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#1
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Design student working on garden product idea
Hi my name is Evan and I am a design student trying to come up with a product to help beginner to expert gardeners with the process of growing plants, fruits in a garden or greenhouse. It would be best to explain my idea by giving you an example of how you could use it.
The user opens up the box to find the Hand held device with a color LCD touch screen, seeds for several different plants, earphones and location markers with embedded RFID chips. The handheld device would also have a docking station to connect to a computer. The idea is that when the user starts planting fruits, flowers, ect. They would then place a RFID in the ground right with the seed.(An RFID is a chip that stores information you enter, and then can retrieve the information later wirelessly.) The user would input what plant he just put the RFID chip next to. Now when the user ever comes back to that plant he waves his device over the plant and up pops a history of the plant, how to take care of it, the history of the users interaction with that plant, ect. The device would also be able to play mp3 files, which would allow the user to hook up to the internet and download instructional lessons, different methods of planting, care, ect. The device could even give visual references for the user. This idea is just not limited to outdoor use. You could use the system for greenhouses, or even inside the house with “smart pots.” Maybe you have smart pots that have RFID integrated chips. The main thing I want to concentrate on is building this idea into an entire system for home gardening. I would really appreciate any answers to the following questions, and any comments about my idea What is your biggest problem with gardening and the gardening process? What is the hardest thing to remember when gardening? Do you document plants as they grow? How do you remember what plants you planted? What are the most common things you need to remember when taking care of a garden, ie nutrition, type of fertilizer, ect. What are the most important things you need to do before starting to plant seeds for your garden? Are there different ways you need to treat plants that you grow outside then in a greenhouse? Thanks for your time, this will really help me out. |
#2
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Design student working on garden product idea
I think beginner gardeners would not really benefit much from your very good
idea other than to claim that they have the latest thing. I have a large garden and a large greenhouse. My biggest problem is locating a specific plant. Outdoor tags can get lost (carried off by curious birds or other animals) or disintegrate. Even indoor tags can disintegrate or become illegible. My greenhouse is filled with multiple plants of 895 different orchids so locating 1 individual can take a lot of time. Orchids are frequently repotted so an integrated RFID really doesn't make much sense there. But one that can be wired to the pot or plant and transferred to another would help tremendously. I keep track of the orchids on MS Access. Programming an RFID from Access would be a big time saver. All the other data on the plants is in Access so I think a wireless connection on the handheld device would prove more beneficial than just a docking device. My outdoor gardens have a wide variety of plants scattered in many different beds. Again I use Access to keep track of which plants are located where along with any other info I want to keep on them. I've used several different programs to map the beds. I haven't decided yet on the one I like best for this purpose. The vegetable garden is the only one where I sow seeds directly. It's fairly simple and straight forward. I keep a diagram for several years to remind me of the rotation or crops. Otherwise I don't keep detailed records other than when and where the seed was purchased and how well it germinated and produced. Generally I know what I planted where by looking at the plants. If you can extend your idea to pollination records, an RFID attached to a pod or capsule would be a tremendous aid in record keeping in any field. Many orchid capsules can take more than a year to mature. You can imagine the problems that can happen to tags in that time. An RFID embedded in the agar of an orchid flask would help immeasurably in ease of record keeping and flask location there. If you can extend this to inventory management I think you'll have a real winner. Gary "spirk" wrote in message ... Hi my name is Evan and I am a design student trying to come up with a product to help beginner to expert gardeners with the process of growing plants, fruits in a garden or greenhouse. It would be best to explain my idea by giving you an example of how you could use it. The user opens up the box to find the Hand held device with a color LCD touch screen, seeds for several different plants, earphones and location markers with embedded RFID chips. The handheld device would also have a docking station to connect to a computer. The idea is that when the user starts planting fruits, flowers, ect. They would then place a RFID in the ground right with the seed.(An RFID is a chip that stores information you enter, and then can retrieve the information later wirelessly.) The user would input what plant he just put the RFID chip next to. Now when the user ever comes back to that plant he waves his device over the plant and up pops a history of the plant, how to take care of it, the history of the users interaction with that plant, ect. The device would also be able to play mp3 files, which would allow the user to hook up to the internet and download instructional lessons, different methods of planting, care, ect. The device could even give visual references for the user. This idea is just not limited to outdoor use. You could use the system for greenhouses, or even inside the house with "smart pots." Maybe you have smart pots that have RFID integrated chips. The main thing I want to concentrate on is building this idea into an entire system for home gardening. I would really appreciate any answers to the following questions, and any comments about my idea What is your biggest problem with gardening and the gardening process? What is the hardest thing to remember when gardening? Do you document plants as they grow? How do you remember what plants you planted? What are the most common things you need to remember when taking care of a garden, ie nutrition, type of fertilizer, ect. What are the most important things you need to do before starting to plant seeds for your garden? Are there different ways you need to treat plants that you grow outside then in a greenhouse? Thanks for your time, this will really help me out. -- spirk |
#3
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Dear Gary,
Thank you very much for the great reply. I really appreciate your help. I had one quick question for you. I live in the United States and I am not what ms access is? Again thank you for taking the time to reply. You really had some good ideas. Best Regards, Evan |
#4
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Design student working on garden product idea
I live in the US also. MS Access is the database program that is part of
Microsoft Office Pro also available as an independent program. It's a very popular database program although there are others that are cheaper and also popular. Good luck on your program. Gary "spirk" wrote in message ... Dear Gary, Thank you very much for the great reply. I really appreciate your help. I had one quick question for you. I live in the United States and I am not what ms access is? Again thank you for taking the time to reply. You really had some good ideas. Best Regards, Evan -- spirk |
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