Two of my favorite interests — gardening and wireless technology — came together at the Maximum Yield Indoor Gardening Expo in Tacoma, WA April 5 & 6. Some of you may already know that I am an avid home gardener, former partner in a retail hydroponics shop, and editor of the LED Grow Book published last year. While my primary reason for visiting Tacoma was to promote the book, I was delighted to find a range of wireless indoor gardening equipment designed to give small-scale indoor growers some of the same high-tech tools used in commercial greenhouses.
I was delighted, in particular, to see Zigbee- and Wi-Fi-based grow room control systems being offered at the show: Swarm Technologies, LLC Smart Bee controller family and PurGro Electronics’ GroBot Evolution systems. Sun Systems weighed in with their Bluetooth Sun Winch light hangers that provide control over light hanging height from up to 30′ away, while Dynamiq Lighting’s Genesis lighting ballast supports wireless control over grow light timing and intensity.
So the next time you see a hobby garden, don’t just think of it as a mini-tropical oasis… think of it as a hotbed of wireless technology.
Read more in my upcoming August/September Connected World Magazine column: Wireless Tech is Growing in the Greenhouse.
