I live in Germany (near Frankfurt so about 50 degrees latitude) and have a rather tiny lawn. It doesn't get a lot of light, especially in the winter, and frankly it rains a lot here and the patch is often wet. We have rolled out grass twice, but in both cases it turned to mostly clover and moss within about 3-4 years. I am not sure what the drainage is, nor do I really know how much light it gets.
I would like to have nice grass, and it is really very small, maybe 5x20 meters so I can afford to give it a fair amount of care. But I am not really sure what, and am not really sure what I have to deal with.
So my question is: how should I start to profile my lawn, maybe measure the sunlight and moisture (and anything else?) over a year or so to decide what kind of grass will grow best, and if installing a drainage system of some sort is necessary.
Should I get some Arduino soil moisture measuring devices? Maybe some light sensing ones too? Or are there simpler methods I don't know about?