unit doesn’t need any power hookups.
The unit is powered by the plant grow lights and my Mark I prototype proved it can harvest enough energy to perform any published temporary immersion protocol I have seen.
I think this qualifies as ‘weird’ because it usually requires explanation to justify the ‘why’ of this project. Plant tissue culture is not a common interest.
But if you want to plant a trillion trees and ‘save the planet’, we will need to develop some new propagation methods. This is my little attempt to address some of that need.
What's your favourite plant?
Right now it’s Boquila trifoliolata, a plant involved in a recent scientific publication that gets some attention for making a very bold claim. Can plants ‘see’?
This study below describes an experiment that seems to suggest they can. Who knows what the real answer will be, but this is science at it’s purest. You can scoff at the author’s conclusions but you cannot ignore their baffling observations.
open access link to article
I expected something like "yukka" or "rubber plant" not "alien plant with eyes".
Thank you for the article though!
After going through the paper, it's not just "alien plant with eyes", but rather "alien mimic plant with eyes"! This plant "sees" other plants around (above?) itself and changes the shape of its own leaves to match those of the other plant.
I wonder if the effect can be chained, and if so, how long the chain could be? I'm imagining an alien mimic plant with eyes mimicking an alien mimic plant with eyes mimicking an alien mimic plant with eyes mimicking the first alien mimic plant with eyes.
That's an amazing idea. Using excess energy from plant lights? Ingenious! Have you found any issues with the system that you are in the process of fixing?
Well the energy recovered from plant lights is actually really pathetic when using standard panels. Had to switch to amorphous panels which capture just enough energy to keep the battery sustainably charged day after day under typical loads.
Overall, the system reclaims just enough energy to run the air pumps for up to about 15 minutes total daily use. That’s plenty to achieve the goal of giving the plants a short soak in the nutrient medium which just drains away when the pump stops. It also facilitates filtered fresh air exchange and aeration of the liquid medium which is vital.
The next stage will be to make the system more thrifty with power (MOSFETs instead of relays and other tweaks to reduce current leakage when the microcontroller is asleep).
I want to add the ability to inject CO2 and monitor levels before I consider the product full-featured. Recent studies are showing that can result in huge gains in growth rates. Based on my estimates, a 16g CO2 cartridge (think paintball or whipped cream) can keep a typical 3-liter culture vessel at 4000ppm (10x over atmosphere) for a year, even if you completely flush with fresh air twice daily.
Thank you for your question and interest in my latest obsession.