Hello everyone from GardenWeb community!

I am currently building a smartphone app based on 'The Secret Life of Plants' (the book or film, anyone?), a 1973 bestseller. Having read the book and watched the film myself, I was very interested in the experiments mentioned (Backster Effect, etc.). Research on the internet showed that many people have attempted to recreate the experiments by themselves. Products inspired by the book were invented, to help fans try out some experiments from the book themselves (eg. Floranium).

I find the movement to be quite interesting, there are people worldwide tinkering with science, robotics and plants to discover their own truths from the book, which I think is wonderful. Unfortunately, all these information are scattered and difficult to find. A concept I want to produce is a digital platform for the international fanbase of the title to find encouragement (for those who have not) to carry out their own experiments, and a sharing platform for those who have. It will be a great follow-up after the book and the film for the fans and it will bring ourselves closer to the hands-on, intriguing experiments mentioned. The problem is that many of us don't know how to even start.

I will like to bring in both experts and amateurs, to build a community with shared interest, and bring up-to-date news of any new discoveries or inventions. For those who have done the experiments, you can share to the rest of the community journaling how you did it, tutorials, notes, your discoveries. It will be motivating and educational for others who are interested but lost.

We can have a little fun with plants, science, and robotics. By ourselves or with family, children, or in school. Who knows what will come out of it? Using smartphone applications and website database, we can have beautiful experiment journals and discussions all based on The Secret Life of Plants. The phone app have multiple optional plug-ins installed (for galvanometric readings, weather, sound output, etc.) and these can be created by the community, for the community. The idea is for it to be procedurally-generated, and users are free to install plug-ins depending on their own level of participation. One clearer visual of how sophisticated the phone app could be is when we use an installed augmented reality plug-in, we can point our phone cameras at a certain plant in our house and see its temperature, moisture, galvanometric reading graph progress, as data layered above one plant. Move the camera to another plant, and the data changes accordingly. I want to allow technology to help us see things we cannot see within nature through our own eyes.

Now, as this is still in progress, I would like to hear your say on this concept. Do you have any feedback and comments? I would definitely love to hear them and take them on board :)