How can we make plants accessible and

interactive?
Anthony Wong

ICS - won0808@school.ics.edu.hk

Abstract—If plants are so widely used in offices, households, and plant directly instead of the soil. The design of the product
many other public areas, there must be a way of making it more was aimed for the general population and in common areas,
interactive and colorful. The objective for this project is to explore instead of people with extreme conditions. Based on the
new ways of using plants as music and ultimately create an known benefits of plants in both private and social sectors, It
envisioned product. Plants are full of life and have raw nature,
can be commercialized and updated to condition to what
while technology is a tool that allows us to manipulate
information and data. There has to be a method to complete both people want in different settings. Ethically, plants raise no
elements to maximize efficiency by societal or personal means. concern as they are regarded as helpful and even a necessity
Some previous research and projects have shown that plants and to humans. The last goal of this project is to combine plants
music can have and that plants are shown to have emotions based and machines to create a healing impact not only in the lives
on human interaction. This research shows that it is possible to of children, elderly, and the disabled, but also those in the
collect data from plants in different formats. The data will be used working class or even CEOs of companies. Optimally, it
from the arduino software and a unique product will be built that should strike a balance between development, monetization,
can play music. By using the technology that can use the and accessibility of use.
electrical signals and emotions in plants, and transfer these
signals as sound. The idea is that music and sounds are II. METHODOLOGY
something that is played everywhere, in malls, when people are at
home, so by integrating different elements, the plan is to program
and create this software allowing plants to play music. The initial
test plant used was Plectranthus 'Cerveza N Lime'. The findings
of this project include the wide variety of plants and different
acoustic elements that can serve different purposes and the
incentive of commercialization. The further development involves
working with peers, programming, trouble and adding more
creative elements to the design.

Keywords—plants, arduino, music, technology, sound

I. INTRODUCTION
A study done on young adults have shown to relieve stress
levels in both physiological and psychological ways in
young adults based on various metrics[1]. Such green spaces
are necessary as well, which are shown to be beneficial for
child development[2]. A program done in china which has a
singing plant has shown that it can help children with autism
to help them engage in collaborative play [3]. Another
project in Malaysia created a system that used arduino to
monitor plants, and it gave feedback based on the plant’s
current state. The state was determined through temperature,
LDR, and humidity[4]. Music has been perceived as
emotionally expressive based on the listener’s perception.
Music will be an important integration to the module, as
understanding that different types of music can express
different ranges of emotions can help people in various
circumstances. Since it is still a developing field as it is not
properly mapped, there are possibility of new discovery[5].
Pioneering work done by in the United States used a visual
tactile interaction with plants to determine the change in
emotional through a capacitive sensor. EEG and questionaire
data suggested a positive affect of the multimodal project[6].
Figure 1: Original setup
The software programming was done within the
arduino IDE. The library CapacitiveSensor was used for
the ultrasonic sensor and plant sensor, Mozziguts for
sound processing, and Oscill to set the range for the
sound waves. The control rate for Mozzi was set to the
default of 64. The value for the capacitive sensor was
multiplied by 5, and the reading returned was 10. These
values can be altered depending on the amount of sounds
played during a duration or change in volume. Then, the
audio samples from the plant would be continuously
updated with updateAudio and updateControl, and the
sound would be created in the audiohook function. For
the ultrasonic sensor to be activated, the trigpin was set
to output and echopin to input.

What will be different in the following project is that it will The goal was to build a commercialized product, so
be connected using a clip with a capacitive sensor to the there was focus on affordability. The product was based
 on an Arduino uno. This would be the main processing
unit for the product. A HC SR04 ultrasonic sensor was
used to detect if the human is within a certain distance to
avoid possible interference. It was set to 25 cm. A
crocodile clip was placed between the plant and the
module to get direct information from it. Another wire
ran from there to the na5wk unit. It then operated with a
LM386 amplifier module. This relayed and processed
the incoming capacitive sensor signal.
Figure 3: Module with the pine plant
Afterwards, it was connected to a M386 amplifier
module. This would synthesize the sound and increase
the volume. Finally, the LM836 and na5wk were
connected to the speaker. The speaker created the output
of sound. The plant initially used was Plectranthus
'Cerveza'n Lime', a plant known for being insect
repellant and having a soothing smell. The lines
represented jumper wires which are used to connect the
different sensors and modules. For the block diagram,
see (figure 1).
Figure 2: Block diagram of sensor
To run the program, attach the clip to the plant. Then,
attach the ultrasonic sensor somewhere near the plant.
Run the program, and the first thing that was observed
was alien sounding frequencies. The trials have been
done with different plants, and they seem to have slightly
different frequencies. The first plant, Cerveza'n Lime',
had an average sounding frequency. Compared to the
Pine Plant, it seemed to have a much more vibrant and
obvious change in sound to it, and the sounds will be
documented through video. The module was clipped to
the Plumeria tree, and the sound was much lower in tone
and less sensitive to change during touch. With these
different plant species, it was determined that they still
have a response to human touch.
III. CONCLUSION
The results concluded from the project meant that it was
possible to play sounds by utilizing signals from the
plants, which fulfilled the goal of bringing machinery into
the typical environment to bring sound to both the public
and private environment. The resulting observations were
alternating frequencies and buzzing, which was a
beginning step toward achieving the goal of playing
music.
Figure 4: Module with Plumeria Tree
Trying it on different plants would yield slightly
different sounds, so this was a major success. What gave
it a larger commercialization value was that it could not
only be used in house plants, they can be used along the
parks or the street as well. Also, it accomplished the goal
of being affordable, with the total cost of it around $50.
Also, the plants Overall, they proved to be very simplistic
to use. This is because you just need to attach the clip to
the plant and run the prebuilt project. Still, the main
improvement that could be made is to play musical
harmonies and more complex melodies. This might be
made possible if there is an implementation of an SD
Card Module to it. Also, more time will be put into
investigating and taking data from trees, because their
response was slightly different compared to the
household plants. A larger sample size would help
increase the accessibility of the module on a global scale,
and may play a role in observation and preservation of
plant species. Another further step that I could use was to
take better uses of energy sources, like solar power and
pv systems. Emotional mapping of humans can also
prove to be a better step in making it more accessible,
specializing in various places like hospitals, parks,
construction sites, or offices. A better design could make
it more friendly to children and act as toys for those with
special needs, like fidgety material for children with
ADHD[7].
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in young adults: A randomized crossover study. Journal of
physiological anthropology.

[3] Tang, T. Y., Wang, R. Y., You, Y., Huang, L. Z., & Chen, C. P.
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