Edyn Smart Garden System Launches Kickstarter Campaign

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 5, 2014) - Edyn, a new gardening system that allows you to create, interact with and nurture your garden like never before, announced today that it is launching a Kickstarter campaign on June 5, 2014. The Edyn Smart Garden System consists of a Garden Sensor and a Water Valve, both of which will be available to fund on Kickstarter at various incentive levels, including a "buy one, give one" where backers will donate a Garden Sensor to a school garden in the U.S. through Slow Food USA. The Garden Sensor inserts into your soil, reading nutrient levels, moisture, sunlight, and other external factors that affect the overall health of your plants. The Edyn App displays this data as a real-time snapshot of your garden, and pushes alerts and suggestions to maximize plant health. The Kickstarter campaign's goal is to raise $100,000 to fund the first round of manufacturing as well as to build the sensor's machine learning database.

Founded by soil scientist Jason Aramburu and designed in conjunction with designer and sustainability advocate, Yves Behar and his design firm fuseproject, the Edyn Smart Garden System is the product of many years of research in farming communities in Panama and Kenya. Aramburu started a sustainable fertilizer company that worked primarily with small farmers in these areas, where he witnessed many of the challenges they faced, and wondered if technology and sensors could help us all become better growers and, ultimately, better conservationists. His thoughts became action when he teamed up with Behar and fuseproject in 2013 to create what became Edyn.

"Edyn was created with the belief that understanding our environment is the first step towards conserving it," said Aramburu. "It represents our commitment to helping gardeners of all levels have the best success possible in not only growing plants but creating a thriving garden and being part of a community of like-minded growers. We're using hardware and data to deliver actionable insights that'll help those gardeners achieve their goals."

Edyn Garden System Gives You a Rich Picture of Your Garden

By measuring and quantifying environmental data, Edyn enables users to more efficiently manage our precious natural resources like water, soil and organic fertilizer. The Edyn Garden Sensor constantly monitors its environment and learns exactly what your plants need. It is compatible with vegetable, fruit, herbal, decorative and medicinal plants. The Edyn Water Valve delivers the right amount of water to your plants without waste. Together, these tools help you improve your garden and your environment. About the design, Behar notes, "Inserting into the earth like a shovel or stake, the Edyn Garden Sensor industrial design creates a visual bridge between nature and technology that seems to blossom out of the earth."

Edyn Garden Sensor features:

• Solar-powered (in addition to a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery when not in full sun)
• Wi-Fi enabled and connects to the cloud
• Water and fertilizer resistant
• Measures ambient temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil electrical conductivity
• Edyn iOS app:
  • Reports soil nutrition, moisture, light and temperature in a clear snapshot of your garden, now and over time
  • Provides guidance on how to maximize plant health

Edyn Water Valve features:

• Solar-powered (in addition to a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery when not in full sun)
• Wi-Fi enabled and connects to the cloud
• Fits standard Garden Hose Thread (GHT 1 1/16th" Fittings)
• Compatible with most drip irrigation, soaker hose or garden hose-fed sprinklers
• Requires household water pressure
• Compatible with most washing machine fittings (may require adapter)
• Automatically waters plants only when they need it, based on data from the Edyn Garden Sensor
• Edyn iOS app allows manual control of the Water Valve remotely

Edyn is Designed to Fit Easily into Any Gardener -- or Aspiring Gardener's -- Lifestyle

The Edyn Garden Sensor is a sophisticated computer housed in a durable, hermetically sealed plastic casing to withstand the elements. It contains a database with thousands of plant varieties and soil conditions and its machine-learning algorithm analyzes live sensor data on the device and in the cloud. The Garden Sensor and Water Valve are both solar powered but also use a lithium-polymer battery should the solar reserves run low.

"The exciting part is -- this is only the beginning," said Behar. "At fuseproject, we understand what it means to be an entrepreneur and our design venture practice supports start-ups during the many stages of building a company and brand. We are now working with Jason's team to crowdfund, and we will continue to help Edyn grow. If we can develop a way to let the earth speak to us and tell us what it needs, the possibilities are limitless."

Edyn is Coming

The Edyn Garden Sensor and Water Valve will be available to fund on Edyn's Kickstarter campaign page. For the earliest backers, the Edyn Garden Sensor is available for pre-order starting at $99 and the Edyn Garden Sensor and Water Valve are both available for $159. Additional incentives will be available from the Kickstarter campaign page.

For more information, please visit www.edyn.com and follow @EdynGarden on Twitter and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edyngarden.