When you think of Parrot, chances are you are thinking about the A.R. Drone or its recently launched Bebop drone. But as its CEO Henri Seydoux told me in an interview earlier today, drones are only one area of interest for the company. Parrot is interested in everything that connects to the smartphone and these days, that includes your house plants. The company today unveiled two new gadgets for keeping your plants in shape at CES: the Parrot Pot and the H2O, an updated version of its current Flower Power product.
As the name implies, the Pot is a robotic plant pot that holds two liters of water and two liters of soil. The H2O is essentially the same tool, but instead of holding your water in a large pot, you plug a water bottle into it. Every 15 minutes, the Pot and H2O measure the soil moisture, fertilizer and ambient temperature and light. Based on this data, the gadgets can then water your plants.
While they can work autonomously, the Pot and H2O can also connect to your smartphone and transmit their data to Parrot’s cloud platform for analysis. With this, you can then monitor your plants using Parrot’s Flower Power smartphone and tablet apps.
As Seydoux told me, the Pot holds enough water to keep your plant alive for at least three weeks (or much longer if it’s a cactus). Parrot has a database of about 7,000 plants, so chances are your Anthurium Pink Champion will still be alive after your one-month jaunt across Europe. If you stay any longer and the water starts to run out, the gadgets will switch to conservation mode and only use the smallest amount of water necessary to keep your plant alive.
Sadly, Seydoux didn’t disclose when exactly the H2O and Pot will be available and what they will cost. He did note, however, that these are consumer products and that the current Flower Power device — which is basically the H2O without the watering function — costs $59. If I had to guess, I’d say the H2O will retail for at least $20 more than the current version and the pot will cost at least $200.
While the Pot and H2O may seem like a bit of a departure from Parrot’s other products, Seydoux told me that the company is very interested in agriculture in general — both on the small and large scale. For farms, that means drones like the sensFly eXom, which comes with built-in thermal camera and ultrasonic sensors to help you monitor your fields; and at home, that’s now the Pot and H2O.
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