The Evolution of Smart Gardening: Our Experience with the Eve Aqua

As we stepped outside to tend to our garden, we couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. We had just set up the Eve Aqua, a smart watering system that promised to revolutionize the way we care for our plants. With its ability to run autonomously, without constant connection to our home hub or phone, we were eager to see how it would perform in real-world conditions.

Our schedule was carefully planned, with twice-daily waterings on weekdays and once daily on weekends. This allowed us to keep our lawn and garden consistently hydrated, while also making the most of our time. The Eve Aqua's ability to adapt to changing schedules and weather conditions was a major selling point for us. We could set it up in advance, knowing that it would take care of our plants even when we weren't around.

One of the features that impressed us most about the Eve Aqua was its ease of use. With just a single tap, we could turn on or off the system, adjusting the watering schedule as needed. But what really set it apart was its ability to learn and adapt over time. As we used it more and more, it began to sense our habits and preferences, automatically adjusting the timing and amount of water based on our behavior.

In terms of limitations, we did encounter a few quirks with the Eve Aqua's integration with the Home app. While it worked seamlessly for many tasks, there were some features that simply weren't available or didn't work as expected. For example, when trying to set up custom automation scenes, the Eve Aqua was not recognized as an accessory in the Home app. However, these limitations did not seem to detract from our overall experience with the device.

Fortunately, we found that other smart home features, such as Siri integration and voice control, worked beautifully with the Eve Aqua. We could use Siri to turn on or off the system, adjusting the watering schedule as needed. And when it came time to adjust the settings ourselves, it was easy to do so using the Home app.

We set up the Eve Aqua in two different ways, reflecting our typical usage patterns. First, we attached it directly to our spigot, allowing for effortless watering of large areas like lawns or gardens. We also tried using a hose with a sprinkler attachment, which provided an added level of flexibility and customization. Another favorite method was attaching the device to a soaker hose, which proved to be incredibly effective in delivering water directly to our plants' roots.

One day, we were particularly fortunate when it rained, allowing us to test the Eve Aqua's automatic adjustment feature. Simply by turning off the system with our phone, we could stop the unnecessary watering and conserve water. It was a reassuring experience, knowing that the device was capable of adapting to changing conditions.

In conclusion, our experience with the Eve Aqua has been overwhelmingly positive. This smart watering system has revolutionized the way we care for our garden, allowing us to be more hands-off while still maintaining optimal plant health. Its ease of use, adaptability, and responsiveness have made it a valuable addition to our smart home arsenal.

If you're in the market for a smart gardening solution that can help you take your outdoor space to the next level, we highly recommend considering the Eve Aqua. With its ability to learn and adapt over time, it's an investment that will pay dividends for years to come. You can pick up your own Eve Aqua at the link below, in the description. We'd love to hear about your experiences with this device in the comments section, so be sure to share your thoughts and feedback.

