Rachio WiFi Smart Lawn Sprinkler Controller, 16-Zone 2nd Generation, Alexa and Apple HomeKit Compatible with Rain, Freeze and Wind Skip

This really does save water. And it does what you program it to do. This is all the more important because I am in South East Florida and we water 52 weeks a year down here.First, things to consider:If you expect to just connect the low voltage wires to your sprinkler valves to this device, plug in the AC power unit, spend a few minutes setting up the WiFi, zones and schedules (which is easy to do), and be done with it you will probably be unhappy. I have spent many hours tweaking the settings on this device, but for me it is worth spending the time to make this thing really work.Also, it does rely on Internet access, but if your Internet goes down, I have read it will continue to run the "last saved schedule", but I have not tested that. The Rachio server(s) run on Amazon's AWS servers so they should be reliable.Be sure you have a decent WiFi signal at the location you intend to install the controller.If you install outdoors, be sure and purchase the outdoor enclosure. When using the outdoor enclosure, you do not use the cover that comes with the controller. Only use the cover that comes with the controller for indoor installations.Last, if Rachio goes out of business, and the server(s) are no longer functional, the Rachio controller will be of no use. However, should that ever happen, I know I will have saved many times the cost of the Rachio device in water bills, and really do not find that a concern.Now on to the benefits of using this controller.......Coming from another WiFi controller that kept making changes to my schedules on its own (it would add extra start times, running the same schedule twice, three times, even four times in one day), I find the Rachio is highly advanced.Rachio knows the past rainfall and looks ahead at the weather and so far has not been wrong. So it knows the exact amount of rain that has fallen, which is much more accurate than those rain sensors. I could never get mine to work very well, even after a torrential rain, the rain sensor would dry out after about 12 hours, and often my system would run even though the ground was saturated. This has completely eliminated the system running when it is not necessary.The way this works is the Rachio can be configured to look at the closest weather station. In my case I have had a Davis Vantage Vue weather station at my house since 2011, and it was not too complicated to make it report to pwsweather which once done became a weather station that was on the list of stations available to my Rachio (see attached photo). (This weather station is on the roof of my house, but I have purposely set its location slightly off to protect the anonymity of my house.)I am told by Rachio that besides the information reported by my weather station, it uses 30 years of weather history in making the forecasts it uses to determine if it should run a schedule or not.Another thing I like is that the Rachio can be configured to skip a schedule if it is too windy. In the past I have seen my water just blown away and wasted when it is too windy to water.Besides the above features, the Rachio allows configuration of each zone for the type of plants or grass, spray head type, soil type, sun exposure, slope, and other details, and can be set for the Rachio to completely determine when it should water a zone.You can set the usual schedule to water for a certain length of time on certain days, and the Rachio will do that, and will skip if you have had rain or high winds.Or you can use what Rachio calls Flex Daily Schedules, which will only water once Rachio determines it is necessary to do this by calculating the moisture remaining in the ground. It does this by knowing the type of soil, plant type root depth, sprinkler head type, sun exposure, temperature, evaporation, rainfall, and probably several other things, and it determines when a zone should water. Depending on all this, different zones can run on different days.At this time I have a lot of new sod and a new a new podocarpus hedge that is watered with a drip line that need more frequent watering than established landscape and am running fixed schedules on the 4 zones that water these areas -- that is schedules that run my zones at specific times on specific days. But I am allowing the Rachio to skip these schedules due to rain or wind.The rest of my zones are being watered with the Flex Daily schedule. Rachio knows my rainfall, irrigation, evaporation, and based on all the attributes I mentioned above calculates when a zone should run.For fixed schedules Rachio also looks 7 days in the past at the actual rainfall, and 7 days into the future for forecast rain, then takes into consideration the soil type, sun exposure, vegetation type, temperature, and determines if there is enough water in the soil to justify skipping a schedule. This is called a "saturation skip". It can take some work to properly configure a system to have the correct soil types, and other data that the system needs to correctly make these calculations and saturation skip can be turned off if you do not have the necessary data, such as you are too far from a weather station for this to work correctly, but if the data is available this can also save a considerable amount of water.For Flex Daily Schedules, Rachio basically relies on similar information to keep track of how much water is in the soil and used that information alone to determine when a zone should water.It does other good things to. One thing I like is it has a feature called "Smart Cycle" which will pause the watering of a zone after so long (depending on a number of factors such as soil type) to allow the water to soak in, then after the pause resume watering that zone.Besides the iPhone app, you can access your Rachio from your PC or Mac using a browser. In my case, I use Safari on my iMac when I am in my home office. And once you poke around the various screens, Rachio has organized everything very neatly into zones and schedules that makes configuring and tweaking the system easy once you get the hang of it. It also contains help screens which go into considerable depth explaining how each setting works. The app (and browser version) is modern in its thorough but simple approach and even allows you to take photos of each zone to make it easy to remember which zone controls which area of your yard.All in all I highly recommend Rachio and believe it will save many times the cost of the device in water bills, while keeping my grass and plants healthy. Obviously, the more accurate the weather data that Rachio has available to it, the better it will work at saving water, and having your own personal weather station (accurately calibrated and properly installed) is the ultimate way to do this. But even with weather information from the NWS, it is still a very good irrigation timer and will do a great job.

