garden.geek.nz

The original solar lights in the sky are so magnificent and wondrous to behold, but the solar lights you can buy are generally uninspired and ugly. How to capture and transmit beauty along with the light? I’m utterly charmed by Wendy Legro’s graduation project for Design Academy Eindhoven, Morning Glory:

The sun is our natural light source. Our homes are filled with artificial light replacing it, undeliberately disrupting our biological clock.

This product works autonomously with a light sensor. During the day, mechanical flowers are closed enabling sunlight to come in. When sun sets, the flowers open and start to emit light. In this way, awareness for a beautiful phenomenon will be brought back.

Want to see something crazy? Check out time-lapsed video of a real morning glory vine and how it lassos on to supports.

Love this Ignite video of Kati London, co-creator of Botanicalls, a device that will let you know when your plant needs watering via Twitter. The Botanicalls system and applications use networked open source hardware and software to allow plants to communicate with people on people’s terms – using the telephone, text messages or twitter.

• If you’re in Wellington this weekend, check out the linux.conf.au 2010 Open Day of talks, hackfest, makers space and little blu kids area at at Town Hall Saturday 23 January 2010 from 11am to 2pm.