Project Oasis
Can every plant know exactly when it needs water?
Give every plant a way to say when it is thirsty, from a windowsill pot to a commercial glasshouse.
PrototypeThe problem
Most plants die of watering, not of neglect — too much, too little, at the wrong time. The information needed to get it right already exists in the soil and the forecast. Nobody joins it up, so people water on a schedule and hope.
What we built
Give every plant a way to say when it is thirsty, from a windowsill pot to a commercial glasshouse.
Where it is now
Prototype — sensor bench tests running against a forecast feed. No field trial yet.
Questions it answers
- Can every plant know exactly when it needs water?
Future concepts
Research only. These are not existing features.
Who it's for
Components
Research question
“Can every plant know exactly when it needs water?”
Why this matters
Most plants die of watering, not of neglect — too much, too little, at the wrong time. The information needed to get it right already exists in the soil and the forecast. Nobody joins it up, so people water on a schedule and hope.
Current progress
Prototype — sensor bench tests running against a forecast feed. No field trial yet.
Workflow
Prototype
Building the smallest thing that tests the claim.
How it could work
Problem
A plant needs water at a moment nobody can see.
Current world
A timer, a hosepipe and a guess. Water is used whether it is needed or not.
Quinn Labs idea
Read the soil, read the sky, water the individual plant only when it is actually needed.
Potential future
Growing spaces that spend water per plant rather than per zone.
Research board
Not a schedule
Every failed watering product is a timer with an app. The decision has to be about the plant, not the clock.
Forecast skip
Measure water saved simply by cancelling irrigation before rain. Establish the baseline before building anything clever.
Open questions
How cheap is cheap enough?
A sensor per plant only works if it costs less than the plant. What is the honest floor?
Future possibilities
Research directions only. None of these exist, and some never will.
Questions we're asking
- Can every plant know exactly when it needs water?
- Low-cost capacitive soil sensors that last a season on one cell
- Per-plant watering rather than per-zone irrigation
- Forecast-aware scheduling that skips the watering before rain
Potential collaborators
Related projects
Research
Project Harvest
Turn satellite, weather and soil signals into a short list of what will go wrong in a field next week.
Research
Project Root
Turn soil from an invisible asset into something a grower, a council or a buyer can actually read.
Question
Project Rain
Treat rain falling on a building as a resource with a second use, not a drainage problem.
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Project Seed
Match varieties to the climate a place is heading for, not the one it had.
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Project Bloom
Make it obvious what to plant, and when, so ordinary gardens add up to a corridor.
We prototype possibilities. Not every question has an answer. Every answer begins with a question.
Similar problem in your business?
Tell us what you're trying to solve. We'll say whether it's worth building.
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