Home gardening

EcoQube Air lets you grow your favorite plant on your desk


Working in an office cubicle can be a bit drab and I’m always looking for ways to liven it up a bit. The EcoQube Air does just that by providing a desktop greenhouse for you to grow and maintain your favorite plant while providing beneficial air quality improvements.

The EcoQube Air not only will oxygenate the air around you with the plant growth, but the base contains a HEPA filter and fan that will reduce mold and dust in your environment. Everything you need to grow the plant of your choice is included and it’s maintenance free. The kit includes the plant medium and pebbles to put in your grow tray as well as the full-spectrum LED lighting, water pump, and filter. Since it is a closed system, the water will only need to be changed once per month.

EcoCube Air is an ideal fit for those of us who don’t necessarily have a green thumb or who would like the benefit of having a plant nearby without the mess and maintenance required to keep it alive. It will cost $199.99 from the manufacturer website, but can be found for as low as $179.99 on JoyUs.com.

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EcoQube Air lets you grow your favorite plant on your desk originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 10, 2019 at 8:39 am.

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B-Hyve Hose Faucet Timer review

REVIEW – Smart watering? Yup, it’s a thing. The B-Hyve system allows you to manage the watering chores around your property from anywhere you have Internet access. I challenged it to keep my garden alive while I spent most of the month of June traveling. How did it work out? Let’s see!

What is it?

It’s a smart watering system that enables you to schedule and manage your watering with an app on your smartphone.

Hardware specs

Faucet Timer:

  • IOS, Android and Alexa compatible
  • Powered by 2 AA batteries (not included)
  • IP34 waterproof rating
  • 10-100 PSI valve flow rating

WIFI Hub

  • Standard 2.4 Ghz WIFI
  • 200 foot range
  • Compatible with standard 100V outlet
  • Capacity for 64 connected units

What’s in the box?

The box contains the faucet timer, WIFI hub, and a quick start instruction guide.

Design and features

The B-Hyve Hose Faucet Timer consists of two parts. First, you have a WIFI hub that plugs into a standard outlet in your house, preferably near the exterior faucet you wish to manage. It’s a tiny little one-piece unit about the size of a plug-in night light.

I have mine plugged into the corner of my family room. The exterior faucet is below the window on the left, about 5 feet from the hub. It has a range of 200 feet, but is also extended by your home network:

The second component is the timer unit. Powered by 2 AA batteries, the timer is completely self-contained and waterproof. That yellow button on the right in the photo below is a multifunction manual operation and pairing button. You’ll attach the unit to the faucet and turn on your hose; an internal valve in the timer now controls the water flow.

You’ll set the whole system up with the B-Hyve app that you download to your smartphone. The app wizard walks you through the process of pairing the components, installation, and setting up your programs. It’s so simple that I won’t walk through it here… know that you’ll be up and running in about 5 minutes. 

You now have the ability to control all of your watering functions from anywhere in the world with the B-Hyve app. It’s a beautifully executed app from a usability perspective, with features and capabilities I haven’t even fully explored yet after a month of use. Let’s start with the basics, and I’ll show you some of that extensibility.

You’ll begin by setting up your automated watering program. Name your program, set the days of the week to water, start times, and duration. The setup below is for my garden (twice daily, 5 minutes per watering):

Once you’re set up, the app will notify you as it goes about it’s scheduled activities. You can also manually run watering cycles if your plants seem a bit thirsty. In either case, the app logs every event and sends notifications to your phone when each watering session is completed:

Here’s where things get really cool. The B-Hyve app integrates active monitoring of your local weather into the system if you wish, and will cancel or delay scheduled watering events if Mother Nature is going to do the work for you!

Pretty cool, right? It’s important to note that the app is based on forecasts, so it might miscalculate if that storm bypasses your immediate area. We found it to be pretty accurate in our actual tests, however, and we could manually trigger a watering if the storm passed us by.

If you want to get really deep into watering management, you can fully customize your options. You’ll identify “Zones” for your watering. In each zone you can provide all of the details about the environment and conditions (plant types, ground slope, sprinkler type(s), sun coverage, soil type, etc.) and the app will automatically calibrate a watering program based on the zone’s requirements. Check out the screenshots below to get a taste of the available customizations:

What does this all mean? Well, you could add multiple timers to all of the watering/irrigation systems around your house (garden, lawn, flowerbeds, etc.), set up the zones, and get professional-level water management and optimization from a single app for every aspect of your landscaping and climate conditions. That’s really impressive.

