You don’t need to have a back yard if you want a smart garden now that the connected world has caught up with horticulture. In fact, there are handfuls of sensors at the ready which are adept at picking up those key variables like light, temperature, moisture and soil pH conditions.
Sprinkle in a little Wi-Fi, add a touch of Bluetooth and you will be enjoying the fruits with very little labour in no time at all.
So, whether you’re mad keen, a total amateur, live in acres of grassland or in a tower block with not so much as a window box; here’s a seed to plant in your mind – the best smart garden devices around.
Grove
Hydroponics is yesterday’s news. How about getting yourself an indoor organic vegetable patch that works by aquaponics instead? A fish tank at the bottom of this rather sizeable wooden cabinet is the secret to how it all works.
Feed your finned-friends the right food and they’ll produce an ammonia-rich waste which is then broken down by bacteria within the water to produce a set of nitrates which are A1 for growing the plants on top. The whole system is internet-connected and, thanks to the sensors within, will send you push notifications with all the care and maintenance instructions you’ll need. Still inKickstarter development but due to ship in the summer of 2016.
$2700, grovelabs.io
Edyn smart garden sensor
There are a few connected soil sensors out there for your smart garden but Edyn has the richest feature set of them all. Plunge it into your beds and it measures the moisture, pH, temperature, light levels, nutrients and humidity that your plants will be enjoying. It sends all that info back to a mobile app for a full analysis of your back yard’s conditions and, therefore, both what the best greenery to grow might be as well as how to look after them on a daily basis.
Edyn’s solar powered, so no need to worry about batteries, and it has bank of over 5,000 plants in its botanical repertoire. The only point to consider is that it will need to be in range of your Wi-Fi router to work. If that doesn’t sound like your manor, then you might want to consider the Parrot or Koubachi models instead.
$100, edyn.com
Biopod
Pets, decorative plants or a herb garden; Biopod is the indoor microclimate that can grow it all at your app’s behest. It’s not out just yet but its smashed Kickstarter target and successful noises so far suggest that all those incentives and pre-orders will not go astray.
Launching in March 2016, Biopod controls temperature, light, humidity, ventilation and rainfall inside that fish tank-sized space and will create a habitat suitable for whatever kind of species you’d care to support. So, no matter if it’s blowing a gale in your garden, you can still have your sub-tropicana paradise blooming inside.
$225, biopod.org
Robomow RS630
You grow it, it mows it; and all without the slightest effort on your part. There is quite the glut of robot lawnmowers these days and, while it’s going to depend a little on your garden size as to which model you plump for, one of the better brands out there is Robomow.
Top of the pile with the ability to cover nearly an acre of land in as many cutting zones as you like is the Robomow RS630. Along with anti-theft and child safety features, it includes a rain sensor so that it can mow at optimum times and a mobile app with which you can send instructions as well as check in on where it’s at with its program. Pricey but fun.
$2,099, robomow.com | Amazon
Playbulb Garden
Think Philips Hue for the outdoors and you’ve got the right mental place for Playbulb Garden. They’re solar powered LED light pods, much like you might see in all sorts of forms these days, but the important distinction with this lot is that you can app-control them thanks to a cheeky Bluetooth connection to your phone.
Group them together or not and then select just which ones you’d like to colour your mood. Naturally, they’re water resistant enough for whatever the weather throws at them too.
$40, playbulb.com | Amazon
GreenIQ Smart Garden
Households with garden irrigations systems might want to listen up. GreenIQ is the name to look out for and this company has come up with a smart garden hub which taps into the weather reports to work out exactly when and how much it needs to water your plants. If it’s about to chuck it down, then there’s no pointing in wasting your money on unnecessary bills.
You can retro-fit the Smart Garden Hub to any irrigation system that you’ve got and it’ll also work hand-in-hand with a few soil sensors and the like too. Plus, there’s a decent set of IFTTT recipes for it as well. Naturally, there’s also a mobile app to go with it.
$249, greeniq.co | Amazon
Plantui 6
Back to the urban gardener and we’d like to recommend the Plantui 6 as the connected hydroponics set up of choice. Plantui has been in the game a while and has figured out that the size of your crop is, in fact, rather important. As such, its most recent model’s grow lamps are height-adjustable to accommodate your plants all the way from seedlings up until harvest with the intensity and colour of the illumination changing as the system dictates is optimal for the greenery underneath.
There’s no need to know anything about gardening. Pop the plant capsules in along with the water and the Plantui app will sort out the rest. Cucumbers, chillies, flowers, whatever you like; and all for nice, low electricity costs too.
$250, plantui.com
Netatmo Weather Station
Say hello to the 21st century’s take on home meteorology. The Netatmo Weather Station’s goal is to tell you everything you could possibly know about your home and garden microclimates. There are units for both indoors and outdoors which report back to your phone on variables like temperature, pressure, humidity, CO2 levels, noise pollution and even the likes of wind and precipitation fineries if you pick up the right add-ons.
The software then analyses all that data, presents pretty graphs and gives you real-time accounts plus all the environmental trends a gardener could need to figure out what to plant, when to plant it and how to best take care of them all. Michael Fish, eat your heart out.
Source: wareable.com