The lawn mowing robot is on – which one do you use and what do you say about it?

I'll jump in here since this topic will be relevant for me towards the end of the year... Lawn area approx. 350m² I don't think the Gardena Sileno life is bad. Would the 1000m² model be sufficient if you don't want to run the mower at night (because of hedgehogs, etc.)?

How "smart" is the Sileno? Without having looked into it further, but maybe someone here knows... Does the mower have an open API or something similar? Because I would like to turn off the mower (preferably via HTTP command?!) when opening the terrace doors (reed contact on KXN binary actuator) and turn it back on when closing the door? The reason is that I have a dog and the two should not be "active" in the garden at the same time ;-)

/Edit: I just saw that there is an integration for the Smart System in Home Assistant. Does the Smart System need WLAN throughout the entire garden, or how does the communication to the mower work?

The smart sileno live 750, 1000 and 1250 differ only in the maximum runtime. Motor, mower, battery, housing are all the same.

So, here is an update. Gardena Sileno life Smart for 1000sqm arrived today. The actual area is about 250sqm, so there should be enough buffer. Yesterday, I cut our lawn for the first time with an electric mower from the neighbor and it took about 1.5 hours. At least it was for free, as everything was covered by the photovoltaic system. Still, I am glad that we will have a helper in the future who takes care of this. I would be interested in your expertise again here. As mentioned, you remember it correctly, about 250sqm, U-shaped. The legs are about 2-2.30m wide and 8/5m long. Otherwise, we have an edge strip and a terrace at lawn level. No slope, everything is flat. The Robbie should park on the 8m leg. How would you lay the cables? Do you need photos to assess this better?

We installed the same mower as follows,
in front of vertical obstacles the 35cm B cable distance, (10-12cm remain uncut)
in front of flat mowing edges and terraces 10cm B cable distance, (is cut cleanly up to the edge).
The station as required, the guide cable must lead 2m straight out of the station and once across the garden, and at the furthest point clamp onto the boundary cable with a grease clamp

You can set up the station in one of the legs as written. I would place it outside the lawn area. This way no grass remains at the station. Lay the three cables under the plates.

Lay the search cable straight out of the station through the entire leg, drive once in a curve through your main area, and straight to the end of the other leg. Please leave a small loop when laying the boundary wire at this point. You will need some spare cable to connect it to the search cable.

Depending on how wide your mowing edges are and whether it bothers you how far the robot goes onto your terrace, you can lay the boundary wire directly at the edge.

The lawn should be short when laying it. Press the cable flat with your finger and fasten it with the nails. Better to use too many nails or buy more cheaply afterwards. There is nothing more annoying than getting caught on the wire or that it stands up in one place and is cut by the Tobi itself.

In the last few days, I installed the cables for our large mower robot (435x awd). In the end, it was 640 meters... At least the station shows no error. Tomorrow I will have the mower do a test run.

if you want it “smart” have a look at Roboconnect. It’s associated with loss of warranty, though. Otherwise, some robots work with Alexa and with ifttt. Gardena requires the gateway for coverage. Husqvarna has an integrated SIM card with lifetime service. That is very practical. I have built a smart home. So far, I have not connected my robotic mowers. But I don’t have a use case like you.