Smart technology is used all over the place – outside of business, it has become part of our homes, our vehicles, and more. It’s even been adapted for use in our lawn and garden now. Smart technology is more than just timers and sensors – those have been around for years, and while they are still
For Lighting Needs
One of the handiest things to control through smart technology is your landscape lighting. Being able to turn it on and off while you’re away from the house can make it easy to come home to. Even just being able to program it and control from any point in your lawn or house means you might not have to run downstairs if you forget to turn them on or off.
CE Tech Audio Path Light Kit
- GE Z-Wave Wireless Lighting Controls is incredibly easy to install, and allows you to control lighting and small appliances. The technology allows each unit to communicate, and act as a receiver and a sender of messages. This makes for units that are reliable, and controllable from different points – from a keypad controller in the house, to an LCD remote on the deck, to a phone app from the backyard.
- CE Tech Audio Path Light Kit, pictured at left, combines lighting and audio, with the music able to be controlled by a wireless, Bluetooth-enabled device. Great for entertainment and picnics.
Garden Maintenance
Sometimes your garden needs to be taken care of when you’re not around – maybe you expected rainfall over your vacation, an it hasn’t happened. Using smart technology, you can trigger some of your lawn and garden maintenance equipment while you’re miles away.
- Rachio Iro Connected Sprinkler connects to a smartphone app or a Web-based app. It allows you to set up and adjust a watering schedule to work with the expected weather and rainfall in your area. If something changes, you can alter that schedule easily.
- Koubachi Plant Sensor can sense the various conditions that make for happy, healthy plants. Keeping track of the soil moisture, temperature, and light intensity, the sensor will feed these to your smartphone. This can help you to determine what plants need what care, and when.
Robotics
While there are no Rosie the Robots for your garden quite yet, robotics have made their way outside.
- Droplet is a robotic sprinkler that will work a path around your gardens, watering them as needed. Through inputting the types and locations of plants, the robot will use biological plant information, a database of soil samples, and realtime weather data to determine the amount of water to deliver to which plants at specific times. It can be checked and controlled through a smartphone ap or a website.
- Finally, there’s the robotic lawnmower. Companies like RoboMow and LawnBott have been producing robotic, guided lawnmowers for years now. They merely need to be given an assigned path and a schedule, although they are only good for flat, debris-free lawns.
By combining all of this smart technology, lawn and garden maintenance becomes almost automatic. It’s only a matter of time before you can control everything your lawn needs right from your handheld smartphone. Much of this technology is still in development, and may still be a bit on the expensive side, but in the coming years, you should see more advancement and the dropping of prices.
