If your friends and family know you as Johnny Black-thumb, you might not be the best person to grow plants. They aren’t the easiest things to keep alive, after all — but the Lua Smart Planter might be able to help you grow flowers to compete with your neighbor’s prize-winning yard. Why? Because the last thing you want to do is let your pet die.
You read that right. Lua is a smart planter designed to turn your plant into a pet, or so their slogan goes. The smart planter is loaded with sensors that let it trigger up to 15 different animations to depict various emotions. These sensors measure everything from the soil’s moisture, temperature, and light exposure to the movement of the pot to help you keep your plant alive. It’s like an at-home medical center for things that feed on photosynthesis.
Lua conveys the needs of the plant through the onboard LED screen. Just scan the QR code with the Lua app and you’re ready to get started. The screen will display a panting face if your plant needs water, a face with chattering teeth if the plant is too cold, or a sweating face if the plant is too hot.
There are other faces, too, like a squinting face for too much light exposure and a sick face for too much water. There’s also a vampire face. If this one shows up, just move your plant into the sunlight after you’ve finished laughing. Other faces are included, too, like the happy face you should strive for, and a grumpy face that is a random animation. The Mu Design team behind Lua wants to make the Grumpy Face emotion an indicator of rain, but only if their stretch goals are met.
Lua even has a motion sensor that lets it follow motion with its eyes. It’s definitely cute, and you can control the size of the face on the pot through the Lua app.
Right now, you can fund the development of Lua through an Indiegogo campaign. At the time of writing, Lua was at 43% funding — about $14.5 thousand out of a target goal of roughly $34 thousand. The 99 early bird support tiers have already been purchased, but the next level of a single Lua planter for $112 is still available.
The Lua has a target ship date of December 2019, but keep in mind that funding a project is not a guarantee of delivery. As adorable as this planter is, there are no promises that it will reach funding through this campaign. All you can do is hope the Lua’s crowdfunding campaign results in a happy face.
