Hydroponic Growers – Manage Your Garden From Anywhere

A Brooklyn-based company funded by Kickstarter, Bitponics, unveiled their new cloud-based hydroponic garden managing system at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York on Wednesday. The system is a group of sensors (water temperature, air temperature, humidity, light levels and pH, with an optional EC, electrical conductivity, sensor) that connect to a Wi-Fi base station with two timers. These sensors feed data to a cloud-accessible dashboard.

While this is all great for monitoring your hydroponic garden, According to TechCrunch the system is supposed to be able to control these aspects of the garden from anywhere. The system does appear to be able to control the timers from a remote location, but I’ve seen no mention of connecting controllers to, for example, add water, ph adjusters, nutrients or adjust ventilation (unless it’s hooked to one of the timers). I’d love to see a demo of this system, to determine whether it is in fact a garden controller or a garden monitor.

And, of course, I can’t talk about hydroponics without stating the facts that most hydroponic gardens are not organic, and that organic gardens are really the way to go for top-quality product.

All that said, this seems to be a great product for monitoring a hydroponic garden, and if it can indeed control the garden without simply telling you to rush home and add plain water to your reservoir, it is absolutely fantastic. Did I mention that the projected (the units are not yet available, even for pre-order) price tag of this system is only $500? Compare this against the Colorado Grow Box I recently wrote about, which is a self-contained, fully-automated plant chamber, with a price tag of almost $5,000 for the “basic analog unit.”