At the moment there are only just over 4,000 species of plants available for identification on the app, so there’s plenty of work still to be done. The app pulls data from a social network which gathers pictures and info on plants, and then works that in with their. It’s called PlantNet, and it’s kind of like Shazam for plants. Available for both Android phones and iPhones, PlantNet can currently help users identify around 4,100 different plant species, which may not sound like a lot when you consider there are over 400,000 species worldwide, but it is a constantly-evolving venture. Download microsoft project 2016 for mac. PlantNet is an app that can identify the plant you’re looking at based on a photo you take of it, making it the “Shazam” for plants. While image-matching is extremely difficult, considerably more than audio-matching like Shazam does, it’s made easier when it’s at least just limited to one, albeit immense, category: plants.
Garden Compass promises to give would-be horticulturalists expert insight into growing plants on the go.
Apps can now do for plants what Shazam does for music, but we are still a long way from that most precious commodity: truth. 'What's that plant?' Is a common question for the home gardener. EyeSpy is an app that is is part of an ongoing attempt to involve ordinary people in citizen science projects. Similar to Shazam - an app that allows you to identify music from audio recordings - the EyeSpy app allows you to identify plants, animals, cars, clothing and most other things from your photos by harnessing image recognition technology. Whether you’re exploring the great outdoors.
Perhaps taking a leaf out of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk playbook, Garden Compass lets you snap plants on your phone and upload them to a database where one of a team of experts will get back to you with the right information.
From there you can strike up a conversation with whichever expert gets in touch. While this might seem like a human-powered Let Me Google That For You at a distance, part of the appeal is that the people you’ll be speaking to are certified Master Gardeners.
Founder and COO of Garden Compass George Williams, who wrote his university dissertation on yellow magnolias (of all things) sees the platform as a way for people a bit younger than your average Chelsea Flower Show regular to get some pro tips on keeping that Japanese peace lily growing in their flat.
“There are many people in their twenties and older who like having a garden to relax in but wouldn’t call themselves gardeners,” said Williams. “Gardening sometimes suffers from a nerdy image, so we’re trying to make it simple and easy for people to make the most of their outdoor spaces, without having to become gardening geeks.”
Garden Compass has been available on iOS for a while now and earlier this week an Android version sprouted in Google Play. We’ve had some quick hands on time with the Android version, sending a request for tips on how to keep an off the shelf chilli plant going. Experts promise to get back to you within 24 hours of your photo being uploaded; we’re 188th in the queue at the time of writing.
Shazam For Plants Android
With over 25,000 downloads of the iOS app since the start of this year, the Garden Compass team have got their work cut out for them. There’s currently a team of 50 experts worldwide, 11 of which are based in the UK.
Garden Compass could act as a nice companion app for things like Parrot’s Flower Power H2O sensor. While devices like this do the job of watering plants for you when you’re out and about, Garden Compass’s experts will be able to fill you in on things like whether a north or south aspect is best for your plants and be able to identify pests on sight.
Shazam App For Plants
Right now Garden Compass works on a freemium model; you’ll get your first three plants photo identified for free after which you’ll need to sign up for a premium subscription, which costs either £4/month or £36 for a year.
Hopefully the panel of experts will be able to steer us in the right direction; a couple of summers ago, we got hold of a Flower Power from Parrot. Unfortunately for the office plant Alan, no matter how much we watered him, it never seemed to be enough. Here’s what he looks like now.
To celebrate National Gardening Week, Garden Compass is also running a competition that’ll see users who share a snap of their favourite plant to an expert with #GreatestGardens in the comment box entered into a competition to win a trip of their choice to one botanical garden in either Brazil, India, Singapore, South Africa or the US.
Shazam For Plants Apps
You can download Garden Compass for iOS and Android now.