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I would like to measure a plant's electric activity / voltage, I've looked online to find out where to place the electrodes and what type of electrodes to use but they seem to very wildly. Any ideas?

At the moment

  1. I plan on wiring one end of a needle to the stalk and one end to the soil.
  2. The connections from the plant would go to a laptop mic input to record the signal then I would normalize the signal.
  3. I would then process the signal in MATLAB/Octave using FFT.

Any thoughts or videos on connecting the electrodes to the plants or trees?

I did find this Development of Bio-Machine Based on the Plant Response to External Stimuli

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  • $\begingroup$ A quick glance on Google scholar only revealed plant-electrophysiological studies deploying single-cell recordings. You can't do single-unit recordings in an intact plant with your sound card connected to a needle. What potentials are you exactly planning on measuring? Without specification of your target potential this question cannot be easily answered (that is, not by me :-) $\endgroup$
    – AliceD ♦
    Mar 31, 2015 at 12:08
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    $\begingroup$ Further, I strongly doubt that the amplification of the AD converter is sufficient, and the amount of noise in the signal will probably sky rocket due to your setup being poorly isolated. $\endgroup$
    – AliceD ♦
    Mar 31, 2015 at 12:48
  • $\begingroup$ I vote to close as OP has not edited and clarified question after comments $\endgroup$
    – AliceD ♦
    Apr 28, 2015 at 11:27
  • $\begingroup$ I'm looking to measure voltage $\endgroup$
    – Rick T
    Apr 28, 2015 at 15:03
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    $\begingroup$ Import the signal into matlab or octave and use their FFT function to analyze it (see #3 from question) $\endgroup$
    – Rick T
    Apr 29, 2015 at 17:26

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