.jpeg)
Sensors measure precipitation or soil moisture and control the robotic mower or the automatic watering system while you are at work or on holiday - after the smart home, intelligent and networked devices are conquering gardens. Robotic mowers make sense for lawns of 100 square metres or more and are now standard in many gardens. They are now being supplemented and networked step by step with other smart devices. Smart gardening makes work in the garden easier, improves maintenance and relieves home owners of tasks such as mowing the lawn or watering plants. This gives you more time to relax and enjoy your garden, terrace or balcony.
Before you buy individual components or a complete smart gardening system, you should consider how smart you want your garden to become and which jobs you want to do yourself. If you relax best when mowing the lawn, you should continue to do so. Important for planning are the locations of all sockets, because many smart home devices do not yet run on solar energy, and a wireless internet connection. If the WLAN does not reach every corner of the garden, you should install a more powerful router or a weatherproof signal booster. If you are planning a larger smart garden and want to install sockets or have boundary wires for the robotic mower laid in the ground, for example, it's best to talk to a gardener from your region.
Battery-powered robotic lawn mowers mow the lawn without a murmur. They also cut the blades into smaller pieces that do not need to be picked up and fertilise the soil. Regular cutting and nutrients are important for maintenance: on the one hand, fewer weeds grow, on the other hand, the turf grows denser and the lawn becomes less matted. Most robotic mowers need boundary cables or wires laid above or below ground so that they "know" where they are allowed to mow. There are also devices that can be programmed via GPS. Intelligent robotic mowers recognise when the grass is high enough or if it is raining and they prefer to wait. With many models you can set the resting hours and thus ensure that the robotic lawn mower does not disturb a neighbour's nap...
Pay attention to battery power, anti-theft device, cutting width and, depending on the terrain, climbing ability. Individually bolted blades cut more accurately and fold away as soon as they hit a solid object.
{{plantmanager}}
For a smart irrigation or sprinkler system, water hoses are laid in the ground or above. The heart is the irrigation computer, which is attached to the tap and controlled or, in smart gardening systems, controlled via a smartphone app. They work on command or automatically. Simpler devices water the beds or lawn at fixed times. More complex devices water, for example, vegetables, herbs or lettuces and garden areas differently in the shade or in the sun. Intelligent sensors measure temperature, sun intensity as well as soil and air humidity and automatically adjust the watering to the conditions and weather forecasts. This optimises water consumption and thus saves resources and your wallet.
With an irrigation system, you no longer have to get up early in the summer to water all the plants. And you also never have to ask neighbours to water the garden during your holidays.
With a smart socket, you can also make older devices "smart". For example, an antique lamp from the flea market or the tufa fountain in front of the romantic gazebo in the corner of the garden. With an intelligent adapter plug, which must be waterproof and splash-proof, you integrate "dumb" devices into the smart gardening system and can easily and conveniently operate or programme them remotely. For example, that the lamp only burns from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. or the fountain only runs in spring, summer and autumn when it is not raining.
Smart lamps in the home are widespread. In the meantime, they are also available for outdoors. For example, you can programme the lights on the flagstone path to switch on automatically as soon as it gets dark and switch off at midnight.
Robotic mowers, irrigation systems or power sockets only become really smart with sensors or weather stations with rain gauges and wind gauges. Among other things, they measure the moisture in the soil and in the air, precipitation, solar radiation and wind strength. The smart gardening system evaluates all the data and decides on the basis of the results and simple rules, for example, that ...
Many smart gardening systems work with rules, such as those offered by IFTTT . As soon as something happens (the sun goes down), this triggers an action (the pavement lighting switches on). On ifttt.com you can find many so-called recipes for Smart Gardening.
For a smart gardening system, in addition to power connections, you need a constant internet connection, i.e. an area-wide WLAN (at least one router, if necessary a signal amplifier). The individual devices are networked via the Internet of Things (IoT) and integrated into the smart gardening system. Such networks can be a weak point. With these five measures, you effectively protect the network, the individual devices and your data from unauthorised access:
On iBarry you can easily generate secure passwords. You can also find a lot of valuable information on the Swiss platform for internet security, including on the topic of the "Internet of Things".
Smart Gardening is not just for home owners with a garden. Condo owners can, for example, have the plants on the balcony watered automatically or programme the terrace lighting with atmospheric scenarios. There is also Smart Gardening for indoors. Indoor growing stations are suitable for kitchen herbs or growing vegetables. First, capsules or kits are planted that contain the seeds and all the nutrients. Then the greenhouse takes over and provides the plants with light, nutrients and water. It does not need more than a power socket and a filled water tank for this. However, you should not expect miracles: you will hardly be able to provide for your family yourself with the harvest ...
With our free plant manager you can identify unknown plants with a mobile phone photo and save your garden or indoor plants in your personal Houzy Cockpit. There you will find your individual garden calendar with seasonal care tips for your plants. So you always know when to fertilise, water or prune them. In addition, you can identify invasive neophytes with just one picture and get tips on how to effectively combat these alien plants that threaten our native fauna.
