Parrot's Flower Power: Monitors plants using your iPhone

Don't have a green thumb? Parrot, perhaps best known for its AR.Drone quadricopter, has a new product on the way called Flower Power that could help you keep yours plants happy and helping by means of your iPhone or other iOS device.

Announced at CES, the stake-style sensor gets inserted into the soil next to a plant and monitors things like moisture, sunlight, temperature and fertilizer content. This information is sent over Bluetooth Smart to a cloud-based server, then piped to your device so you're informed when the plant needs water, food or moving so as to achieve the appropriate lighting conditions. The recommendations are pulled from a database after you tell the app what type of plant you have it monitoring. The app is capable of tracking multiple plants and sensors in the same environment, indoors or out.

Parrot hasn't said how much the Flower Power sensors will cost, but intends to ship the horticulture hardware sometime in 2013.