I need an automated gardener

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This might, no beyond might, I know it sounds dumb, but let me explain…

My wife insists we have a gardener, You see I don’t hadle high heat, or humidity at all well, and am more prone than most to heat stroke. So she has deemed thou shalt not do lawn work in the summer…

Since the HOA won’t allow me not to mow or edge my lawn, I have to farm out the job.

Have you tried hiring the neighborhood kids to mow your lawn these days? Not like it once was…

I have a service, which is $25.00 / week, $100.00 / month. Year round…

This has me thinking. I could sure use to cut costs, and honestly, I dig technology…

I am working a home automation / smart home project right now, and part of me is thinking…

They can do roomba to vacuum. Do they do a robot lawn mower, edger and weed whacker, and if so, what’s a good one?

It should be obvious that the mower MUST mulch… Non mulching mowers are a non starter for me. I want as little manual cleanup as possible…

​​​​​​​So what have you folks seen and are they worth it?

Also I can route hoses and leave sprinklers in all summer and run them off of timers / remote controls with no hassle from the HOA or city, but the only ST compatible units I am aware of are the Orbit / Iris controllers which are reportedly horrible. Anyone know of a good hose controller? If not I do have a smart timer that will pause for rain… Need to be careful with the sprinklers, it’s not smart enough to know if it is sprinkling on itself or being rained on…

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If only I didn’t have the DPF (Dog Poop Factor) to deal with, I’d certainly try one.

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Natural Fertilizer!

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There are certainly robot mowers. How well they will work for you depends on the specific layout of your lawn. But they are very expensive and I don’t know of any that have integration with SmartThings. Huqsvarna is the gold standard for these, and they do have both IFTTT and Alexa compatibility, so you might get some integration that way. But they are also among the most expensive.

The following article is a good overview and lists the top brands. :sun_with_face:


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Irrigation

As far as the irrigation systems, there are all kinds of choices for that. A lot of people just use a regular dumb valve actuator and plug it into any smart plug that works with SmartThings. Also any system which has an IFTTT channel may give you indirect integration that way. You can also get much fancier and do your own zones and run them off of something like the fibaro RGBW controller. So lots of choices, and people have come up with some pretty creative stuff. :sunglasses::sunflower::sunflower::sunflower:

Why don’t you take a look in the community-created wiki at the quick browse lists, look down in the bottom of that page for the “project report” section, and then there are a couple of different lists that should be of interest. One is on irrigation systems and one is in the subsection on “projects by room” and is on yard projects.

https://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section

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Well the price to beat is $1200 a year. At that point I can cut my lawn service back since they don’t clean out any of the flower boxes or trim the hedges anyway a robotic mower that could handle the edging would be perfect. And yeah I saw how much the Huqvarnas cost.

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Try Link tap G2 for water