iWater Wizard Irrigation Controller 4+

Works great considering the limitation inherent with bluetooth.

I do not think Plantraco is supporting this anymore. There have been no updates in 8 months and there is no way to contact support on the website. I bought 2 of these and I can kiss that money goodbye. I have 2 major complaints that will cause me to throw these away.

1. This claims to be easy to use; however, the things I want to do everyday is very difficult. Most controllers allow you to set 1 or more cycles then set the times to run them. This forces you to set a start time in the schedule, so if you want to run it twice in a day you need to enter it twice. If you want to force a cycle to run now, guess what? Yep, create a new schedule. Very awkward. I hate it.

2. This does not apply to everyone, but I have more than 15 zones so I bought 2 of these. The software can only control one. Not only that, but you cannot switch between them because apparently some of the information is stored on the phone. When you connect to the other system, the zone names, etc are still for the other controller. If your dumb enough to waste you money on two of these, then be prepared to borrow your wife's iPad to control the second one, then have to manually set schedules that do not overlap.

I heard about this product and ordered the iWater Wizard from their website. There is really not much documentation, but they place a link to an installation video (which is more of a commercial than a manual) and a link to order the controller in the middle of the application. Once you have bought and installed the controller, you don't need these anymore, Remove them!

Having said that, the installation is pretty straight forward. The only complication I had was inserting the sprinkler valve wires into the controller, if your pushing the wire hard and its not going in, your just not pushing hard enough. I eventually got needle nose pliers and used these to push the wires into the controller.

The application needs a little polishing, but seems to work (would be nice to have an iPad version of the application).

Basically you use the iOS application to create the schedule, and then download it to the controller over Bluetooth by pressing a "Set Controller Schedule" button in the settings menu. There is no indication that the schedule is being uploaded on the application (very bad) and it takes a while. You basically have to be in front of the controller and watch the Blue LED which will start rapidly flashing while you upload or download a schedule (would have been nice to have an activity indicatory in the app itself to indicate when the transfer is taking place and when its done). If you walk out of range while its downloading then it will give you a "Synch Error".

So my conclusion, great product and concept, but the iOS application needs a bit of polish.