These connections let you turn your sprinklers on with a voice command or have them turn off when you open your front door, so you don’t get wet on the way to collect the mail. “If you compare this technology to a homeowner who sets their controller one time and doesn’t touch it the rest of the year then we see where these controllers do make adjustments,” said Swanson. I’ve been a writer and editor for 20 years and have spent the past decade trying to live a greener lifestyle (and writing about it). Read the report, which contains a detailed breakdown of how each controller operated in different landscapes, here (PDF). It basically ran every day, unless rain was in the forecast, in which case it would skip waterings for two to three days around the rain event. Free shipping. We installed each device in the covered porch of a 1960s home in Charleston, South Carolina. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. If every home in the US that had a sprinkler system followed suit, that could save 120 billion gallons each year, not to mention $435 million in water costs. There is the option to choose your own weather station and view basic watering history, but there are no water-use reports. The app also tells you when it’s offline; this is key because with a device that’s so easy to set and forget, if it lost power, you might not know until your garden suffered damage. No data is shared, sold. Smart controllers are for use only with underground sprinkler systems that have wired controllers; they will not work with battery-operated controllers or hose timers. The wording can get a bit clunky, leaving lots of room for miscommunication: “Alexa, ask Rachio to start zone four for 15 minutes,” or “Alexa, ask Rachio to stop watering.” We found the HomeKit integration to be the most seamless. Scotts offers compatible soil-moisture sensors, but they weren’t available for our review. It provides necessary … Home Control. If your town or city has a program like this, it could be an option over a smart controller—assuming that the only reason you want a smart controller is for water savings, not for the added convenience and smart-home integrations these devices also offer. Comparatively, all updates, including HomeKit, have come to the RainMachine HD unit we’ve been testing since 2017. We really like B-hyve’s simple on-device control—its designers packed a lot of functionality into a single LED-lit button. Automated sprinkler systems water the lawn when you're on vacation, at work or asleep so you can focus on other things. Rely on our team to make sure your system … A smart lock lets you go key-free and control your door from afar. General Design Requirements for Sprinkler System. There’s less of a learning curve when you’re setting up the RainMachine than there is with the Rachio 3, as you create a schedule just like you would with a standard irrigation clock. Consider upgrading your sprinkler system with a smart controller. But if you want to dig deeper, it’s less intuitive. You can, however, find compatible enclosures, and Orbit offers a model that comes with one (see the Competition). 0. Rachio data is stored in a virtual private cloud using. There are no on-device controls, and this device works only with Amazon Alexa and Siri Shortcuts. Soil moisture sensors, flow meters, catch cups, and other add-ons commonly offered with a smart controller can all help fine-tune how the system reacts, but they are not essential to the core functionality of the controllers (see Soil-moisture sensors). About Reliable Sprinkler Reliable Manufacturing Headquarters, Liberty, SC. In our testing, we found some of these integrations offered real value and weren’t just gimmicky. In all other cases, we would recommend the Rachio 3 because of its simplicity, ease of use, and more-precise forecasting. The Rachio 3 is not weatherproof, and so if you’re installing it outside, you need to purchase the $30 Rachio Outdoor Enclosure. Based on this, we evaluated how each controller responded to changes in weather during testing and whether it allowed us to select a weather station versus a data source chosen by the controller. RainMachine has almost as many smart-home integrations as Rachio, including Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, SmartThings (using a device handler), and IFTTT (If This Then That), and it has an API for control on a local network. Smart smoke alarms send alerts to your phone if a fire or carbon monoxide leak occurs. Also, it has a big plus in its favor: We are still testing the original review unit we received in 2017, and all of the features and upgrades RainMachine has received in the interim have come to this device, including HomeKit compatibility. The system … The B-hyve is small, effective, and inexpensive, but it lacks some key features. The EPA is actively working on a requirement for controllers that rely on a soil-moisture sensor, so we may see more of these integrated into smart controllers in the future and will reassess at that point. According to the National Fire Protection Association, a properly installed fire sprinkler system can reduce property damages due to a fire by 69%, and has lowered the rate of fire deaths by 83%. It’s also the smallest device we tested, able to fit neatly in the palm of your hand. The A, B, C, D system it uses may be familiar to irrigation experts, but it’s just a confusing holdover from basic clocks and not useful for the average homeowner. We definitely felt a tinge of eco-smugness when we saw our neighbor’s sprinklers going off just before a rainstorm. If you find the confusing dials and buttons or tiny LCD screen on your