Smart Yard 101

Upgrade your outdoor spaces with these smart home tech devices.

In the dog days of summer with autumn fast approaching, everyone is looking to squeeze the last few precious days of pleasant fresh-are enjoyment from their home’s outdoor spaces. If you want to maximize fun and comfort in your deck, patio, or yard, you’ve come to the right place.

Here we’ve gathered the best in smart home tech to turn your property into an outdoor oasis. Whether you are entertaining, relaxing, or just making best use out of all the outdoor space in your home, we’ve got you covered.

Lighting

One of the easiest, fastest, and most high-impact ways to transform an outdoor living area is with lighting. Today, smart-lighting devices can increase the aesthetic and curb-appeal, make your outdoor spaces more functional and usable, and even help keep your family safe.

There are many forms of smart outdoor lighting. For example, Philips Hue Lucca outdoor lighting allow you to set timers/schedules or even turn on your exterior lights with voice activation. You can also use the Hue Calla lights to enhance the appearance of walkways around your home and set a particular mood that fits your fancy.

A new popular option for exterior lighting includes smart strip-lighting, like the Hue Lightstrip Outdoor.The possibilities with strip lighting are endless. Enjoy the added convenience of voice operation with connections to your preferred smart-home tech system, like Siri, Google, or Alexa.

For powerful, functional, and easy-to-install outdoor spotlights, check out the Hue Lily Outdoor smart lighting system. These bright, programable, and connected lamps can be affixed to walls or fences, or simply staked in the ground. You can control your outdoor spotlights with your voice using Apple homekit, Alexa, and Google assistant. These also pair nicely with your existing home automation system like Nest or Samsung SmartThings system.

Power

If you really want to set the vibes in your outdoor spaces, you’ll need power to connect lighting, speakers, and other devices. That’s where the Wyze Plug Outdoor comes in. This weather resistant dual-outlet plug is not just safe and durable, it’s also smart and can easily be controls through Alexa and Google voice commands. Savvy home owners can get even more nifty with IFTTT applets. Finally, the Wyze Plug Outdoor’s energy monitoring feature makes this a great pick for budget conscious.

Irrigation

These days it’s nearly impossible to keep a picture-perfect green lawn unless you have an irrigation system. Programable lawn-watering has been around for decades, but today’s smart irrigation systems take the lawn care to a whole new level. What if your irrigation system could know that it has been unusually hot for the past few days? Or what if it could automatically adjust the sprinkler schedule because it has been raining a lot recently? Well, that is exactly what the Rachio 3 smart sprinkler offers. With the Rachio system, you can program specific zones to different settings based on your watering needs, and your sprinkler schedules automatically adjust to account for changing weather conditions. Pretty dang convenient!

If you’re watering the lawn with above-ground water hoses, you can still benefit from the convenience of smart spigot. The Eve Aqua, for example, is a smart device that hooks right up to the outdoor spigot and your hose to allow you to program and control the flow of water just like you would with any other smart device - with your voice - using Apple Homekit or Google Home.

Lawn Maintenance

Imagine a Roomba for your outdoor spaces. That’s what the folks at iRobot have created in their Terra Robot Mower. Using their smartmapping beacon technology, this “grass roomba” stays within it’s programable boundaries and can even stick to certain mowing patterns, if you are the kind of person who appreciates gridiron stripes in the backyard. The Terra is totally self-reliant. When it needs to go charge, it simply finds it’s dock and takes a quick nap.

For larger, more, let’s say, rugged outdoor spaces, the Robomow may be a better option for smart lawn maintenance. The Robomow does require a perimeter wire to set the boundaries, but the mower can also be controlled using a phone app or a physical remote control, which sounds like a lot of fun!

Bonfire

No outdoor space is truly complete without a bonfire setup. There’s nothing better than winding down with the warmth and luminescent glow of a bonfire. The trouble with burning wood, though, is it tends to produce a lot of smoke (duh)! Well now, naturally, there is a smart solution to the problem of smoke blowing in people’s faces, ruining their bonfire experience. Enter the BioLite Steel Wood Burning Fire Pit. Using a 4-speed fan system, this portable fire pit keeps smoke from getting in your eyes and lungs.

For a more authentic campfire style experience, check out the Solo-Stove Stainless Steel Outdoor fire pits. Simply put, the Solo-Stove’s revolutionary design maximizes airflow and eliminates smoke while also reducing waste. Weighing in at only 20 pounds, the Solo-Stove is extremely portable!

Looking to upgrade your outdoor spaces?

Our Teks have transformed countless outdoor spaces into smart spaces and we can transform yours too! Reach out today to schedule a smart-home tech installation.