The internet of spring: Why the best smart gadgets for the home might actually be for the garden

The internet of things can be everywhere. But it seems to have mostly stayed indoors.

In recent years, the connected home market has flourished: there are internet-connected cameras, lightbulbs, thermostats and kettles. If something can be hooked up to the internet, then it probably has been; even if it can’t, someone has still tried. (Companies are largely trying to get in through the kitchen, though they’ll find a way in just about wherever you let them.)

But the connected garden has remained largely unrealised. Some of the products that live inside have made their way outdoors, though – a range of companies, like Nest and Canary, released outdoor versions of their popular smart home gadgets – but there is much less excitement about the possibilities of the internet outdoors.

Many of the products that have broken out sit literally on the threshold of the outdoors. Ring, for instance, has become famous for offering a smart doorbell, allowing you to answer the door from anywhere in the world using the built-in camera, as well as to keep an eye on your door and whatever is in front of it. (It also makes other similar products, including a camera that replaces your security light.)

There are still some glaring gaps. It is not possible to get a really good, smart outdoor speaker, for instance, despite a proliferation of them for inside the house.

But some of those gaps are also getting filled in. Philips Hue – whose connected lightbulbs have become arguably the standard-bearer for the smart home, and probably its best and most reliable product – announced recently that it will be taking its popular smart lighting outdoors, and they will arrive in early July. It includes everything from security to mood lighting – and since they are smart, they can easily serve as both.

“While Philips Hue bulbs and luminaires are available for every area inside your home, we wanted to traverse the threshold and offer connected luminaires designed for outside areas,” said Sridhar Kumaraswamy from Philips Lighting. “The Philips Hue outdoor range enables you to make the most of your outside areas, be it creating the ideal ambiance to host a BBQ at the weekend or beautifying your garden.”

Other gaps might be less obvious but their utility is clear as soon as you use them. Hozelock, for instance, has long made timers that can be used to ensure that your grass and plants are regularly topped up with water, allowing you simply to choose when they should turn on and send water to your sprinkler or irrigation system. Now it not only allows you to set timers on your phone, the app also tracks the weather and adjusts the settings accordingly.

There are, of course, technical problems with getting things outside. For one, everything needs a wireless connection – usually via a hub that is plugged into your router – which could be a problem if your garden is large or stretches some way from where the internet comes into your house. Some companies such as Ring even offer special extenders to ensure that the internet can reach all the way to their cameras.

And while many of the outdoor gadgets are powered by batteries, some such as lights and cameras really require power. That in turn can require you to add wiring and electricity to your garden, though not any more than a non-smart light would need.

There are practical concerns once they are out there, too. Many of the connected gadgets for the outdoors have shown a tendency to die over time, taken by frost, wind or cold.

But concerns that blight the smart home aren’t so present in the smart garden. For one, their use is more clear: the fact is that you probably aren’t in your garden quite so much, so there are more reasons to automate it. That means using the features doesn’t seem quite so lazy: turning on a security light to scare off potential intruders feels slightly more practical than turning on your living room light because you can’t be bothered to get up from the sofa.

Even laziness feels slightly more permissible when it comes to the garden. A range of companies, including traditional garden brands like Flymo, make robot lawnmowers that can move autonomously around your garden and ensure it is looking trim. That feels much more practical than their indoor equivalent: vacuums that trundle around and do the hoovering for you (and can’t make their way up or down stairs, for one).

And as well as everything else, having smart products outside of your house is just a little less scary than having them indoors. (Though the thought of a robot lawnmower prowling around your garden does have shades of Stephen King.) As the internet of things has grown, so have the various threats that it poses: both to the world, in the form of major cyber attacks on badly secured devices, but also to your privacy and security.

Things inside your house know some of your most personal habits, behaviours and activities. Amazon has encouraged us to put cameras inside our bedroom with the recent launch of the Echo Spot, which serves as an excellent and very smart bedside clock; even your smart lightbulbs help signal when you might be in or out of the house. The better technology companies are very clear about how that data will be used and that it will be kept very safe, but just that it is being collected puts you in some degree of danger.

That is less worrying in the garden. A smart sprinkler might have some sense of how wet your grass is; an internet-connected lawnmower might know how long your grass is. None of that feels especially invasive – and, besides, if anyone really wanted to know they could just have a look for themselves.

Some outdoor products are even meant to share your data – and are built specifically for that. With the Netatmo Weather Station, for instance, you can choose to upload data on the climate around your house to its website, and all of that information is shown on a special map available on the company’s website, allowing for hyperlocal temperature readings.