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Contributing

Contributions are welcome — this is a hobby project and there is plenty of room to help.

Hardware for testing (the most helpful contribution!)

The bridge is generic, but it can only be verified against the GARDENA devices we physically have (soil sensors + a SILENO mower). By far the most useful thing you can contribute is access to other GARDENA smart-system hardware so it can be mapped, tested and integrated:

  • water control / valves, smart power plugs, pressure pumps, other sensors or mowers, …
  • Lend or donate such a device, or help test and capture its data layer on your own gateway so the mapping can be added.

Open an issue describing the device (model — keep any SGTIN/serial redacted) and we will coordinate.

Other ways to help

  • Test reports from your own setup (which devices, what worked / didn't). See the troubleshooting section in the add-on docs for what to include — and redact secrets.
  • Bug reports and fixes, documentation improvements, translations.
  • Build / test experiments on the cross-compile toolchain.

Reporting a problem — and the data that helps us fix it

The biggest blocker to fixing a bug is not being able to see what your gateway sees. The bridge runs locally on your gateway, so a good report lets us reason about your exact setup. When something doesn't work, please open an issue with:

  • Versions: the add-on version (shown in the add-on UI footer), your Home Assistant version, and the gateway firmware version.
  • What you expected vs. what happened — which device, which value, and whether it's Matter, MQTT or both.
  • The bridge log: journalctl -u gardena-matter-bridge -n 200 --no-pager — the bridge's own service log on the gateway; it shows device discovery and errors.
  • For MQTT problems: whether saving the MQTT settings succeeded, and — if MQTT is on — the discovered topics and one sample payload, e.g. mosquitto_sub -h <broker> -t 'gardena/#' -v.

Redact secrets first. Device IDs, serial numbers / SGTINs, the sticker password, pairing/setup codes and broker passwords must be removed or masked before you paste anything.

Help support a new GARDENA device (capture its data layer)

The bridge is generic: it reads each device's schema and live values straight from the self-describing LsDL filesystem that lemonbeatd keeps at /var/lib/lemonbeatd/ on the gateway (see the technical docs). That directory is exactly what we need to map a device we don't own yet — water control / valves, pressure pumps, smart power plugs, other sensors or mowers.

If you have such a device and SSH access to your gateway, the most useful thing you can send is a redacted snapshot of that directory tree while the device is paired and reporting:

# 1) structure + file names (no values yet)
find /var/lib/lemonbeatd -type f | sort

# 2) the contents, so we can see the schema and how values are encoded
#    — redact every serial / SGTIN / address before sharing

Attach it to an issue describing the device model. With that we can add the mapping and hand you a build to re-test — and you will have unlocked that device for everyone who owns the same one.

Please note

  • Never post device IDs, passwords, pairing/setup codes or keys in issues/PRs — redact them.
  • The bridge installs into the gateway's writable overlay (no flashing, reversible via the uninstall scripts), but it remains a hobby project: no warranty, use at your own risk.
  • Apple Home and Google Home were not tested — treat other Matter controllers as experimental.
  • Please back technical discussion with a source (command output, repo link, commit).

Documentation language

The docs are bilingual (English / German). English is the canonical source — make content changes in the English file first (docs/<page>.md), then follow up in the German one (docs/<page>.de.md). The German version may lag briefly.