For those looking for a comprehensive resource on Apple products, we recommend checking out our price guide. It's updated daily and features the latest deals and discounts on all things Apple. Be sure to follow us on social media, where you'll find exclusive content, tips, and insights into the world of smart home technology. Until next time, stay smart and keep on gardening!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enElgato Eve aqua is one of the first if not the first smart homekit water controller to hit the market welcome everyone it is Andrew here for Apple Insider and we're going to check out how you can easily automate your watering with the eve aqua L gonto make some really awesome home kit products we've reviewed a bunch of them between the eve button the eve degree the eve room there's motion sensors there's a lot going on but there have been very few movements as far as watering system goes or home gate we saw a few earlier this year and CES but this is I think maybe one of the first to actually hit the market and be available for sale the idea is by attaching device like the eve aqua to your outdoor spigot you can control it from your phone turn it on and off set it for a certain amount of time or completely schedule it and don't worry about it if it's close enough to your home and you have a home hub you can even control it remotely now you never have to worry about turning on a sprinkler system and forgetting to turn it off it will even calculate how much water you're going through so you can better understand your consumption and know how much it's costing you to water your lawn or your garden inside the box of the EVOC what you're gonna find the actual unit itself which is going to be pretty important you can find a few different instructions in getting started guides including a back up the home kit pairing code and then you're gonna find a couple of double-a batteries like all of elegante products this does run on batteries which makes it really easy so you don't have to ever worry about having it plugged in for something that runs outside and may not necessarily be near an outlet to begin with running on batteries is pretty important while we haven't had to test it as long and to see how long those batteries will actually last in real-world use we've got some pretty good battery life and of the other Elgato products that we should expect similar results here aside of the standard screw on you also have a little adapter depending on which hose you have makes it really easy to go between you also have a spare gasket just in case it something happens to the other one gets lost or it starts to leak to get started with the eve aqua it's pretty darn simple you simply open up the actual top of the unit and insert the two batteries then we're gonna go ahead and pair it to home cake I will say the actual setup process here was a bit weird it was kind of awkward trying to open this up to actually insert the batteries and inside it seems like has kind of a stock off-the-shelf battery compartment and it was a little bit difficult to really easily get them in there of course it has to stay pretty waterproof because this thing is meant to be outside it's got to be protected against UV rays got to protect against any water getting into the inside compartment where those batteries are housed once we had a little bit of fiddling around we were able to get those batteries in there and they do come out really easily thanks to that little ribbon that's put in place the actual battery insertion aside we actually really like the design of the Eve aqua it has that more modern looking metal aluminum and black exterior that we're seeing with the more recent El Gato products the original line were very plastic and had that white look now they all seem to have dumped to this aluminum and black and I definitely like it a lot better on the left hand side there is the home kit pairing code which you can use to pair with the home app and they're using the more modern QR version rather than the simple eight digits the back of the unit is a little bit rounded and has the serial number printed on there if you ever needed to get support for whatever reason then of course right up front is a physical button allowing you to actually turn the water on and off manually without having to use your phone at all so that way when you're outside you can just press that button it'll turn on water comes out press it again water turns off it's really really handy and honestly even easier than actually turning the spigot like you would normally have to do setting it up in Honka is also just as easy we're gonna open the home app Hey add accessory then scan that little QR code it pretty much immediately found the eve aqua and then we were able to associate it with a room in our case we're gonna put this on our patio garden we're gonna tap on done in the top right hand corner and then venture to the rooms tab of the home app we're gonna go from dining room over to our patio where I just added the Eve aqua and you can see the little sprinkler icon and we can just tap to turn it on off 3d touch in to move that switch up or down or get more granular by jumping into the settings it did take a few moments obviously making a change for to actually send the command to the evil aqua but then we saw the whirring noise of the actual motor turning that water on and off unlike other home kit accessories the aqua actually has the ability to have more or less a timer built in so when it's turned on it'll automatically turn off after a set amount of time whether it's five minutes 15 20 or an hour once that's been set up you actually can see the countdown clock happening inside of the switch we need 3d touch in you can see the water is on in there's 8 minutes and 20 seconds left on our watering system this is a really good thing so you never over water your lawn or forget to turn this off so what about