Touch Your Philodendron and Control Your Computer

By placing a wire in your plant's soil, even an artificial plant, and using a program called Botanicus Interactus you can control your computer.

Botanicus Interactus is built upon capacitive touch sensing, the same principle underlying the touchscreens used in most smartphones. But instead of sensing electrical signals at a single frequency like the typical touchscreen, this technology uses Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS) technique to monitor capacitive signals across a broad range of frequencies. This makes it possible to detect not only if the plant is being touched, but to estimate where and how the plant is being touched.

Which sounds fine until you have to water it, trim it, or your cat discovers her new interactive toy.