Rachio - 16-zone 2nd Generation Smart Sprinkler Controller - White

Super simple to install. Marked the wires/zone from the old controller. Three screws to put on the wall. Reset the wires. Use the app to first connect to the controller, connect the controller to the internet (using wifi - router is in a back room, not close to the garage). Run through the setup and now control everything from the app. You can control the basics manually if needed.

The only thing that was annoying is the molded clip on the cover broke off so I have to use zip tie to hold it on

Great product. Does exactly as advertised. Took less than 20 minutes to install and have up and running. Took longer to find the instructions on how to pair it with echo then it did to actually pair it with echo. Have made a few calls to support. Not for any glitches or installation problems but just to find out how to accomplish something. My only issue is the operating manual was not written as user friendly as the instruction manual.

I have 11 zones, 3 are drip. Last year I paid $750 to water the yard. I have had the system installed about a month. My usage to date is running about 50% less than last year. In the past they yard always over watered. Since installing the system I have had no over watering issues. The install was very easy, programing was also easy, tech support is always there and ready to help. How it controls the watering is amazing. Not only does it communicate with the local weather stations it also waters in cycles reducing my runoff to zero. All this is communicated by email and the history is kept in your account. Major improvement over my Hunter Pro C system.

I've had the Rachio 16 zone, 2nd generation Smart Sprinkler Controller for a few weeks now. It is working as advertised and I am a happy customer so far. My needs were simple. I wanted to be able to turn-on any sprinkler on any specific zone manually from time-to-time in addition to having the regular weekly schedule, and I also wanted to know that the sprinklers came-on when they were supposed to as scheduled. I was also hoping to be able to clearly label every station in the app so I don't always have to look for my cheat sheet when I was working in the backyard. Well, Rachio does all that and many other things and so far has done a great job. I like the reports and notifications, and I like being able to manually turn any of the stations on from any where. Physical installation of Rachio was super easy. It took me longer to remove the old controller and document all the stations! Getting the app configured and scheduling all the stations was also super easy. The recommendations on the length of time to water each station needed changes as the app was suggesting very long duration for some stations, and not enough for others. But that is probably because I did not pick the exact right type of soil, plant, sprinkler type, etc. So most likely not the fault of the app. Next step is to add a few rain sensors and maybe some day when we actually get rain in California will know if they work! :-)

I had a commercial quality mechanical timer / controller installed when our sprinkler system was put in about 20 years ago. It served it's purpose, but was finally showing its age this past year. I was also in the process of adding smart home features around the house, so the timing was good. So far - 3 Google Home's, 4 Chromecast audio's and 2 Chromecasts, 2 Nest thermostats and 6 Nest smoke detectors, along with 4 Google WiFi pucks in a standard mesh configuration. I started researching smart sprinkler controllers last autumn, and planned to be ready in the spring to replace the old mechanical controller with one. Rachio made it to the top of the list in virtually all the serious reviews I read. Some others are almost neck and neck with it -- and admittedly it might be nice to have more of a visual display and control panel on the unit itself, but overall Rachio struck me as the one to pick. Installation was a breeze. When I was taking down the old unit, I labeled all the wires with their zone number (I have 10 active zones, so I got the 16 zone Rachio controller). I wound up shortening the controller cable harness a bit, as I didn't need the last extra foot of wire that had been stuffed in the open space in the old controller box. I stripped the leads and popped them in, including a lead for the master valve (my system has one -- some do, some don't - this is optional as needed). I installed the Android app on my phone, fired up the controller, and it only took a few minutes for the app to connect to the controller (bluetooth initially) and for me to configure the controller to connect to my Wi-Fi setup. I had already made sure that the Wi-Fi propagated by my Google WiFi setup reached well into the garage (where the controller is mounted on the wall) - and beyond, so this was a breeze. It took me a bit of reading to understand how the zones are set up. Rachio needs to know (or make assumptions) about the type of nozzles you have in each zone, what kind of soil and plants you have in each, how much sun or shade each gets, etc. You also need to select a local weather station for the controller to talk to in order to fetch weather reports and forecasts. That was as far as i went. If you have the need and desire, you can wire in physical rain sensors, water flow sensors, and hook up multiple Rachio controllers to operate cooperatively for very large yards. In the end - I love it. There's a learning curve to getting it configured properly - but even if you use defaults, it's already better than any of the old "dumb" controllers in that it's aware of weather, temperature, rain, etc., and will adjust to compensate (unless you configure it not to!). There's a great online community, and Rachio has reps in the forums who participate very actively. Overall - excellent product, company and experience. I would recommend this in a heartbeat. Jon

I bought the Rachio 2nd generation 16 zone system since it was on sale and installed it while my wife was away since I like gadgets and home automation. For years, my wife has kept track of our lawn irrigation system and turned it off and on as needed based on the weather or how the yard looked. Although she was skeptical of the Rachio's utility, she travels more now and the lawn was not looking as good under my supervision. The Rachio has won my wife over since we don't have to worry about any manual adjustments now and our yard looks much better by getting only the needed amount of watering. The automatic rain skips have been quite useful and any desired manual override is easy from the either the website (used by my wife) or the iPhone app (used by myself). However, we only tested this feature to be familiar with this option since we haven't needed to perform any manual adjustments since I installed the Rachio. The Rachio's ability to allow renaming of our zones from the numbers 1 to 7 that only my wife had memorized to names that made sense based on location has been great. Adding pictures of our lawn to the app / website is a nice touch and very easy with the iPhone app. The physical installation in our garage as a replacement for our 10 year old semi-automatic system that had a dial and push buttons was easy. Although our copper wire was at the upper size limit for the Rachio, the connections went smoothly. Despite the fact that I have the Netgear Orbi mesh WiFi system that uses a single SSID for all access points and both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, the Rachio connected without difficulty on the second attempt. Since my iPhone connects on the 5 GHz band and the 2nd generation Rachio can only use the 2.4 GHz band, the WiFi connection was only successful after a restart of the device and software. I have now been using the Rachio for about a month and our lawn looks great even without my wife's constant vigilance.

Contemplated changing the existing old school 12 zone bulky controller for some time. Was the best decision to do so. Clever device, eliminating the need for sensors, connecting to the nearest weather station, doing seasonal adjustments automatically, and figuring out the right amount of watering for all the zones separately. The setup was hard and relatively time consuming, as you need to enter the slope, the soil type and the vegetation type for all zones separately. The soaking function needs to be skipped (at least it needed to be skipped for me, as otherwise I would have paid several thousand dollars for just the first day of watering). Understand the purpose of soaking though. Controls when you need to is very easy (all I did was to hold the schedules for winter). The information it provides is very vast and helpful as well. Feels expensive, but do not forget to factor in the $100 rebate (some areas may be different amount though). And the water savings you will get or the convenience of not having to manage the other dumb controllers based on weather reports... Setup was easy, although in my case, I had to get an extension cord as there was no outlet close by.