existing irrigation clock frustrating to use, you’ll love the ease of setting your sprinkler schedules with a smartphone app or on your computer. An excellent web portal lets you tinker with your system’s settings from the comfort of a larger screen. Unlike all of the other models we tested, the RainMachine doesn’t need to connect to the cloud to function, and it depends on the internet only for weather updates. We turned on all of the offered smart features, including Smart Cycle, a cycle-and-soak feature that splits watering into multiple shorter cycles to prevent runoff, and Weather Intelligence, which includes climate skip (watering times skipped based on recent, past, and future weather conditions), rain skip (which skips watering before or after rain), and freeze skip (which prevents watering when a ground freeze is expected, so your plants don’t freeze). The Gro Controller by Scotts (formerly Blossom) supports up to eight zones, is simple to set up, and is one of the least expensive options. Wirecutter takes security and privacy issues seriously. An irrigation controller is not something you should upgrade every year, and even though the additional functionality of, say, HomeKit isn’t essential to the device’s operation, it’s still frustrating for users who don’t want to upgrade. The first professional grade Rain Bird sprinkler system designed for homeowner installation, it provides everything you need to keep your lawn green season after season while saving water. For example, one day it told us, “Your device is in auto rain delay for 24 hours” and “Your next watering will be in 12 days.”. You can even set different schedules for each of your system’s zones. The printed circuit board serves three distinct functions. Setup took about 30 minutes, including having the app walk us through taking pictures and answering questions about each zone—from the types of plants and soil to slope, sun exposure, and nozzle-head types. It is WaterSense-labeled, and its software and app are the same as those for our budget pick. These systems are designed and installed as prescribed in the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems … The Orbit B-hyve XR is a slick, higher-end version of our budget pick that should offer a greater wireless range for bigger yards. It’s WaterSense-certified and has a compatible solar-powered soil-moisture sensor that also records temperature (this was not available for testing). There are a few missing features, however, including no optimization of watering based on plant and soil types and no suggested runtimes (the company tells us these are in the works, along with WaterSense-certification). We tested NxEco, which is too much like a standard clock and too complicated to use for us to recommend. B-hyve works reliably with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to control your sprinklers with voice. Introducing the new ST8-WiFi Smart Irrigation Timer. And we also tested BlueSpray, which might suit very specific needs, such as if someone has a golf course in their backyard. Plus, because Control’s soil-moisture sensor works over a radio frequency, it had excellent range in our test garden and continued to dictate the watering schedule even if the internet went down. It also has a built-in plant library with more than 1,000 common species, so your … It includes an optional delay for wells and pumps, can run up to three zones concurrently, has useful analytics comparing runtime with the actual weather, and an activity log. (The app also has a tab for Rachio’s new lawn-care subscription service, Thrive. Updated hourly. Our test yard is not a controlled lab site, and though we enjoy the convenience and features of smart controllers, for a scientific perspective we turned to Guy Fipps and Charles Swanson, of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. An informative water-usage screen shows you an estimate of how much water was applied to each zone both monthly and daily. The Rachio 3 (available in versions for eight or 16 zones) provides straightforward plug-and-play functionality for a beginner, but it can be fine-tuned with advanced settings to satisfy a master gardener too. It works with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit. (The Gardena system is also not WaterSense-certified and works only with soil sensors. Spruce Irrigation, 16 Zone Wifi Sprinkler Controller. We let the Rachio 3 set our schedule, choosing Flexible Daily, which updates every day based on estimated soil moisture. Easy-to-apply lawn treatments (made from natural nutrients) and a convenient expandable hose work in tandem with the Rachio Smart Sprinkler … There's a problem loading this menu right now. The B-hyve’s smartphone app does a good job of walking you through setting up each zone and creating a smart schedule. The only other way to get this type of accurate hyperlocal forecasting is by buying and installing a personal weather station; these range in price from $150 to several thousand dollars and require careful maintenance to remain accurate, according to experts we spoke with. And even though it has all of the alerts we think are necessary, the offline notification has never worked in our testing. Although we really liked this set-it-and-forget-it approach, it does require a fair amount of blind trust, since you can’t tweak or change the autonomous schedule at all. If you’ve got a bigger lawn than most, or one that’s a bit hilly and hard … Wireless soil-moisture sensors we’ve tested previously have been unreliable and expensive—often dropping off the network, rendering them useless. 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