I haven’t had a chance to test all of these features yet, but we did set up a month-long test of the system on my vegetable gardens. I spent most of the month of June traveling between vacation and business trips. While I was roaming the Earth, I trusted the watering of my garden to then B-Hyve and a standard oscillating fan sprinkler. The system took care of all the watering needs, using the Smart Watering features to adjust for weather. I haven’t lost a single planting. These were all starter plants five weeks ago:

If I need to use the faucet for something else (like power washing), I can also turn the faucet on or off by pressing that button on the timer to do some other work without removing the unit. Other than that, I can control everything from my living room, or my hotel room, or WIFI at the airport. Impressive. So impressive, in fact, that I think I am going to look into multiple units and hydration systems to make the whole operation more efficient next summer.

What I like

  • Simple installation and setup
  • Well-executed app usability
  • Robust functionality that you can manage to your desired level of complexity
  • Ability to handle expanded/upgraded watering solutions
  • Well-built hardware looks like it will stand up to multiple years of use

What needs to be improved

  • None to be found so far

Final thoughts

I really like the B-Hyve Hose Faucet Timer so far. The hardware looks to be very solid after 6 weeks of operation, and setup is a snap. The management app is excellent and has the ability to accommodate both simple task-oriented users and power users who want to set up a whole watering management system (with easy expansion to multiple units for a whole-home solution). It’s a great tool to help conserve water as well. I’d strongly recommend it.

Price: $69.00
Where to buy: Visit the B-Hyve web site or buy it on Amazon. Also available at many home retail stores like Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and Lowes.
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Orbit B-Hyve.

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B-Hyve Hose Faucet Timer review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 14, 2018 at 10:00 am.

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Click & Grow Smart Garden 9 review

REVIEW – When you grow your own food, you not only nourish your body, but you nourish your mind and your spirit from the effort and time spent tending the plants. Unfortunately, not everyone has the outdoor space to create a garden plot. So for them, we have the Click & Grow Smart Garden 9. Let’s check it out this indoor gardening gadget.

What is it?

The Smart Garden from Click & Grow is a self-contained garden that is perfect for even the smallest indoor spaces to let you grow up to 9 different plants and is also available in a smaller version that can grow 3 plants.

What’s in the box?

Click & Grow Smart Garden 9
Individual pots
Light bar
4 Light bar supports
AC adapter
3 plant capsules that each have 3 pods per pack

Design and features

The Smart Garden arrives in a package that has the instructions printed right on the box. Setup is easy but does require some minimal assembly.

First, you remove the tank which is designed to automatically water the plants and holds 9 plant capsule holders which are already in place.

The next step is to attach the grow light stand to the tank. The Smart Garden 9 comes with 2 sets of arms so you can adjust the height of the grow light as the plants get taller. The arms just press on the tank without the need to use tools. I did run into a small issue with the arms that I’ll discuss later.

Then you route the power cord down a channel on the side of the tank.

Next, you open one of the plant capsules. The Smart Garden 9 ships with Green Lettuce, Basil, and Mini Tomato 3-pack capsules but you can buy refills of other plants as they offer 40 different capsules that include plants, flowers, and herbs like: a variety of pepper plants, kale, dill, dwarf peas, wild strawberries, and many more.

I don’t see why you couldn’t create your own plant pods to grow other plants too and I may try that at some point and share the results with a review update.

When you open one of the plant packages, you find 3 little brown pods. Each pod contains everything needed to grow a plant even if you think you have a black thumb. The pods contain NASA inspired smart soil and the seeds which are already planted inside the pods.

All you need to do is remove one of the plastic capsule holders from the tank and remove the lid.

If you turn over the holder, you’ll see a wick on the bottom that automatically sucks up water from the tank to water the plant.

The plant capsule fits in the holder.

The lid goes over the holder.

Then a clear plastic biodome lid snaps over the top.

The biodome lids create a tiny terrarium-like environment which helps the seeds in the capsule to sprout. It should be obvious that the little biodome lids should be removed as soon as the seedlings are big enough that they start touching the “ceiling” of the lid.

All that is left to do is fill the tank with water by pouring water directly into the receptacle in the lower left corner.

The water receptacle has a built-in water level indicator that rises as you add the water. If you press on it, it bobs up and down to let you know that there is still enough water in the tank. Here’s a 10-second demo showing how that works.

As the water is used by the plants, the water level indicator sinks into the receptacle to let you know that it’s time to add more water. The design is both genius and simple.

Earlier, I mentioned that I had an issue with the support arms for the grow light. Can you see the problem in the image above? If you can’t see it, look at the right support arm. See how there’s a gap where the grow light attaches to the top of the arm? That gap is there because I can’t get it to seat completely and I’m afraid I’ll break something if I put even more pressure on it. I’m equally worried that I won’t be able to detach the grow light when the time comes to add the other support arms to increase the height of the grow light when the plants get tall enough.

