Well Dusty,

I used my regular email address when I signed up on google to view
newsgroups and to post to them. You could try it and see if it works.
If it doesn't, then google has mangled the address to frustrate email
address harvesters. If you want to send email, perhaps the most
reliable way is to do so through my website.

As for the tray, the plants and pots would not site in it, as it would
be at least 15 cm deep. Instead, it would be used to create humidity
as necessary, and perhaps as a source of irrigation water.

There is new technology from Intel, called motes, so bleeding edge
Intel doesn't sell it directly. Instead, you have to go through a
vendor in California to get it. Ecologists have been field testing it
to collect microclimate and soil data with a minimum of disturbance to
the site being studied. (This is in addition to a wide variety of
studies in several industries, including medicine, to test its utility
and reliability.) My thought was to use motes to connect the "growth
chamber" to a computer, which would monitor everything that can be
monitoring using this kind of technology, to use the light to provide
additional heat when needed (by controlling air flow around it) as well
as light when ambient light is inadequate, and to irrigate when the
sensor says the medium is too dry, etc. Alas, it will take some time
to get it developed and tested. I hope one day to have a database with
ideal growing condition data for every species/variety of houseplant
imaginable, so that the computer would know how to grow plants that
even the owner doesn't know how to grow, and give the owner a warning
should he or she be foolish enough to try to grow a heat loving plant
with a cold loving plant, or a plant that needs near 100% humidity with
a plant that would rot at a relative humidity greater than 50%. But
that will be a long time coming. Once developed, though, it would free
us to take holidays without worrying about whether or not our plants
are being properly cared for. It would also allow those, like my
sisters and niece, who have very black thumbs, almost able to kill
plastic plants ;-), to have healthy houseplants, protected even from
the owner.

Cheers,

Ted


R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making