RainPoint 4+

I really like this product. We have rental property that’s five hours away and wanted to keep the landscaping watered. The app allows me to control everything remotely. I’ve never had any problems activating the water. I think the app could be laid out a little bit better and some of the terminology on the app isn’t all that clear, but I figured it out. Overall I’m very happy with the system.

Review from an actual UX designer:

So I love the functionality of the system itself, but the app UI leaves much, much to be desired.

For one, there is no way to view history. So if I want to know when was the last few times the sprinkler turned on and for how long, I don’t have that data.

Also, I’ve often pressed buttons in the app and there has been no change in state. Recently I tried to enable a 24hr rain delay and i couldn’t. The button didn’t change. Now it might have been a connection issue but there was no way for me to know, the app didn’t tell me anything. It lets me press a button but then nothing changes. I also run into this quite frequently when trying to manually turn on a sprinkler. I’ll press a button and nothing will happen.

The way that irrigation plans are displayed is very confusing and forces me to scan too much info. I want to see a schedule or a calendar and see what’s coming up. I don’t want to have to parse everything myself.

There’s no way to change to a DD/MM/YYYY date format, which is very frustrating.

There doesn’t appear to be a way to reset or delete an irrigation plan, only a disable control. And you can only have three plans per spigot, which is frustrating.

The UI for creating “Scenes” is so inscrutable, I don’t even use it.

The general information architecture of the app is terrible.

App is very similarly designed to Tuya and Smart Life. Rainpoint says and does what is advertised. It turns the smart water valve on and off like it should by the schedule, and measures how many gallons are given through each valve. There are notifications that alert you when the valve turn on and off. I asked the developer if they would consider adding a notification for when the valve does not function successfully (like some of my other SmartLife/Tuya devices do), and if there could be a notification for a valve dispensing more than “X” gallons. However Rainpoint’s response was instructions on how to turn on and off notifications. Looks like this app is what it is, and most likely will not be furthering its capabilities or smart functions.