Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We’ve seen the boys and girls in blue disturb the peace on occasion, but this is just downright bizarre. It’s bruited that the city of Plano, Texas has complained to the FCC about a powerful new police communications system that’s being testing in Cedar Hill, DeSoto and Duncanville. The signals have the ability to reach some 30 miles away, and they’re driving the radio-controlled sprinklers that Plano uses at parks and road medians absolutely crazy. The whole ordeal has made for some pretty interesting conversation amongst those involved, with one Tim Smith, managing director of the Southwest Regional Communications Center, asserting: “Which comes first: watering plants or protecting police and fire?” If anyone catches grown men fighting about this, do us a favor and send in the video.

[Thanks, Travis]

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Filed under: Household, Wireless

Frustrated with that exorbitantly high water bill stemming from all the H20 wastefully spewed out from that non-intelligent sprinkler system? Enter the Cyber-Rain XCI, which gives owners wireless control of up to eight watering zones. After hooking up the controller(s) and plugging a wireless access point into your PC via USB, users can look forward to the solution automatically tweaking their irrigation system based on weather conditions, seasons, etc. It’ll even log water savings and chuck out a graph to prove its value. C’mon, you know it’s worth $349 to make your thumb look way greener than it actually is (and save some water, too).

[Via Unplggd]

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