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Show HN: Known – Semi-smart plant labels (knownplants.com)

12 points by commondream ↗ HN
A little while back I posted a little experiment we ran linking plants to the web in the garden. Well we got a lot of positive feedback on that idea, and decided to launch https://www.knownplants.com. It's a web application paired with fairly inexpensive semi-smart NFC enabled labels that help gardeners keep up with their plants.

What do you think?

11 comments

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greendude29
Cool idea. I'm guessing most of the value to your users is in the content in your app since the hardware can be replaced by bookmarks for those have >10 or so plants.

For me, I'd more excited about well organized plant content than the NFC hardware. Is there a preview of the content itself? That's where I imagine most of the "features" will be.

commondream
Not quite yet, but it’s in progress. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
sv123
That's pretty clever and the price seems reasonable. On the product page there is mention of 12 months free of Known Plus, but no mention of the price after that. Understanding you are trying to make money but having a subscription for my plants in the dirt outside feels a little rough.
commondream
Yeah, we need to get something up about the pricing model. There will be three tiers. Basic is free will let you just label your plants and comes with every label. Plus adds the journal feature, the care database, and will let you share management of your garden for $10 or so per year, and there will be a premium plan for $25 or so per year that will let you make your garden public.
zipping1549
So the label is actually just a normal NFC tag and can be replaced with cheap sticker tag?
commondream
It’s a pre-programmed to connect with our service NFC tag that we wrapped up in plastic to make it a little more resistant to the weather and a lot easier to just put in your yard. You tap it with your phone and it walks you through the whole process of recording your plants.
tylerritchie
it's cool! (though i tried to sign in to poke around and hit a wall since there's no tag associated with the account)

that said, the tags are kinda steep.

the tags are pre-paying for the webapp in general (vs only knownplus) but i'd prefer tags be a convenient shortcut instead of a cost of entry. that is, figure out whatever the appropriate price is for the web app and charge that (this seems like it'd lend itself well to freemium, 2 plants for free, up to n $12/yr, up to n $??/yr).

i have 43 pots of indoor plants and many of those have two to four distinct species in them. so that'd be $135 to add a single tag to each pot vs ~$15? to buy a bunch of NFC stickers

the tags also mean it's a $25 experiment to see if i even like the product (i might not really be the target market, but soil/light/water ranges and requirements being a tap away is pretty cool). i've currently got a bunch of different colored glass blobs i use to help remind me of watering targets but i'll usually do a quick search when it comes time to repot and mix up new potting soil mixes

commondream
Thanks for the great feedback!

We’ll have standalone billing with no labels required in the next little while. We’re also planning to add a feature that will let you connect one label to multiple plants for that multiple plants in one location case.

tylerritchie
that's great, i look forward to checking it out!
Gys
There is no webapp yet?

As far as I know Apple does not support the NFC web api: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_NFC_API...

(This means no browser on iOS can support this, although for the EU this might change in the future)

commondream
Good question! It uses a web app. NFC reading is open on iOS, so when you tap our labels it opens up the page for the label.