Rain BirdARC8 App-Based Indoor/Outdoor Smart Irrigation WiFi Timer/Controller, 8-Zone/Station, EPA WaterSense Certified, Compatible with AlexaWaterSense

Couldn't be happier, it does what it says. My favorite feature is Delay Watering. You select one of three percentage of precipitation 70%, 80% or 90% and it delays watering accordingly. Only problem I found during installation is the wifi connectivity. All you have to do is make sure you only enable 2.4ghrz band on your wifi router, access point, or extender. Make sure to disable 5ghrz and 6ghrz bands during installation and once your installation complete, you enable those bands afterwords.

Why did you pick this product vs others?:I used this to replace a 20 year old rainbird controller. I didn't experience any of the connectivity issues described in other reviews. This is also half the price of other competitors offerings. Good product at a fair price.

I’ve never installed or upgraded an irrigation controller before, and the amount of wires on my old one was a bit intimidating, but it was actually super easy! Yes, the app in the instructions was not the right one (There’s a 2.0 version), but it showed me how to get the right one, and the firmware also needed to be updated as soon as I got it connected to my WiFi (2.4 only), but after all that it was a breeze to set up programming and do a test run in the app. The Alexa connectivity doesn’t seem great, I was able to link the system easily, but it’s not working very well (or at all at this point). Still, very happy with my purchase and the upgrade this is over my old Rain Bird.

Here's an update from May 21, 2024… The Rainbird wireless water system is still going strong. I've not had any problems. It's so convenient to be able to program it either in the house or across the country as weather dictates. Regarding the wireless connectivity, I've maybe had a couple of times where it's lost connection but it's usually for maybe a few minutes… But the most important thing is that, it still continues with your program. And especially even if you've lost power it still picks back up with its memory and you're still on your installed program so your plants survive in the summer. Regarding other reviewers saying the unit loses connectivity with the wireless network, I've got mine installed of course outside but it's on the same wall as the wireless router, which is up on the second story so probably about 25 to 30 feet from router to the unit. I've got OK connection probably about three bars, but it seems to be just fine. So I might suggest that of course establish with your phone that where you're going to install the controller you have fairly decent wireless connectivity. And at least in my experience if it does drop a connection, it does come back quickly and doesn't require any rebooting, etc. And of course, if you were to install a wireless repeater near the unit that would mitigate any connection drops.I like how easy it is to run a program in manually… And of course it being on the Wi-Fi system I can access it anywhere in the world. Last summer my sprinklers went off for a week while we were traveling… You can imagine how difficult that is on plants in Phoenix Arizona, where we had days that we were up at 110F. Most of the plants survived but it was a warning to me with the $10,000 worth of landscaping we put in two years ago that I needed a way to be able to monitor and change my watering while we are traveling. I also purchased at the same time, a flume water meter that measures exactly how much my home uses right at the meter from the city. So when I run the watering system, I know exactly how many gallons each station is using. But the amazing thing is is that the Rain Bird does not lose its programming if power is cut off, so it will not stop watering, if for some reason the Wi-Fi connection is lost. Additionally, as soon as Wi-Fi comes back on, it will automatically re-connect. I've seen some reviews of other products where people were complaining about losing the Wi-Fi and then losing their program or the system not running because Wi-Fi had been lost. I searched for almost 2 years looking at different products, and this one seemed to be the most reliable. And in my experience in the last four months, this is worked flawlessly. Oh, I forgot to mention that is so easy to hook up… That's provided you already have an old school watering system… I disconnected our 30 year old orbit, water controller, and put this in 10 minutes.

I had a perfectly good working Hunter X-Core sprinkler controller which was easy to configure & worked fine, but didn't have WiFi support. I'm lazy, & didn't want to go outside to change settings or pause the controller, especially in the rain. So, I bought the ARC8. Since some people have had problems with WiFi, I first connected the ARC8 to just power at the intended installation site, before connecting the zone wiring. Rain Bird recommends that somewhere, so you can find out if you have a good WiFi connection before proceeding with the zone wiring. They also recommend taking a picture of your old controller's wiring. Both good ideas.I searched for & installed the Rain Bird controller app on Google. Leave it to Google to only list the OLD, OUTDMODED Rain Bird app, but NOT the NEW one! Google also offered unrelated apps for my search, to please other app makers. Apparently Google has never heard of using AI to give reasonable choices in their product searches, like they do on their web searches. (Amazon product searches do this too.) Greedy **** **** ******s !!!Anyway, I spent 1/2 hour in the rain trying to configure the WiFi in the OLD app, to no avail. Then I found the new app ("Rain Bird 2.0"), & installed it. I set up my Rain Bird account (which did not appear possible in the old app). I have no idea why the new app couldn't find my WiFi SSID after a couple minutes of waiting (in the rain), so I had to enter the SSID manually.It would have been nice to set up the controller BEFORE upgrading the firmware, so that I could go inside out of the rain. But no, it wanted to do the upgrade immediately. Then the app just sat there, indicating that it had lost contact with the controller for a couple minutes, before the firmware upgrade started (in the rain). After several minutes, the upgrade completed. The app indicated a signal strength of -58dBm which is excellent.The rest was easy. I mounted the ARC8 at my intended site & connected up the zone wiring from the picture I took, & went inside. Configuring my 7 zones & 3 programs in the Rain Bird app to be like I had with the Hunter controller was easy.The documented way to temporarily disable a program doesn't work. To work around this (as well as provide a program backup capability) is to first create a template for each program you want (including alternate programs). Then copy them as needed to your controller.Suggestions for users: Save the picture of your zone wiring in the app, where it allows you to save pictures of your zones.Suggestions for Rain Bird:#1: Adjust the colors in your WiFi icon in the app, so that good WiFi signals appear as green: -75dBm or lower should be red; -65 to -75 dBm is orange; -65dBm or better is green. -58dBm is excellent.#2: Have a separate place in the app to save a picture of the zone wiring diagram.#3: Why the restriction on ANY non-alphanumeric characters in the zone description??? Why do I have to spell out "and" between two yard areas in my description. when a simple "+/,-#" makes for better & more compact text???UPDATE: After 2.5 weeks, I decided to change the SSID in my WiFi access point, which means I have to replace the WiFi credentials in the ARC8. I spent 2 hours trying to do that, & never making the updated connection. I then reset the ARC8 & deleted it from my account, & then tried to add it again, getting a repeated error from Bluetooth of "too many requests." After another 2 hours of trying stuff, packed up the ARC8 for return, & reinstalled the Hunter controller. I need a reliable controller. This SHOULD be simple!

Doublecheck the weather app for your area. Isn’t always accurate.Controller is great, easy to install