Garden, Meet Edyn: How the ‘Internet of Things’ Has Moved Outside
A snazzy new start-up, Edyn, joins the ranks of food-focused Silicon Valley hardware.
Garden, Meet Edyn: How the ‘Internet of Things’ Has Moved Outside
A snazzy new start-up, Edyn, joins the ranks of food-focused Silicon Valley hardware.
Edyn crept out of stealth mode today, launching a Kickstarter campaign (goal: $100,000) and revealing their modern-design solar powered garden sensors and water valves. The idea is that using Bluetooth and a house’s WiFi, the devices will feed data straight from the soil to your phone in order to monitor tomatoes, basil or whatever else is in the garden. Sensors test the soil. For the water valve, if the crops are getting a little dry, tap a few buttons on the iPhone from work and give them a drink, or the software does so automatically.
The target demo of Edyn: Busy folks that have an interest in fresh produce but can’t always get to their garden. “A lot of people are passionate about food but simply don’t have the time,” says CEO Jason Aramburu.
“The Internet of Things” has become a catchall term to encompass anything with a sensor and a connection. But the definition of “thing” has almost no limits. A chair could tell you when its joints are dangerously weak, a toilet brush when the bacterial levels are too high.
Farmers with big plots of land have used sensors for some time but as costs of circuitry and wireless communication dropped, so too has the cost of bringing those tools to the more casual gardener. Not to mention the sensors built by Do-It-Yourselfers with Arduino microcontrollers, have opened up a new world of garden management.
One factor that fuels a lot of the tech-and-garden bloom is that while Silicon Valley (and nearby areas) is full of engineers, it’s also full of foodies. Those foodies want new ways to get fresh fruits and veggies and since they don’t have room for farmland, they look for ways to get the most out of tight living quarters. So you get Palo Alto-based companies like Click and Grow making “NASA-inspired” herb gardens that fit on a kitchen counter. When the company asked the Kickstarter community for $75,000 to get off the ground, people ended up donating over $625,000.
For most pieces of technology the equation is simple: First comes function, and then comes form. Take thermostats. People had dials or keypads on the wall that looked roughly the same for decades. But then a few years ago came Nest, which made them controllable from a smartphone. Not only that, but founder Tony Fadell’s had spent half a decade designing Apple’s iPod and injected that focus on aesthetic into Nest’s thermostat and smoke detector. The company showed quick success and Google bought the company in January for the tidy sum of $3.2 billion.
Garden sensors are no exception to this trend. Parrot, often known for its AR.Drones, and Koubachi (neither located in the Bay Area) make slick garden sensor competitors to Edyn. But Edyn is bringing its own firepower. Yves Behar, the chief creative officer for Jawbone and often considered a leading voice in the field of design, has invested in the company and has been the driving force behind the product’s look and feel.
It’s not hard to see how the smooth curves and warm colors want to stand apart from decades of clumsy buttons. And for urban foodies who might have a little more disposable income, the $99 price tag ($149 for the sensor and water valve combo) could justify avoiding the exposed wiring, two-toned screens or clunky software of many traditional garden sensors.
In fact, the only power supply for the sensor is the small solar panel that sits on top of the unit. Otherwise the devices are controlled straight from an app. And just like an Apple product, the company plans to ship the devices in stylish and elaborate packaging — all to make the unwrapping that much more exciting. In the tradition of Silicon Valley hype: Edyn may be the next step of evolution. Could the Singularity start in in your garden?
Follow us
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].by Caleb Garling, Modern Farmer
June 5, 2014
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
SubmitNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.