We recently installed a Gardena micro drip system for our garden on the northwest, consisting of 4 large flower boxes. A very fine system where the GARDENA smart Water Control Set is a perfect addition. The main reason for purchasing this set is convenience, extremely simple installation and my interest in home automation.
The set consists of the Smart gateway and the smart water control. The smart water control is connected to the tap outside and ensures the automatic water supply to the connected irrigation system. The Gateway you install indoors provides the connection between the smart water control and your home network to be able to operate everything via the free app for Android or IOS. This can be wired or via WiFi, here the gateway is connected wired and hangs in the meter cupboard. The distance between the gateway and smart water control is 10 meters, which shows a signal strength in the Gardena App.
The installation is very simple, especially if you have already installed the app on your smartphone in advance and created the required account via the app. Then you connect the gateway to your home network, the latest firmware is automatically installed and you connect the gateway in the app by scanning the QR on the back of the gateway. Finally, you add the smart water control via the app, this also becomes the latest firmware, this takes about half an hour. Now the set is ready for use and you can be controlled from wherever you are via your smartphone!
Finally, you can make a weekly schedule for watering your plants. This can be done by specifying a start and end time per day or by having the Gardena assistant put together a schedule. This assistant asks you a number of questions about the type of soil, planting, sprinkler installation and which days you want to exclude from the schedule. In my generated schedule, every other day at 9:00 pm, first 5 minutes and then 40 minutes of water, this shifts slightly every week because sunrise and sunset are also taken into account. It doesn't get any easier than this, you can also see neatly in the app whether water is being given at that time, when the last time was and the next time this is planned.