Lucas A – Eco Intent
Marimo Moss Garden
Summary
Marimo Moss balls are some of the easiest live plants to take care of. They are also small and cute. I intend to make at least one Marimo garden to create a connection to nature similar to a garden, but much smaller and easier to maintain. I hope this provides an easy escape from an ever growing technical/mechanical world. HOWEVER, because this is relatively simple, I also intend on completely automating it’s care with an Arduino completely contradicting it’s purpose. This hopefully won’t work, and will create a gross contrast between the constant destruction of nature we allow and support everyday in our culture. Many people disregard nature and it’s presence often with a do first think second attitude, and with this continuum we will destroy our environment. Hopefully through this project I can maintain something beautiful for a short period of time, but then, unless becoming directly involved, it will fail.
Execution
Create the garden, and automate it with an Arduino following this guide for Marimo Moss Ball Care. Document it’s life over time and neglect to make necessary changes until it is possibly too late. This will represent the environment as a whole.
2 thoughts on “Lucas A – Eco Intent”
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Concept
I like your concept Marimo Moss balls are pretty cute and are very easy to take care of. Another thing you could think of using instead of the moss ball is this: https://www.amazon.com/EcoSphere-Closed-Aquatic-Ecosystem-Sphere/dp/B005IZOB5M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492004514&sr=8-1&keywords=shrimp+ecosystem
These are shrimp in a similar ecosphere to the Marimo balls and are usually easy to take care of. Mine, unfortunately, all died which was apparently unusual. There was too much algae growing in the ecosphere for them to keep up and survive using an Arduino to monitor the temperature of the ecosphere may have saved the little guys. I also had to keep them in the sun for a certain amount of time each day which was somewhat hard to keep track of. Just another idea for you to explore!
Your idea is totally doable and should be fun!
Technical
I agree that you should defiantly use some kind of microcontroller to monitor the little moss ball.
Audience
Your audience for this project would be anyone interested in owning their own little moss ball. I’d probably be interested in your collective information myself.
Creativity
I think this is creative and interesting. You’re dealing with a living thing and using technology to take care of it. It reminds me somewhat of the issues brought up in the Photosynthesis robot project I presented last week.
I absolutely love this idea. I wanted to create something very similar, in the sense of having a plant or scene within a small clear casing, and Moss balls did cross my mind. Not to mention the twist by adding Arduino, which kind of detracts from the idea of taking care of a pet yourself. I’m really interested in seeing how you manage this, especially that it’s something I’d like to try myself (minus the Arduino bit). It has a good mix of simplicity and technicality, which I think you can pull off. Best of luck!