Mindy: a WiFi Connected IoT Planter With Ambient Lighting Launches on Kickstarter

  CUPERTINO, CA - 09/14/2016 (PRESS RELEASE JET)

Too busy to water your house plants or worried about what to do when you go on vacation? Mindy, a new WiFi connected planter, waters your plant for you and lets you check in on it remotely via computer or smart phone.

Atriot announced today that it is launching a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to manufacture and market Mindy, a WiFi connected planter designed to monitor and water an indoor plant. The company is seeking to raise $96,000 to complete development and to manufacture their IoT device. Backers will receive special discount pricing and will be first to receive the intelligent planter.

Under development since early 2015, the Mindy planter features a sleek cubical design with room for a 6-inch potted plant, a large reservoir of water and programmable LED lighting in the base. The planter houses multiple sensors and a microcomputer programmed to communicate wirelessly over the Internet and to control the planter's built-in lighting and watering system.

Indoor plants often die due to over or under-watering and consumer surveys suggest that a device to automatically water houseplants is one of the most desired applications of the Internet of Things. With this in mind, Mindy was designed to monitor a plant and to precisely deliver the water needed, when needed. With a 2.5-liter reservoir, the planter can water a plant for up to ten weeks while the caregiver is on vacation or busy with other things.

The programmable RGB lighting and WiFi connectivity add another dimension to this smart planter. For example, the planter can flash its lights and issue a text or e-mail alert when the water reservoir needs refilled. Using the companion apps or Web site, consumers can choose the color of the lights and can program the lights to turn on or off on a schedule or display scheduled alerts such as reminders to take daily medications.

“With Mindy’s open API, the planter becomes an information appliance able to connect with other smart home devices, track data over the Internet and respond with changes in lighting that reflect the changing data,” stated Jay Myers, Atriot’s CEO.

By integrating with Amazon Alexa, the company plans to provide voice control of the Mindy planter. And with the planned IFTTT integration, Mindy will offer expanded functions using the lights to display alerts for calendar events or triggered events such as package deliveries and even real-time tracking displays where the color of the lights correspond to changes in data such as weather conditions or stock prices.

To back the Mindy crowdfunding campaign, visit http://www.mindyplanter.com. The campaign will run through October 26th.

Atriot, based in Cupertino California, is a tech startup that aims to create and bring to market intelligent IoT devices to simplify and enrich our lives.