RainMachine

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I’ve had the device for over 2 years. It might have been really useful but falls short due to very poor scheduling algorithms. On the surface, they claim to take into account a multitude of parameters like rain amount, evaporation rate, and other factors affecting moisture retention. In reality, the scheduling makes no sense. I’m not sure if basic sanity checks were ever done, let alone comprehensive performance testing. Today we got 2.3 inches of rain as recorded by the connected rain gauge. For whatever reason, instead of using the actual measurement they somehow came up with 1.5 in of rain. Even with that number, one expects that watering should be paused for a while. But no - I have scheduled 150% watering for tomorrow, and 100% two days after that. I had to deactivate the program to prevent this insanity. In summary - if you need a device that you can manually control with your phone it will do the trick. If you want to rely on some “smart” scheduling you are out of luck. Congratulations - you bought yourself an irrigation system remote! This is why I give some credit to the app - not a bad remote and has some graphs too... LOL

I have pretty much automated everything in my home and this has to be my favorite and most used. The device is easy to install and the app is very easy even for my kids to understand and use. No more spending a half an hour in the basement trying to change my schedule because it’s getting hotter and no more stupid wireless rain sensor messing up my watering schedule. I connected zone to my garden drip system this year and my garden has never looked better. It’s really cool that I can stand in my garden and if it needs more water I can just press a button on my phone. Just yesterday my landscapers wanted to put fertilizer on the lawn but needed me to water it first and I was able to do that from work. The best part is being able to stop watering when I want to take a shower and the water pressure is low because the sprinklers are on. The only problem is that the snooze button does not work for programs that are actively on....if they add that function I would give it 5 stars and paid more money! So pause button and skip zone button need to be in your next update...Thanks

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The concept is great regarding the opportunity to remotely control the lawn watering system - but the WiFi built into the unit is not reliable. All other automated WiFi connections within the home are working fine, but the Rainmaker panel can not hold a WiFi signal. I have had the local cable company who services our WiFi come out several times and the unit continues to fail holding a continual WiFi signal. It is worth the effort to research other similar products within the competitive market before purchasing Rainmaker. They have a 2.8 rating out of 5. That should be concerning to you if making a decision to purchase a unit such as this. I bought Rainmaker without doing my homework and troubles me for not following through on other similar products. Especially with the money i spent for the unit and installation. Best of luck to all! Also the amount of watering this year from the unit saturated my yard and now have water in my cellar. The sump pump was dry for years unit I had this unit installed. It’s a false sense of security and I will eventually go back to a manual watering panel. The developers are dedicated to fix all the bugs, and intentions are honorable, but in the mean time with all the bata fixes and more, my unit is not working! I bought it purposely because I travel and wanted to monitor my sprinkler system from remote!

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This is nice when it works. Currently it is watering my yard 200%. I have no idea why but it is turning my yard into a mud pit. I even turned it off for a week. I mean we just lived through Harvey and got 40 + inches of rain and my yard is clay. I've been using this for a year and only the last 2 times it was scheduled to run 100% has it run 200, but it's making this "smart" controller rather dumb as it tells me I've save negative amounts of water. My other issues- I'm not sure where it gets it weather data. A week and a half ago it said we got .24 inches or rain. We got at least 2. The streets were flooding. This was the day before it watered 200% for the first time. Huh? Needs improvement.

This app runs the rainmachine controller well. The on/off capabilities of the mobil apps are useful for working on the system and also provide a lot of information. However, the apps do not provide the actual water used when you have the flow rates programmed in. The only place that is available is in the web interface. The apps only provide a relative “Water saved” calculation based on a percentage of time the system is run (less than 100%). The actual water used should be, I feel, an easy to see and predominant point in every interface.