Thursday 24 May 2012

Solve wasted heat and office greenery in one

From How to Geek:

I can’t exactly recall when the idea came to me, but at some point I started wanting to use the heat from a computer as a way to warm the soil and help with germination/growth.  I became hooked on the idea of using computer heat as a way to control the soil temperature of some sort of living plant life.

The result is a rather clever design that uses acrylic cylinders filled with soil to draw heat up to to the planter in the top of the case. Hit up the link below for a very detailed run down of the project including results from various temperature tests.

green computing - literally!Most office workers have desktop PCs churning away all day every day (well, throughout the working week, anyway) which brings office temperatures to the high seventies by mid-afternoon.

Equally, most office workers (particularly solicitors it seems) like to be surrounded by greenery, plants and other nick-nacks better suited to a greenhouse. Personally, I’ve never seen the attraction with indoor plants; I couldn’t even get jazzed by growing cacti.

So, what could be better than a computer-mounted mini garden which uses heat generated from the PC to enhance growth?  Better than a Tupperware box full of seeds left to germinate on the office window sill, right?

And please: no comments on health and safety. If water leaks through causing the circuit to short and the thing goes up in flames, so be it. It’s a good metaphor for what’s happening to the planet if nothing else.

4 comments:

  1. That looks suspiciously like a pot growing experiment to me. I can imagine some student very hopefully trying that and being very disappointed.

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  2. I think you're probably right. :-\

    Still, I'm happy to press my ageing desktop into service as a heat source and see what happens. ;-)

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    1. That's very clever ... are you feeling OK?

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    2. Save for ruining a perfectly good desktop PC, I'm fine and dandy, thanks! :p

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