Move over garden gnomes. GardenSpace, a new smart watering-camera-deterrent device for your garden on Kickstarter, is looking to stake a claim in garden beds to help home food growers improve their bounty (hat tip to Digital Trends).
You “plant” this solar-powered stationary device in your garden, connect it to a hose and the accompanying app to tell it what you are growing. GardenSpace has a 360 degree camera and thermal sensors to determine how much water each plant needs. The swiveling head and spout rotate and angle waterings to deliver the precise amounts of water required to keep everything in your garden healthy. The “smart” camera can even detect a pest such as a rodent and squirt water to shoo it away.
The people behind GardenSpace say they created the device to help aspiring gardeners yield better crops by taking the guesswork out of watering. Ideally, GardenSpace will reduce water consumption by eliminating over watering, while keeping plants more healthy through proper hydration.
What we can’t tell from the video is how much area one GardenSpace can handle, and how many you’d need to cover larger garden areas.
Regardless, helping people grow their own food is an admirable goal, and one that many companies are getting into. Elsewhere on Kickstarter, the creator of Roomba has Tertill, a mobile robot that goes through your garden to whack down weeds.
One trend we’ve seen up close and personal here at the Spoon is moving the whole garden process indoors. Both AVA Byte and Verdical were in the Startup Showcase at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit (Verdical even won the top prize). Each company creates self-contained indoor gardening systems that basically do all of the growing work for you.
With the campaign just a hundred or so dollars shy of its $25,000 goal, things are looking good for the GardenSpace. And anything that helps people grow their own food is a good thing (especially if it can replace those gnomes).
