- Bird Buddy introduces Petal and Wonder Blocks
- It’s a modular camera and accessory system
- It watches for birds, bees, and especially bugs
If I have a favorite gadget, it’s probably my Bird Buddy, a Wi-Fi-connected bird-feeding webcam that delivers beautiful, up-close images of doves, cardinals, sparrows, and woodpeckers.
Getting up close to nature is fun, even inspiring, and I think that may be why Wonder, the name for Bird Buddy’s new line of products, is introducing a couple more digital nature-watching technology ideas here at CES 2025: Wonder Blocks and Petal.
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The two products are really something of a pair. One, Petal, is an HD camera on a bendable stalk that can look like a large orange flower. It has fake leaves, one of which can be an optional solar panel to keep the camera battery charged. Petal can be placed in your garden alone, or you can pair it with Wonder Blocks, a modular habitat system where you can plant flowers, invite bees to build a hive, and even offer bird-seed-friendly trays.
Modules include a Bee Hotel, Bug Hotel, seed tray, plant base, and pedestals on which you can stack all these modules.
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The Petal stalk, which has a 1/1.9 inch sensor and shoots 12MP stills and up to 4K video, can be stuck in the dirt of one of those modules to watch the action of, say, a butterfly alighting on one of the flowers growing in your Wonder Blocks. As with Bird Buddy, the ‘wonder’ really begins when the AI-backed camera starts capturing photos and videos of the bird, bugs, and other nature inhabitants and sends them to the Wonder app.
Bird Buddy’s AI, the same AI used to identify birds in my Bird Buddy App, can identify the bugs and other wildlife visiting your Wonder Blocks and Petal. The Wonder Blocks system currently has no sensors, but developers tell me it could, for instance, eventually keep track of the seed you put in it, and report on how much it has left and for how many days it can feed the birds.
Bird Buddy also plans to consolidate all the Wonder Products, including Bird Buddy, into one app where you can track all of your nature-watching cameras.
Similar to Bird Buddy, the system’s AI will give you real-time and daily reports of all the different types of bugs visiting the blocks, which are about the same size of a large garden planter. You can see photos and videos of the insects, and even share them if you like.
Wonder Blocks and Petal are not a fixed pair. Remember that flexible stem? It’s bendable enough that you can wrap it around a tree branch and capture images of birds landing and bugs making the journey from leaf to brand to leaf. There are also optional Petal lens attachments for closeup and wide-angle views of birds, bees, and bugs.
Despite being modular, the Wonder Block system, which Wonder has yet to announce pricing for, is large and heavy enough that it looks unlikely to get knocked over by a hungry squirrel or busy raccoon.
Since the solar panel is optional, I wonder about the longevity of that Petal battery. When I got my Bird Buddy bird feeder, we opted for the optional solar roof so I wouldn’t have to keep pulling the camera module to charge it inside my house. Bird Buddy used the somewhat aging 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band, so I’d hope that Petal and, ultimately, Wonder Blocks use Wi-Fi 5.0. It has a shorter range but a higher bandwidth.
Even so, I think Wonder Blocks and Petal might inspire my bug-watching in much the same way Bird Buddy did. This might be the first time I’m happy to see some bees build a hive near-ish my home.
Pricing for the Petal is expected to be about $99 when it ships later this year. While there’s no separate pricing for the solar panel, Wonder representatives told me they expect to sell bundles where you’ll get a pair of Petal cameras and solar panels for around $250. Wonder expects to start shipping Petal and Wonder Blocks in the “spring”, so March-May.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
