Here is another ridiculous project of mine.
I bought a starter hydroponics kit and decided to track the plants’ growth.
The kit holds six plant pods, the set immersed in 2.1 liters of water, with two teaspoons of liquid plant food (to be administered every 2 weeks). Each pod is a simple plastic structure holding an argil substrate with the plant seeds. The substrate sucks the water, the water reaches the seeds, hopefully the seeds grow, a plant appears and its roots will feed by drinking the water with nutrients.
To track the spectacular growth of the plants, I bought a small POE (Power Over Ethernet) Chinese camera. The camera arrived one week too late, but is the perfect small size. It delivers great video, but poor time-lapse captures. The poor time-lapse results are due to the effect of the artificial sun light in the camera sensor. The effect is inoffensive in real time video, but becomes obvious on interval snapshots, because the lights and/or the sensor itself are/is irregular in radiation distribution/capture, hence some strips will appear in the videos.
These plants are growing on an 18 hours cycle, meaning they get 18 hours of artificial sun light and 6 hours of whatever natural light I have in the kitchen.
One of the reasons I embarked on this project was to show my kids how kinetic plants are. They move a lot! I intend to regularly publish 24 hours of plant growth footage, smashed in less than 1 minute.
The stripes on video are annoying, I know. Moreover, the video may feature kids’ hands playing with the plants :), or adults’ hands cutting off leaves for cuisine purposes!