Rain Bird 4+

Really impressed with this simple app. Reliable wifi connection and excellent rain sensor. Can easily modify settings, programs, schedules etc from the app and they are immediately synced with controller. Small delay of about 5 seconds while connecting from the app to the controller but that is perfectly fine.

Really disappointed with the Rainbird set up using the ESP-Me controller. (1) will only work on a 2.4ghz wifi network not 5ghz, (2) doesn’t have a strong range so constantly drops out, (3) works on wifi or mobile network initially then over time only works on my wifi network then eventually every month or so it won’t connect via any network. I have to then spend ages trying to reconnect the controller to wifi from scratch. (4) will constantly display errors such as manual time out/connection error etc. All this occurs in areas where all other devices connect to wifi perfectly with strong signal so it’s not the wifi service. For something that’s supposed to make irrigating seamless it is a very high maintenance and buggy system, particularly anything to do with the app and controller talking to each other. Please fix this.

I went to the local irrigation shop to buy and orbit b-hyve controller as I had heard really good things about the app, however I was talked into the rain bird.

The controller it’s self is good but the app really lacks some functionality which I would have thought was basic. You can not look back on a day and see what events actually happened. E.g if you have a program scheduled, you can see when these were/are scheduled, but if you manually water or stop a program short, you don’t see this on the calendar. It’s a small feature but I’d say a very vital feature for an app based irritation system.

Overall I’m happy with most but there is a lot for improvement.