UPDATE: May 1, 2017So I have been using the Rachio controller for a few weeks and I can confirm what many other reviewers have said here-- this is a terrific device which works exactly as advertised.We have been having a rainy April here in the Northeast and the controller is paired with a local PWS (Personal Weather Station) which is about 4 miles from my home. There is no cost for this and there are many PWS available so picking an appropriate one should be no problem. It is a bit weird that someone in my neighborhood I don't know who happens to own a weather station is determining whether my lawn gets watered or not. When the PWS predicts more than about a tenth of an inch of rain for the coming day, Rachio suspends watering. If more than a tenth inch of rain has fallen, Rachio will suspend water for the day. Finally, if the rain sensor which is attached to my system has triggered (this will show in the app and can be sent to you by email) watering is suspended until the sensor drys. You can override this manually if you wish.All of this leads to never seeing your sprinkler heads popping when they shouldn't.I have integrated Rachio with Alexa which allows me to say "Alexa, tell Rachio to water zone 7 for 10 minutes' which works flawlessly and is cool. I have taken photos of each zone running and integrated that into the app so it is easy to see which areas are watered by each zone.My Wireless router has been reset or gone offline a few times n the past month and Rachio has reconnected without any effort each time. I have not had to reset Rachio a single time for any reason.The Android interface is quite good, easy to use and is fully functional.The app offers an opportunity to get fairly technical about what types of sprinkler heads, soil and topography you have. I have chosen to use the defaults in most cases and the results have been satisfactory. I imagine that engineer types out there would find the app satisfactory as well.In summary, I will confirm my original impressions about Rachio-- someone has taken a traditional product (sprinkler control box) and by integrating it with the internet has augmented and amplified its usefulness. This is NOT like an internet enabled waffle iron. The fact that Rachio knows that it will probably rain today saves thousands of gallons of water over the season and internet accessibility (whether by app, voice or desktop) gives you the ability to put water on your plants when and where it is needed=======================+++++++++++++========+++++++++=======+++++++++======++++++++=======+++++++It is still not watering season here in the Northeast however I thought I would start my review on Rachio 2nd Generation (16 zone) controller by discussing the installation, app and 'philosophy' of this apparently excellent product. I say 'apparently' only because the water is not on yet and I haven't runthrough a watering cycle yet.Anyway, packaged and delivered well. The product comes with a well written install booklet however installation is really straight forward. You will identify all of the common (usually white) wires and attach them to the 'c' terminals on the Rachio wiring blocks. The c wires are all 'common' meaning that they are connected together-- there is no order to them and I imagine that you may not need to hook all of them up--however I did.The remaining wiring is just moving the wire for each zone (16 of them in my case) from their connection in your old sprinkler box to the Rachio box. You should take a few photos of the old wiring 'just in case' however I found it useful to mark each wire in the old box with its corresponding zone number. You can do this with tape or with professional wire markers which are sold at Home Depot or on line. If you have a rain sensor, you can hook that up as well and there is also a place to put a moisture sensor if you have one so that the Rachio brain knows how moist the soil is.Both the rain sensor and the moisture sensor are extraneous apparently as Rachio can calculate when it has rained and how much using local area weather stations--both governmental and private.Rachio is powered by a 20v transformer which is included.Once all is attached, you download the Rachio app (free) and enter your serial number and password to get the Rachio box to find your WIFI and pair. This process was flawless and the four blue segments on the box lit up as described.The application is straightforward-- you enter the type of plants that are in each zone-- the app provides appropriate choices including several types of grass. You enter the number and types of sprinkler heads and the type of soil (clay or loamy for example) to give the algorithm a chance to figure out how best to water each zone. There is an option to find a weather station near you which will allow the unit to know how much rain has fallen-- or is about to fall. A cool thing is that Rachio will not water your lawn if it is about to rain-- it will wait and see how much rain you actually get before deciding whether to top it off or do a full watering cycle.You can extend control of your system to your sprinkler guy, your landscaper or your neighbor--- temporarily or in full. These permissions can be revoked as you like.It appears as though you really don't need to set up a watering schedule--Rachio can do that autom,atically if you want and you can override that if you want to. However, you can set up a traditional schedule for each zone--but Rachio will adjust it as the weather changes.This is all I have done so far, I will come back after the season starts and give an update on how it works in practice.