StartupTunes

Green Wheel

It was the 1980s when NASA developed a concept of growing edible plants and herbs inside the spacecrafts, in zero- gravity environment. This concept of theirs never saw the light of the day, since they never started developing it in a consumer object. To describe it, it was imagined as a rotating ring- looking device with an inside part, which can act as the base for the growing plants.

Thirty years later, the Italian design company DesignLibero took the concept, in order to revive it and to develop a consumer product. And that’s how Green Wheel came about.

In details, the product contains a base part and a ring/wheel attached to the base.
The base or the case, which is static, consists of a water tank, a water pump which controls the water flow and of course an electromotor, which moves the mechanism up.

The more interesting part is the moving ring. It is perforated and consisted of many holes, which can act as tiny vases or tiny pots, in which the plants can grow. There are many of them, which means different kinds and quite a lot of plans can be grown inside the inner part of the ring.
The tiny vases are in constant contact with the water tank, since the ring makes a 360 degrees rotation in one hour.

There’s a tube- shaped LED light with a full spectre in the middle of the ring that allows every single plant to receive the necessary light. The light colour, the temperature and the intensity would be adjustable and controlled remotely by a smartphone application. This way, the users would be informed about issues, such as low water supply etc.

Parameters such as the amount and colour temperature of the light would be controlled wirelessly via a smartphone/tablet app, which would also alert users when the system was running low on water.

Thumbs up for this idea and fingers crossed for turning this indoor gardening concept into a product.