Thank you to Lyle MacLeod of easylawnmowing.co.uk for this Gardena Smart System review. It is packed full of details and features that the automated system has to help maintain your outdoor lawn needs.
For those out there that don’t want to get their hands dirty and work up a sweat maintaining their lawn, Gardena may have brought out the solution for you. They have combined their Sileno Robotic Lawn Mower, Smart Sensor, Smart Water Control and Smart Gateway into a nice little package so that you can get all that hard work done from the palm of your hand – the Gardena Smart System.
Gardena Smart System products are available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Scandinavia, UK, France, Italy and Poland.
This system features a range of sensors which detects and keeps track of rainfall, sunlight, temperature and grass growth, and according to all these factors it will determine how often your lawn needs watered and mowed (but you can alter this if you so please).
All the components are connected via the Gardena Smart System App and work as a unit to control the changing conditions of your grass to which ever specifications you would like.
Gardena Smart System Overview Video
Smart Gateway
This component produces an internet connection via an existing rooter to connect all the systems together and communicates wirelessly to all devices through the Gardena Smart App.
With strong antennae in the smart Water Control and smart Sensor, this system guarantees cable-free connection from the Gateway to the rest of the components and ensures that this connection remains strong and stable even over large areas (1000m²).
It is in this way that the Gateway acts as the core of the entire Smart System.
Smart Water Control
According to the data sent through from the smart Sensor, the Water Control will automatically adapt how much water is supplied to your garden to make for more efficient irrigation of your plants and grass.
The system will be aware of the outside temperature, light intensity and soil moisture, so if it’s damp, cloudy and cold it’ll put out a little less than usual and if it’s dry, sunny and warm it’ll put out a little more than usual.
But if you want to take a more control of the output and even arrange the Sileno mowing times so it coincides with the watering times, you can do so using the Gardena Smart App.
You can program which days and times (1min – 10hrs) it operates, so it can be working away when you’re not at home, and you can alter the irrigation rhythm it uses.
Probably the best and most useful feature of the Water Control is that its temperature sensor will warm of any signs of frost, at which point you’ll need to disconnect, remove and store the device inside to keep it safe.
It’ll also tell you when it needs new batteries, if anything is wrong with the system (with the use of LED lights) and provides you with relevant and up-to-date measurement data. This really is a very smart and effective system that could save you a boat load of stress and time.
The Water control is a small system with dimensions of 12.3×15.9×12.3cm and a weight of 404 grams so you shouldn’t have a problem finding a place for it in your garden.
Allow you will need to make sure that it can connect to a legendary 3 x AA 1.5V alkaline battery from your house otherwise it won’t work.
Sileno Robotic Lawnmower
This device ensures that your grass is kept at the desired height throughout the year. It operates on a daily basis, only taking the tinniest of clippings so that your lawn is cut evenly at all times and will not have any visible stripes thanks to the Silenos SensorCut System.
This makes for better lawn health and growth as the clippings will act as natural fertiliser to supply your lawn the nutrients it needs. In comparison to the regular push mower, the Sileno not only makes for easier lawn maintenance but also much better results!
The Sileno, as the name suggests, is a very quiet machine operating at only 58 decibels, this makes it not only quieter than your push mower but also every other robotic lawnmower in the market.
This means you really can send it out whenever you want, be it in the middle of the day or during the night, you can rest assured that it won’t be annoying anybody.
You can program the unit either using its control panel or, like the other components, you can use the Smart System App. This allows you to change its mowing times, which you can align with your watering times, and its mowing height so that it adapts to the different growing seasons.
Now if you have a slightly more complicated lawn than most, i.e. with some narrow passages, then don’t worry the Sileno will handle these without a problem.
With its EasyPassage function the mower can pass through these corridors with ease and won’t leave any tracks behind. All you need to do is make sure it’s boundary wires are set up correctly in these areas and the Sileno will work like a charm.
Smart System Sensor
Real- time updates from your garden. Light, temperature and soil moisture will be tracked and can be checked via the app at any time.
This unit gathers on the weather conditions within your garden – the temperature, light intensity and soil moisture – and sends out this data to its counterparts so that they can alter their actions and outputs accordingly. This data is also forwarded to the Smart App where you can make further changes.
In order for it to measure the soil moisture content it needs to be place within the ground and beside your plants, this makes for more reliable results as it’s right beside the plant roots. As the antennae provide a strong and reliable connection between all components, the smart sensor will operate in even large gardens without a problem.
Smart App
The Gardena app is completely free and can be downloaded onto all Android and iOS devices. As I have mentioned above, you can control mowing times, watering times and see all the important information picked up by the Smart Sensor. Provided you have data and signal, you can keep complete control of your lawn and adapt the systems settings as you so please with just the tap of the screen.
Brief Summary of the Automated Smart System
Overall I think the Gardena Smart System really could change the way we maintain our gardens for the years to come. It takes out all the hard work of maintaining the lawn, requires almost no effort to operate and gives everyone the chance of having a brilliant looking garden. It’s just a fantastic piece of technology!
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