The grow light itself has 9 white and red LED lights which are programmed to turn on and off at different times of the day in order to provide the needed light for the plants to grow. I happen to have the Click & Grow Smart Garden set up in Gadgeteer HQ which is in a basement office. For that reason, I really don’t care when the grow light is active or inactive because I don’t sleep down there. But if you have a very small living area, that might be a consideration as to where you decide to place this indoor garden because there isn’t a way to customize the light schedule.

It’s time to grow the veggies!

I set up the Smart Garden on 6/28/18 and the lettuce seeds were the first to start sprouting just a few days later on 7/1/18. It is funny how exciting something non-digital can be! 🙂 A couple days later the basil sprouted and then finally when I was almost ready to give up, the mini tomato seeds sprouted.

I thought it would be fun to create a time-lapse video showing the growth progress of the plants, so I set up the Brinno TLC200 Pro time-lapse camera and here is a quick 1-minute video showing 9 days of the Click & Grow Smart Garden 9.

It’s really cool when plants grow and you had to do was add the water. So I have my little garden going inside the house and Jeanne has a 50 x 50 foot garden outside. So far my garden is doing better than hers but don’t tell her that I said that!

What I like

  • Completely automatic, just add plant capsules and water

What needs to be improved

  • No way to customize the grow light timing
  • Grow light extension arms can be too tight to connect fully
  • Refill plant capsules are expensive at almost $10 for a 3 pack

Final thoughts

It’s going to take several weeks before the plants are big enough to harvest and eat. Especially the mini tomatoes. So I decided to go ahead and post my review now and then follow up with updates as time goes on to show the progress. That said, I’m impressed so far by how easy the Smart Garden is to use.

Price: $199.95
Where to buy: Click & Grow and Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Click & Grow.

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Click & Grow Smart Garden 9 review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 12, 2018 at 10:00 am.

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Your home is smart – now with Elgato Eve Aqua, your lawn can be smart, too

Elgato Eve products can be used inside to automate your home.  The Gadgeteer has even reviewed some of them.  Now Elgato adds the Eve Aqua to turn your outdoor faucet into an “intelligent water outlet” to make watering your yard as easy as set-it-and-forget it scheduling or to allow you to water your lawn while you’re out doing errands.

You don’t need to buy a hub for Eve products.  They are designed to work with Apple’s HomeKit, so they will work out of the box with your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch. Your Apple TV or iPad will serve as a home hub, seamlessly automating your accessories and keeping you connected anywhere you have internet connectivity.

Elgato says: “Eve accessories are exclusively HomeKit-enabled. Even when accessing your home remotely via your home hub, data is end-to-end encrypted and stored on your iPhone or iPad. Superior privacy, advanced security, and absolute peace of mind – it’s all here.  Equipped with Bluetooth low energy technology, Eve accessories ensure reliable operation independently of bridges. Setup is quick and easy. Energy consumption is minimal. And accessory response time is snappy.“

The Eve Aqua connects between your outdoor faucet and a garden hose.  It has IPX4 water resistance plus Australian-certified UV protection to keep the Aqua in prime working shape for years to come.  You can set it up once and let your schedules work independently without wireless connectivity.  Or you can control the Eve Aqua on the fly by using the app on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch or by issuing Siri voice commands.  In addition to controlling watering schedules, the Eve app will track water usage over time, so you’ll know.

The Elgato Eve Aqua is available for pre-order for $99.95.  Shipments begin on June 25th.  Place your pre-order now at the Elgato website.

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Your home is smart – now with Elgato Eve Aqua, your lawn can be smart, too originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on June 1, 2018 at 1:00 pm.

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There’s nothing kinky about the Bernini Pro Series garden hose

Are you tired of those traditional, green rubber-pipe garden hoses that get kinked up so badly water won’t pass through or spring so many leaks your yard looks like a water feature?  Replace that old hose with a Bernini Pro Series hose and you won’t have to deal with kinks again.

The Bernini hose is made of Spiroshield 304 stainless steel for toughness while keeping it lightweight.  The metal stops kinks and keeps its shape when the hose is pulled around corners.  Billet aluminum couplings with rubber comfort grips makes for tight connections to the faucet.  The included billet-aluminum spray nozzle adjusts from a steady stream to a gentle spray, or you can replace it with your own spray nozzle.  The hose is corrosion- and UV-resistant, and it even stays cooler in the sun than most hoses.

The Bernini Pro Series hose is the Today’s Special Value at QVC through 12:00 AM PST tonight.  Learn more and order at the limited-time price of $34.98 at QVC.

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There’s nothing kinky about the Bernini Pro Series garden hose originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 20, 2018 at 8:00 am.

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