Apparently, in the middle of the Twentieth Century, the plantern was born. The what? It is a lamp with a planter in the base. It was made such that you could turn on the lamp via touch of the lamp shade or by touching the leaves of the plant in the planter. A capacitive touch plate is placed in the planter bottom, providing the touch conduction to the lamp (likely it would help to have a plant that likes a moist soil).
We couldn’t find any current lamps for sale, but apparently they are still manufactured and they come up on online auction sites and other places.
This would make a great maker project. Note that isolation of the mains power from the switch circuitry would be crucial to avoid electric shock hazards. Perhaps a lower voltage LED (NeoPixel) lamp circuit. And most microcontrollers can do capacitive touch.
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