getting into the more advanced stuff completely scheduling it so you don't have to do anything that's all possible but to do it we have to use the eve app luckily the evap is by far one of the best apps out there or controlling homekit devices so here we have the eve aqua we've done a quick software update to give it a little bit more functionality like schedules you can see here it turned on or off turning on or off the schedules when it was last water the default duration and estimated consumption the schedules are what we really want to look at cuz that's one of the biggest advantages here not having to worry about it and scheduling this to work by itself by default you have a weekday view along the top and you can turn on or off any day that you like so perhaps we want to water this Monday Wednesday Friday and Sunday we want to water it twice a day so how about in the morning and then again in the evening for 20 minutes each time so here we have it we turn it on at 6:15 in the morning in water for 20 minutes and then at around 6:15 at night it again is going to turn off after 20 minutes however what's nice about using the elgato app is you have a lot more flexibility when it comes to how much time you're not tied just to 20 minutes you can actually increase that to a whole lot more we can see that here on our second program where you want to kind of do the inverse of the original days but instead of watering it twice a day on these off days we wanted water just for one time a day for again 20 minutes but you could see how we had a lot more options on this list than in the home app we can go all the way up to 4 hours for bigger lawns or other situations you might want those larger amounts of time and that is something you can do in the event that you can't do in the home app so there we have it there's our schedule on those four days a week it's Kaneko water twice morning at night and on the off days it's just gonna get watered once in the morning what's particularly nice about this is this is not always reliant on a constant connection with your home key devices this can actually run on the eve aqua itself it'll actually take that schedule and put it on the eve aqua then it just stays there and can run completely autonomous of your phone or your home hub this was a big concern that we had because as his outside you may not always have that constant connection and luckily this makes it work really really well when we look at the home app there are some odd limitations that we've noticed for instance you can't do everything in the home app that you can do with other accessories for instance if we run it one to run a specific automation setting it up in the home app instead you can't do that if I want to do it based on the time of day or when a button is pressed it doesn't let me it doesn't show up as an applicable accessory inside of my patio it's just not there the same thing happens when we try to create a scene that on that returns on the water we have the plus button tap on scene and create a new one when we have tap custom it again doesn't give us the option of adding the Eve aqua in the accessories pane hopefully that is just a temporary limitation and not something imposed by the aqua itself but from actual home kit and Apple luckily you can still do other things like using Siri just asking Siri to turn on the patio water or what are the flowers on the patio all those things will work and it works pretty well it works really quick and it automatically set that timer letting me know how long it it has you can adjust that using Siri as well so if I when they turn on the EVOC where for 30 minutes it knows the EVOC was on but it's going to adjust it down to 30 minutes instead then every time I go to turn on the Aqua on the patio it'll automatically use that 30 minutes instead of the hour that is previously set for now this is all well and good here in the studio but it's time to get outside and see how this works in the real world we set it up on our garden using two different methods and they're probably the most common methods that people are going to use first we attach it to our spigot then we attached a hose with one of two things on the end first we try with a sprinkler just allowing it to give a big large area for either a lawn or in this case a garden alternatively we also attached a soaker hose the soaker hose was kind of my favorite was really easy you don't even notice that's going on we tried this a few different times and it worked just as we expected it to in the sweltering heat wave that we've been currently experiencing this has been just a breath of fresh air it is so much easier to throw this thing on throw on the soaker hose or the sprinkler and let it do its thing in one of our days I've tested it actually started to rain so it was really easy for me just to get on my phone and turn off the schedule so that I wasn't unnecessarily watering my garden it wouldn't do that automatically based on the weather but it was still really easy for me to adjust with having to go out there and do a single thing the aqua is one of the first of a series of different faucet type devices that we've seen coming to home kit and we're really excited for it it works really well we had pretty much no qualms at all in our testing it worked just as we would want it to work it was fast it was responsive and best of all it allowed us to be completely hands-off with our gardening now we just have to run out when we actually need to weed things or pick all of our vegetables some smart home devices are a little bit hard to justify where they do almost the exact same thing as their offline counterparts but the Eve aqua is really really handy and I love it not only just to keep the lawn happy but our garden as well you can pick up and Eve aqua for yourself at the link below in the description and let's know what you think in the comments if you enjoyed this video like it