I'm trying out the Racchio. So far it seems pretty nice. I'm exploring the smart part of it and I'm not convinced that it's default time allocations are dry enough. But there are a lot of options to fiddle with. I have a couple zones on 'dumb' and that works pretty well. I don't have a rain sensor but I do have a weather station about a half mile away that it collects data from. I got an email from the controller while on vacation that irrigation was suspended because the weather station recorded .75" of rain and my weekly threshold for the schedule was .5".

Rachio is about to upgrade to 2.0, so I haven't been playing with the current smart settings. All those are going to change with the upgrade.

Thanks. Rachio has the most reviews on Amazon, so I'm going to order one of those.

We have twelve stations on ours but no rain sensor. It's really old. DH does as nanelle does. He hears it might rain, and turns it off as needed. With the cutbacks we only irrigate on our allotted days, so the chances of it raining on one of those is rare.

That's what I do now, but it's a PITA. I'm forever adjusting the run times, turning it off, turning it on. My controller at the old house at least allowed me to specify a number of rain delay days and to make percentage seasonal adjustments. The current one requires a step ladder, a flashlight and a lot of button tapping for the same activity. By the time it rains again, the battery has died on the rain sensor. My real problem, though, is that when I travel in the spring and fall. rain and Santa Anas always seem to arrive while I'm gone!

I'm leaning towards Hydrawise as it has a flow meter, which seems very useful in case a valve gets stuck or a nossle breaks. However I'm not a fan of the $60 yearly subscription fee in order to get real time rain data.

My controller has a little cup on it that collects rainwater and the sprinklers do not turn on until the rain in the cup has evaporated enough. It works surprisingly well, although I manually shut off the system most winters.

Check out the Hydrawise, it is EPA WaterSense approved, so customers in the US may get a rebate. It is a full smart controller, with predict weather. You do not need a subscription plan to use the system and get all the features that the others offer. The subscription offers features above what others offer, such as flow and electrical sensing alerts sent to your phone or email and up to 5 weather stations.

Do you know the ODO irrigation system? They are on kickstarter and the device they propose seems to overcome all problems the others have. Besides sensors and smartphone control, they use a long range communication system which allows the controller to be placed up to 300 hundred meters from the internet connection. Have a look at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375187211/odo-the-smart-irrigation-system

Hmm, I actually didn't think Hydrawise required the subscription for the flow meter or sensors?

Biggest issue for me is that the app seems like an after thought. I've played around with it and although it is ok to manually switch on and off the zones, all setup seems very fiddly and tiny. More like an adapted mobile web site than an actual app. Seems to be the best so far though and hopefully they will develop a proper app.

Thanks for your comments. Here some background on us and the new products coming. We have been making these controllers since 2009 and selling them globally since 2011. We are also up to our 3rd generation controller. We generally release app updates once a month, and we are always working to making our product better. here a screen shot of our app on an iPhone.

PS no subscription required, for our fully functioning system. It is an optional extra for email and SMS alerts and access for up to 5 weather station.