The Brief

Described as the Louis CK of the plant world, we have given a Venus Fly Trap plant a voice by using capacitive sensors to allow it to communicate via Twitter. The idea of a tweeting Venus Fly Trap began as a series of experiments putting capacitive sensors into the soil of different plants. We discovered when you put capacitive sensors into the soil of a Venus Fly Trap we could detect if and when it has caught a fly. We then hooked it up to twitter so that it could communicate its thoughts and feelings to its followers, making it the first Venus Fly Trap with a personality. 5 developers worked on the Venus Fly Trap project over 3 months with a $10,000 budget. The technology is currently ready to be applied to a brand's campaign strategy and released.

We positioned capacitive touch sensors into the soil of a Venus Fly Trap pot plant. These sensors detect variances in electricity and can tell when the Venus Fly Trap has moved. Based on this, we added sensors that detect light, temperature, water and other touch sensors to measure when a change in each of these is experienced by the plant. When it catches a fly, or water is added to its soil, or the sun rises and sets - these sensors will pick up on it. We researched to find out what nutrients, water and light added to the Venus Fly Trap and were thus able to make a judgement on how the plant is feeling at any given time. Using an arduino we connected all of these sensors in a special protective conductive coil to a server which is running with a twitter code that tells it when to tweet. We prepared a pre-defined set of 20-30 tweets per condition. So if the lights go down, a tweet about it going dark will be randomly picked and published on the Venus Fly Trap's twitter feed. We have been the sole investor and controls the technology stack. The next stage of development is to attach the venus fly trap to a brand that would like to use it as an educational tool. It could also be used by a communication network wanting to do something around phones or 3G and 4G network systems.

We expect to be able to attach the tweeting Venus Fly Trap to a brand campaign looking for an unusual spokesperson. With a personality as unique as the Venus Fly Trap's, it could become a major part of a social media strategy for a communication brand campaign.