Rachio WiFi Smart Lawn Sprinkler Controller, Works with Alexa, 8-Zone (2nd Generation) (8ZULW-B)

I have installed the Rachio Gen 2 controller a few months ago and since then I’ve had an opportunity to discover helpful features and missed opportunities. I have read numerous reviews on this product and decided to purchase through Amazon.ca since there was no retailer available here in Canada. The product was delivered in a timely manner and the price was comparable to other irrigation controllers. Upon receiving the product I was surprise and pleased with the small size of the controller. I ordered the 8 zone model but the size is no different from the 16 zone model. The manuals provided or the ones available for download were fairly helpful. Some of the language and terminology could be changed but basically they were helpful. This model, Rachio Gen 2, has replace a Rainbird Esp-ME (working) and is used for my 4 zone irrigation ( front yard, side yard, back yard and flower gardens). We don’t experience the water restrictions that others in warmer clients do however we do have some restrictions occasionally. We are on city water and we pay a flat rate for the water service each year. Water savings is not critical however it is always a concern. It also rains here…a lot. Since I am a building contractor, installing the Rachio controller in my home was not a problem. The controller looks as though it is hardwired however it is not. A nice clean look is very important to me. I was able to modify the wall which accepts the controller. Installation of the controller was pretty straightforward. Here are a few of the pros and cons:Pros: The ability to control most aspects of the irrigation through my phone or computer is certainly beneficial. The Rachio Gen 2 controller uses local weather or PWS’s for irrigation times. There are a couple of sensor options on the controller as well. (rain, flow) I can also manually water each zone, anytime, anywhere, if I want, thru my phone. I can also change schedules through my phone or computer. This is a very convenient feature for myself and potentially for my clients. I haven’t had to use the one 800 number yet and the updates are relatively frequent. The engineers at Rachio seem to be making slight changes to the product with some improvements. So far…so good. (That’s encouragement btw)Cons: since the Rachio product is reliant on local weather stations to preform at its best, availability of good local or personal weather stations in my area is critical. The Rachio app allows you to choose local weather stations however these are limited to a few. My closes pws is 4.5 km away and the reliability is questionable. Having the WU (weather underground) as an option could be benificial to me and to Rachio. Personal weather stations in my area afiliated with the weather underground appear to be more reliant. Rachio does provide a work-a-round to the WU, but you must have a Mac ($1000-$2000). There are other option too but the price just goes up. ( special router, your own PWS $$$).Power. An option to hardwire the product. I don’t want to see the wires.Start/Stop. I see the option to start irrigation at a specific time within the app but…I don’t see the option to stop irrigation at a specific time. I need to stop at 9am. C’mon!Generally the Rachio Gen 2 product is fairly good. The updates and improvements seem slow in coming but I hold out hope that they will eventually arrive. I’ll use the Rachio and watch the updates but I will keep the Rainbird ESP-ME on hand just in case.Update; April 2017, I’ve been using the Gen2 Rachio for almost a year now. No glitches at all. Updates are regular and the controller preformed as advertised. Other irrigation controllers are late to the table (smart features) or too bulky. I would give this controller 4 1/2 to 5 stars (ability to hardwire and weather station).So far…very good.

Amazingly functional with almost too much information. So many options for programming zones. I don’t have grass. Half acre of trees, perennials an annuals all on a multi level slope with as much as a 200′ rise. I use various styles of emitters (drip, spray, low volume spinners, etc.). Over time things disconnect, clog and break. These must be discovered and repaired. All of the emitters in all of the zones are remote from the Rachio controller. There’s at least 600′ of half inch poly serving the zones. The beauty of this situation is that I can be in the field turning zones on and off for testing from my cell phone and making repairs as needed without slogging up and down, in and out to operate zones from the controller.Extremely easy install and a short learning curve for basic operation. