Plants [bot.] are our symbiotic saviors, as they bind CO2 and produce oxygen due to photosynthesis. Yet, they are also sensitive to environmental- and climate changes and have developed defense mechanisms we could learn from. They would teach us what's good for them and for us, if we just could listen to their messages! Guess what - we can! Plants, from algae, flowers, crops, up to trees, can contactless harvest and transport electrical energy and data due to electron entanglement. Forgo billions of toxic lithium battery button cells and electromagnetic waves' smog. Let's join the “smart-by-nature" communication network that has surrounded us since the dawn of life.
What am I going to build to solve this problem? How is it different from existing solutions? Why is it useful?Molecules interact because they are entangled via the binding forces of electrons. The "Brownian motion" creates patterns depending on temperature, consistency of gases (like the air), physical and (bio-) chemical reactions. A simple electrode can "mirror" electrical charges that come along with those patterns, in this case, emitted from a plant that reacts to the environment. Amplified, filtered, and sampled, a machine learning algorithm can be trained with those patterns to classify, predict, and alert environmental changes. Plants are multiple organic environ-"mental" (microfluidic) sensors! As they build communities (e.g. like a forest or a corn field ) they also create a natural communication network where information propagates from one plant to another. Wildfires, flooding, landslides, pests, CO2 impact etc. can be much quicker predicted, prevented, detected, and defended. The mirror electrode comes as a sticker or pedant, attached to the plant. It even gets powered by the plant, so it doesn't require a battery! The QuickFeather MCU acts as a smart base station and communicates with networks for further data processing. A novel A.I. resembles nerve- and brain cells, rather than CNNs. The MCU can remotely control hundreds of such battery-free smart electrodes!
The QuickFeather MCU toggles an output pin with <500kHz (PWM). A level shifter filters the rectangle into a sine wave, which emits a weak alternating (non magnetic!) electric field via a recycled polymer electrode (<10mW). Plants in reach are influenced and couple the field with the attached mirror electrodes. Attached circuitry harvestest DC from the coupling, while the plant modulates the electric field with a pattern that represents its state (similar like an EEG for brain waves). The mirror electrode has a bifilar structure to reject electromagnetic influence. A simple circuit with shielded PGA's and instrumentation amplifier (INA) receives the plant's bio-modulation. A digitizer logic digitally modulates the alternating electric field with the plant's state values and a unique identifier. A Schmitt Trigger creates the necessary system clock from the field's frequency. Therefore, all mirror circuits are collision free synchronized with the QuickFeather MCU, each of them only consumes <10uA. A trans-impedance detector, connected to the field emitting polymer electrode, demodulates the data and feeds it into the QuickFeather’s "Virtual Plant Assistant" (VPA) A.I. Depending on the SensiML's classification the VPA logs reports in blockchain structures or messages first responders or environmental interest groups. To scan a larger array of plants (e.g. crops) the QuickFeather base station can be attached to a drone (or farm machines).
List of the hardware and software used to build this.HW: Recycled flexible Polymer as field emitter & mirror electrode, "Smart Dust" electron entangled energy harvester (EPIC Semiconductors), PIC 1822 (Microchip), impedance amplifier and driver OPs (TI), CoilCraft coupled inductor (1:50 flyback transformer) with driver circuit. Solar recharged QuickFeather MCU.
SW: MicroPython, C.
About myselfI'm a serial entrepreneur and inventor (150+ patents). Expertise in electron entanglement, energy harvesting, A.I. 3.0, and biomedical engineering. Passion for flexible and printable electronics. Fully equipped electronic laboratory.The Project
Plants[bot.] are our best allies to fight climate change (we can’t survive without them anyway, as they feed us and our livestock)!
Plants consume CO₂ from the air and use the carbon for their growth and provide the oxygen to us to breathe. Therefore we should take good care of them!
Like every evolved society, plants are well organized and use an invisible communication network that provides profound information about environmental changes (like soil- and water quality, weather conditions, the sex life of bees, attacking bugs and parasite warnings, housing opportunities for birds and maybe even sweepstakes to win a sunny place for the offspring).
While it is relatively simple to hack into such conversations (see Neuroscientist Greg Gage’s TED => https://youtu.be/pvBlSFVmoaw), it needs sophisticated Artificial Intelligence to classify the right conclusions out of bio-symbolic languages. The QuickFeather MCU & SensiML seems to be the right tool for that. The sensing circuits come disguised as an artificial leaf that entangles contactlessly with a plant to “spy” on the patterns of biochemical processes as the result of environmental influences. This “SmartLeaf '' also harvests energy from- and with no harm for the plant (always a good sign of responsibility not to bring more toxic lithium battery cells into burden mother nature).
Therefore, our SmartLeaf needs an energy harvester and active electrodes (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258903804_Advances_in_Modern_Capacitive_ECG_Systems_for_Continuous_Cardiovascular_Monitoring)
shielded and filtered into an instrumentation amplifier, and a Kirchhoff impedance modulator. The latter is a simple sneaky tool for wireless communication with the remote QuickFeather without contributing to the already “pests of microwaves” (just got a ‘thank you’ letter from the bee queen). Electron entanglement works over distance (just ask the quantum guys), but unlike quantum entanglement, it can transport energy and data from and over a plant’s surface. Here is a block schematic of the principle:
The QuickFeather’s FPGA (or subroutine) creates a frequency (<500kHz) on an output pin that is connected to an electrode via an impedance (Q). The electrode consists of recycled plastic mixed with carbon to be conductive. That’s not only a good step into flexible printable hybrid electronics but also a nice way for responsible and profitable recycling (we should turn recycling into a social game e.g. by using packages as game controllers and redeem our winning points at the recycler container). The electrode emits an alternating electric field that entangles with the plant in reach (the older ones among us called this “capacitive coupling”). The plant will mirror the electrical charges and get fully influenced. The surface of our artificial SmartLeaf is also influenced and turns the charges into DC to operate battery-free (Lithium is rare AND toxic).
Photosynthesis provides the energy for the plant to do their life-saving job. It absorbs CO₂ from the air, takes the carbon for its growth and releases the oxygen for us for free. Why would anybody dare to sabotage this? Wouldn’t that be stupid? Oops! We have been doing this for decades, right? The greenhouse gases filter sunlight and warm up the Earth. The plants suffer from bad air and sour rain… until we eventually disappear. No worries, nature will heal itself!
While this circuit is available as a single chip for a few cents, I decided to use discrete parts for better understanding. One could even spare the PIC (that digitizes the signals and add an identifier) by connecting the Mod input of Q1 to the output of U7 and “kirchhoffing” (send) the analog signal to the QuickFeather for further processing.
The electrochemical processes inside the plants are slow enough to pass a 10 Hz low pass filter in our leaf circuit. The Kirchhoff modulator in our leaf modulates an impedance (K) with the received and amplified pattern which creates a voltage change on the QuickFeather’s impedance (Q) that we connect into the SensiML - first for training, then for classification. Be assured the plant will tell us everything that concerns: temperature, quality of air, soil, and water, efficiency of CO₂ conversion, changes in the environment, etc.
The QuickFeather can create an interpreted classified information package for a digital twin. For now we just visualize the data on a laptop.
So what’s this all about? The idea was not to put a sensor on a plant, yet turn the plant into a sensor!
Another important aspect is that we could engage in biofeedback to stimulate the plant to grow faster or larger, to bind more carbon, and this way to release more oxygen.
The applied electric field that propagates around and influences the plant could contain patterns that attract bees and repel bad bugs (like 5G does with our cities' birds). The QuickFeather guys could turn the SmartLeaf’s electronics into a single chip (I’m always open for a talk) - always a good stock market story to have an advanced technology that is battery free and self-powered and communicates without radio waves.
The base element is the plant (100) that is influenced by an alternating electric field of about 500 kHz (101). The field is generated by means of soft- or hardware from a controller (200). The frequency passes a mixer (201) which contains a level shifter and means to modulate or demodulate data from and to the MCU via the alternating electric field (101). The mixer (201) is connected to a first electrode (202) that is positioned near the plant (100). The electrode emits an alternating electric field (101) that induces the plant and a second electrode (301) as a first component of an electronic circuit (300) that is explained later in detail. The alternating electric field (101) can contain specific patterns that can attract or repel insects or microorganisms. Further, the alternating electric field (101) can stimulate the function or the growth of the plant, bind carbon and release oxygen, and/or its seeds. The electrodes (202) and (301) can consist of (preferably recycled) conductive polymers or rubber in a preferably flexible flat form. The electronic circuitry (300) can convert electrical power and clock signals from the alternating electric field (101) and can separate and process bioelectric signals that the plant (100) modulates into the alternating electric field (101) similar to an EEG. These signals reflect the plant’s environmental state, caused by climate and/or photosynthesis. The electronic circuitry (300) has means to change the load which back propagates over the plant and the electrode (202) to be received by at least one of the plant (100) or the mixer (201). Further, the mixer (201) sends the received pattern as data to the MCU (200) for further processing. The MCU has means to connect with computers, electronic devices or networks, preferably wirelessly like Wi-Fi, BLE, 5G, GPS, etc. The interface is shown symbolic as (203). The electronic circuitry (300) is also able to sense the appearance of insects or microorganisms in reach of the alternating electric field (101) and can decide between an beneficial organism and vermin. In a special embodiment, bees (103) can be attracted and bugs (103) can be repelled.
If we amplify the shield buffers in our SmartLeaf, they could scatter back to the plant (a vegetable bio-feedback). In an extended version, the QuickFeather MCU could modulate the electric field in a way that the plant can optimize its electrochemical processes with the result to create more efficient offspring! A plant can have hundreds of thousands of seeds that can grow into hundreds of thousands of plants which also have hundreds of thousands of seeds each. This could be a softer way into gene manipulation (‘the way parents give their toddlers iPads.... that turn them into idiots’ - - - says Einstein). Environ-”mental” “PowerPlants” could be a new player in the markets of assisted living, smart cities, and agritech. Let’s not forget our oceans, some of them still contain water! We could tune algae and plankton more selectively with QuickFeather MCUs and SensiML. For those who think that it sounds too good to be true, please watch the clips:
https://youtu.be/Ny2sc2Drqvo Harvesting Energy from Plants with recycled Plastic Foils
https://youtu.be/51uDXTr_5jI How a QuickFeather MCU listens to Plants
https://youtu.be/dW-_upilaVI QuickFeather entangles with Lucy
https://youtu.be/q8pLLYzYBBoOur "SmartLeaf" examines Lucy and QuickFeather listens (and brings electric Snacks)
Everything you see is real, no fakes!
Working with SensiML was a tough experiment. It encapsulates tensorflow (like many others, ML5, Azure, Edge Impulse, EdgeML, etc.). The optimization of the FPGA compiler in the QuickFeather also is changing original code ideas (unfortunately not always for the better). As more and more edge AI MCUs pop up, handy ML training tools will be key. Needless to say that the project could be controlled by voice commands and the QuickFeather could be attached to a tree’s branch to check wind- speed and direction..
Workers in forestry, agritech, food production, etc could wear the system and use it temporarily to assess climatic influences. The SmartLeaf and the QuickFeather could be one unit. In this way, it might also get us to Hackster.io- and Quick- and other semiconductor guys out there to provide such interesting parts and tools.
I greet my fellow hackers, stay safe!
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