and hit that subscribe button also check out a price guide which makes it extremely easy to find the best deals and Apple products updated daily be sure to follow us on social media and we'll see you in the next videoElgato Eve aqua is one of the first if not the first smart homekit water controller to hit the market welcome everyone it is Andrew here for Apple Insider and we're going to check out how you can easily automate your watering with the eve aqua L gonto make some really awesome home kit products we've reviewed a bunch of them between the eve button the eve degree the eve room there's motion sensors there's a lot going on but there have been very few movements as far as watering system goes or home gate we saw a few earlier this year and CES but this is I think maybe one of the first to actually hit the market and be available for sale the idea is by attaching device like the eve aqua to your outdoor spigot you can control it from your phone turn it on and off set it for a certain amount of time or completely schedule it and don't worry about it if it's close enough to your home and you have a home hub you can even control it remotely now you never have to worry about turning on a sprinkler system and forgetting to turn it off it will even calculate how much water you're going through so you can better understand your consumption and know how much it's costing you to water your lawn or your garden inside the box of the EVOC what you're gonna find the actual unit itself which is going to be pretty important you can find a few different instructions in getting started guides including a back up the home kit pairing code and then you're gonna find a couple of double-a batteries like all of elegante products this does run on batteries which makes it really easy so you don't have to ever worry about having it plugged in for something that runs outside and may not necessarily be near an outlet to begin with running on batteries is pretty important while we haven't had to test it as long and to see how long those batteries will actually last in real-world use we've got some pretty good battery life and of the other Elgato products that we should expect similar results here aside of the standard screw on you also have a little adapter depending on which hose you have makes it really easy to go between you also have a spare gasket just in case it something happens to the other one gets lost or it starts to leak to get started with the eve aqua it's pretty darn simple you simply open up the actual top of the unit and insert the two batteries then we're gonna go ahead and pair it to home cake I will say the actual setup process here was a bit weird it was kind of awkward trying to open this up to actually insert the batteries and inside it seems like has kind of a stock off-the-shelf battery compartment and it was a little bit difficult to really easily get them in there of course it has to stay pretty waterproof because this thing is meant to be outside it's got to be protected against UV rays got to protect against any water getting into the inside compartment where those batteries are housed once we had a little bit of fiddling around we were able to get those batteries in there and they do come out really easily thanks to that little ribbon that's put in place the actual battery insertion aside we actually really like the design of the Eve aqua it has that more modern looking metal aluminum and black exterior that we're seeing with the more recent El Gato products the original line were very plastic and had that white look now they all seem to have dumped to this aluminum and black and I definitely like it a lot better on the left hand side there is the home kit pairing code which you can use to pair with the home app and they're using the more modern QR version rather than the simple eight digits the back of the unit is a little bit rounded and has the serial number printed on there if you ever needed to get support for whatever reason then of course right up front is a physical button allowing you to actually turn the water on and off manually without having to use your phone at all so that way when you're outside you can just press that button it'll turn on water comes out press it again water turns off it's really really handy and honestly even easier than actually turning the spigot like you would normally have to do setting it up in Honka is also just as easy we're gonna open the home app Hey add accessory then scan that little QR code it pretty much immediately found the eve aqua and then we were able to associate it with a room in our case we're gonna put this on our patio garden we're gonna tap on done in the top right hand corner and then venture to the rooms tab of the home app we're gonna go from dining room over to our patio where I just added the Eve aqua and you can see the little sprinkler icon and we can just tap to turn it on off 3d touch in to move that switch up or down or get more granular by jumping into the settings it did take a few moments obviously making a change for to actually send the command to the evil aqua but then we saw the whirring noise of the actual motor turning that water on and off unlike other home kit accessories the aqua actually has the ability to have more or less a timer built in so when it's turned on it'll automatically turn off after a set amount of time whether it's five minutes 15 20 or an hour once that's been set up you actually can see the countdown clock happening inside of the switch we need 3d touch in you can see the water is on in there's 8 minutes and 20 seconds left on our watering system this is a really good thing so you never over water your lawn or forget to turn this off so what about getting into the more advanced stuff completely scheduling it so you don't have to do anything that's all possible but to do it we have to use the eve app luckily the evap is by far one of the best apps out there or