When The Verge’s senior smart home reviewer, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, offered to give us a tour of her smart backyard, I was thrilled. Firstly, I have never seen a technologically advanced backyard curated by an industry expert before, and secondly, I wasn’t even sure what to expect. My vision of a smart home includes automated vacuums, a smart thermostat, and maybe one of those AI fridges that suggests recipes — all of which work within controlled environments and are built around making life inside more comfortable. So I found myself repeatedly asking, “How exactly do smart devices make something as unyielding as outside, comfortable?”
I quickly learned that my imagination simply wasn’t big enough. Outdoor smart tech includes products like smart sprinklers that check the weather before running, AI-powered smart grills that can cook meals for you, odorless automatic mosquito repellers, or (my personal favorite) smart chicken coops that can keep an eye on the hens and watch out for predators.
My biggest takeaway was that building a smart backyard is not for the faint of heart. It takes trial and error to figure out which devices you actually need and that will work in your environment, as well as an understanding of what kind of person you’d like to be outside. All the products that Jen tests in her backyard tell a story — like, she’s an environmentally conscious cook who, even though she gets eaten alive by mosquitoes, has a tremendous love for animals both big and small.
Watch the full video to get immersed in all the tech in Jen’s smart backyard, and if you want to know more, check out her reviews for more details.
