Rachio WiFi Smart Sprinkler Controller (8-Zone Irrigation Remote Control) – App-Based Scheduling, Local Weather Intelligence, Rain Skips, Easy DIY InstallWaterSense

I debated for a long time before purchasing this product due to the mix of very strong reviews — both positive and negative. After using this unit for about 2 weeks, and experiencing a lot of weather in the North TX area, I’m writing to speak to both sides and offer my observations in hopes that it will help others who find themselves in the same dilemma that I did.First, let me say that this is an awesome product. Having worked in technology, and specifically software engineering and product development for 15-20 years, I truly appreciate the simplicity of the product. The entire setup process — from opening the box to having water running in our yard — lasted maybe 10-15 minutes max, and it was only that high because I spent about 5 minutes creating a label on our label maker to “mark” the zones on the outside of the unit. Some might call this overkill… my wife calls it particular… but nevertheless. Everything from the design, to engineering, to the magnetic cover, the software in the app (we use iOS)… it was simple and the experience was like opening an Apple product and having it “just work”.Second, let me speak to the setup options, since I think this is where most folks that write negative reviews get hung up. There are basically two paths to choose from, and there doesn’t really seem to be a middle ground. One path is to basically set it up as a “dumb controller” — meaning, think of what your parents probably had 20-30 years ago in their garage. You set a schedule, it is fixed, and it basically runs on certain days and times that you set. If this is your preference, then save your money and buy a different controller. There are way cheaper options on the market, and this product is going to be overkill for a schedule that simple.The other option, which is why I suspect most of you are probably interested or reading this in the first place, is what this system is really designed to do. You can set it up as a “smart controller” — meaning, you set a base schedule, along with some data points specific to your location, and these are fed into an algorithm, along with real-time weather information from your area, and it basically adjusts “on demand”. For example, if it rained more than a certain amount (you can set the threshold), or if rain is even expected in your area in the next 24 hours, it will skip a cycle. Or if it detects winds (again, you can set a threshold), it might adjust the time. Same thing for temperature below freezing, soil moisture, etc. There are a lot of options and you can customize which ones per zone… for example, one of our zones is a dedicated drip hose, so the wind alert doesn’t really matter but the soil moisture does. The neat thing is you can set multiple “schedules” and target different settings for each. The only thing to be aware of, is one of the settings is “time of day”… so if you have multiple schedules for the same day, and they are both set to “finish before sunrise”, for example, you might run into weird situations. We get around this by alternating days (or you can set a “fixed” time of day for one). Just a heads up for anyone running more complex schedules across zones.The “smart controller” setup (as I call it) is a little more work up front, and if you do it wrong, I can totally see how it will mess up your yard. However, it’s not all that difficult, and once it’s setup as intended, it’s totally worth the money. Based on our water usage, and the unpredictability of weather in the North TX area, I think this unit will pay for itself in a matter of a couple months. In the past 14 days alone, it has already saved us from running 4 different cycles for who knows how many hundreds of gallons each time. Again, this means that you actually have to do some work up front to make sure it is setup correctly. It does require a little bit of knowledge of your soil type and the ability not to over-estimate slopes. For example, just because your yard is graded (to get water away from your house) does not mean that the slope is “extreme”. All of the factors go into the algorithm… so if you get it wrong, that is not Rachio’s fault, even though it sounds like that is where most of the negative reviews stem from. It’s just like anything else with data… garbage in = garbage out. If you put good data in, then the results can be remarkable.The only downside, if there was one, is I could not get this to work with our existing rain sensor or HomeKit. The rain sensor threw false positives, and once I figured that out (thanks to Rachio alerting us "why" the system did not run), I just unplugged it and it's one less thing to have to worry about. For HomeKit, with a background in software engineering, I’ve looked into this technically and this appears to be an issue with Apple’s integration rather than Rachio. Practically, all this means is I cannot say “Hey Siri, turn on our sprinklers for 10 minutes". Would that be impressive to show off? Absolutely. But with the intelligence already built into Rachio's software, there’s a good chance I’ll never need to do anything manually ever again.In summary… this is an excellent product, but it is not for everyone. I do wish there was a review like this a few weeks back so I did not have to spend time second guessing myself before we purchased this product. All in all, this is a solid product, and I would highly recommend it… as long as you have some time to set it up correctly. I hope this helps!Justin

After 15 years with an older sprinkler controller we upgraded to this product. At 199.00 it has almost paid for itself in one month. Our summer water bills were 200.00 prior to installing and now in the 60.00 range. Unlike the old system that used a plastic water gage in the yard (and never worked), the weather monitoring capability of this unit WORKS!!! If you are comfortable with smart home appliances and have a sprinkler controller that is 10+ years old you got to upgrade to one of these. Unbelievable how far this is advanced over the simple timer systems.

I'm technical and adept at installing things, but not an expert on watering systems by any means. I kid you not, I had this up and watering in 15 minutes after unboxing, and that included removing the old controller. The instructions were simple to follow and I just went for it. I've also done a lot of basic level consumer home automation installs like light switches and smart plugs, and this was easily the smoothest and quickest adoption process I've ever experienced, so kudos to the Rachio team for their work on that.It's rare you find such a polished product. I'm a big fan of this company now, they really know what they are doing.I haven't explored every option in the software quite yet, but so far it's intuitive and works well. Keep in mind I came from a manual system before this, so I'm easily wowed, but I do not overlook annoyances or brain-dead implementations that seem so common with the "let's make everything internet enabled!" devices. This is definitely not one of those, this is how it should be done.I was surprised to see the option to share out access to your system to someone else. This was a nice touch and they really thought it through with the levels of permissions.You've got a longtime fan now Rachio, I hope you don't get gobbled up by rainbird or go the way of your competitors.

My Rachio Gen 1 decided it was time to retire so I ordered this Gen 3 as a replacement. I took the time to label the wiring when I setup the Gen 1 so installing the Gen 3 took me less than 5 minutes which included connecting to wifi. I didn't see a way to copy my old schedule over to the new controller so I just set it up manually. Again another 5 minute task. If you want a controller that is reliable and easy to use this is the controller for you. Rachio's weather feature is spot on and skips watering or adds time to stations based on how hot the day will be. Trying to decide? Just get this controller you won't regret it.

Easy to install and set-up. I have it linked to our local weather and it monitors the weather forecast to determine if it should skip a watering cycle or not. This is nice BUT it dosn’t always rain when it says it should so you have to monitor it and override the “skip” if the rain doesn’t materialize. I do like the app and find it fairly easy to use. Seems there are many options. I’m quite happy with it so far.

I liked the hints on instructions, the one about taking a photo of the old system to keep track where all the small wires go was spot on. I had a problem hooking it up to the wi fi, I tried multiple times and gave it up for that day and the next morning did the exact same thing as the night before and it synched. Once it was synched it was easy to do the rest. It gives a lot of watering options which I liked. I am looking forward to seeing how it does over the next few years.