controlling homekit devices so here we have the eve aqua we've done a quick software update to give it a little bit more functionality like schedules you can see here it turned on or off turning on or off the schedules when it was last water the default duration and estimated consumption the schedules are what we really want to look at cuz that's one of the biggest advantages here not having to worry about it and scheduling this to work by itself by default you have a weekday view along the top and you can turn on or off any day that you like so perhaps we want to water this Monday Wednesday Friday and Sunday we want to water it twice a day so how about in the morning and then again in the evening for 20 minutes each time so here we have it we turn it on at 6:15 in the morning in water for 20 minutes and then at around 6:15 at night it again is going to turn off after 20 minutes however what's nice about using the elgato app is you have a lot more flexibility when it comes to how much time you're not tied just to 20 minutes you can actually increase that to a whole lot more we can see that here on our second program where you want to kind of do the inverse of the original days but instead of watering it twice a day on these off days we wanted water just for one time a day for again 20 minutes but you could see how we had a lot more options on this list than in the home app we can go all the way up to 4 hours for bigger lawns or other situations you might want those larger amounts of time and that is something you can do in the event that you can't do in the home app so there we have it there's our schedule on those four days a week it's Kaneko water twice morning at night and on the off days it's just gonna get watered once in the morning what's particularly nice about this is this is not always reliant on a constant connection with your home key devices this can actually run on the eve aqua itself it'll actually take that schedule and put it on the eve aqua then it just stays there and can run completely autonomous of your phone or your home hub this was a big concern that we had because as his outside you may not always have that constant connection and luckily this makes it work really really well when we look at the home app there are some odd limitations that we've noticed for instance you can't do everything in the home app that you can do with other accessories for instance if we run it one to run a specific automation setting it up in the home app instead you can't do that if I want to do it based on the time of day or when a button is pressed it doesn't let me it doesn't show up as an applicable accessory inside of my patio it's just not there the same thing happens when we try to create a scene that on that returns on the water we have the plus button tap on scene and create a new one when we have tap custom it again doesn't give us the option of adding the Eve aqua in the accessories pane hopefully that is just a temporary limitation and not something imposed by the aqua itself but from actual home kit and Apple luckily you can still do other things like using Siri just asking Siri to turn on the patio water or what are the flowers on the patio all those things will work and it works pretty well it works really quick and it automatically set that timer letting me know how long it it has you can adjust that using Siri as well so if I when they turn on the EVOC where for 30 minutes it knows the EVOC was on but it's going to adjust it down to 30 minutes instead then every time I go to turn on the Aqua on the patio it'll automatically use that 30 minutes instead of the hour that is previously set for now this is all well and good here in the studio but it's time to get outside and see how this works in the real world we set it up on our garden using two different methods and they're probably the most common methods that people are going to use first we attach it to our spigot then we attached a hose with one of two things on the end first we try with a sprinkler just allowing it to give a big large area for either a lawn or in this case a garden alternatively we also attached a soaker hose the soaker hose was kind of my favorite was really easy you don't even notice that's going on we tried this a few different times and it worked just as we expected it to in the sweltering heat wave that we've been currently experiencing this has been just a breath of fresh air it is so much easier to throw this thing on throw on the soaker hose or the sprinkler and let it do its thing in one of our days I've tested it actually started to rain so it was really easy for me just to get on my phone and turn off the schedule so that I wasn't unnecessarily watering my garden it wouldn't do that automatically based on the weather but it was still really easy for me to adjust with having to go out there and do a single thing the aqua is one of the first of a series of different faucet type devices that we've seen coming to home kit and we're really excited for it it works really well we had pretty much no qualms at all in our testing it worked just as we would want it to work it was fast it was responsive and best of all it allowed us to be completely hands-off with our gardening now we just have to run out when we actually need to weed things or pick all of our vegetables some smart home devices are a little bit hard to justify where they do almost the exact same thing as their offline counterparts but the Eve aqua is really really handy and I love it not only just to keep the lawn happy but our garden as well you can pick up and Eve aqua for yourself at the link below in the description and let's know what you think in the comments if you enjoyed this video like it and hit that subscribe button also check out a price guide which makes it extremely easy to find the best deals and Apple products updated daily be sure to follow us on social media and we'll see you in the next video\n"