“Vinduino” by Reinier Van der Lee Vineyard (2015)

With California going through its fourth consecutive year of drought, local farmers of even plants with the lowest water needs have been forced to cut back on their water consumption. Vineyard owner Reinier Van der Lee has created the Vinduino, a handheld Arduino device that takes sensor readings from Arduino based irrigation valves and water pressure sensors, demonstrating that he is surely up to the task.

Van der Lee’s goal with Vinduino was to improve upon commercial soil monitoring systems that rely upon only one sensor by instead using three to better understand how water is moving through the soil.

Vinduino demonstrates how Aruduino and the IoT are allowing consumers to not only control and view their data but to demand better accuracy then commercially available. After talking with a grad student that has worked with wearable companies and hearing her commentary on how questionable some of the information gathered by commercial wearables can be, products like the Vinduino demonstrate that the most revolutionary wearable products in the future may be those that allow users to adjust to their own amount of accuracy.