By now, you should be familiar with the concept of the smart home. They’re filled with a lot of wireless devices that can connect with one another and make everyday life much easier. However, electronics don’t often mix well with nature. Fortunately, there are smart gadgets out there that can level up your garden.
Smart Outdoor Projector
If you use your garden to host social events, a smart outdoor projector can make your garden stand out from the rest. With a projector, the owners don’t have to worry about fragile screens or complex wiring, so they’re great for evening watch parties outside.
These projectors are smart because they use the same platforms that smart TVs use, like Android TV. This means they can stream and use apps to find a wide variety of entertainment online. Today, it’s possible to use these devices to access the same industries you’d find on a desktop or smartphone, like video streaming or iGaming. So, with an internet connection, users can play games like European roulette online for real money along with other services, apps, and browsable pages that are filled with entertainment. Smart projectors pack most things a smart TV can do into a small, water-resistant box that can be deployed outside.
For longevity, it’s still a good idea to keep the projector indoors unless it’s sufficiently covered. While set-up varies by brand, they’re typically fast to deploy if you keep yours in the house. When buying outdoor items, owners should know the difference between popular marketing phrases like water-resistant and others like waterproof.
Smart Sprinkler System
On the more practical side of smart gardening, you’ll find smart sprinklers. This is best for owners trying to maintain natural lawns and other green garden features. Where a dull sprinkler needs to be manually controlled, smart sprinklers will fire off automatically, remember a schedule, and even change that schedule in response to the weather.
They pull weather data from nearby resources, sometimes thousands of different weather stations, to provide the right amount of water for your local climate. Much like smart thermostats in the home, they’ll save time and money by only using the amount of water necessary. They detect and respond to shifts in temperature and humidity, and then act accordingly.
Like all competent smart products, they should have a companion app that allows the owner to change settings on the fly. It’ll also keep the owner notified of when sprinkling starts and ends, and other weather-related updates that may affect the sprinkling schedule. Owners can even control them with their voice if the sprinkler is compatible with Amazon Echo or Google Home platforms.
Smart Bird Feeder
If you prefer a garden that’s friendlier to animals, you can opt for a smart bird feeder instead. These bird boxes aren’t better at feeding birds than the standard ones – that’s pretty easy to do. Instead, they have a special appeal because they’ll record and even identify the visitors in your garden.
Smart bird feeders use motion sensors and a camera to snap pictures and video of visiting animals. While most are designed for birds, they don’t discriminate if other animals like squirrels try to snack on some seeds. Everything the camera captures is trimmed, saved, and sent to a companion app on your phone. Of course, photo quality can vary depending on the model, the weather, and what the bird is doing when it gets snapped.
The smartest bird feeders even keep track of the species in your garden. They’ll identify birds by sight (and may make some small errors) and will notify when a new species has found the feeder. It’s a relatively small but unique implementation of smart home technology. For bird enthusiasts or those who like sharing cute nature pictures, it can make your bird feeder a lot more interesting.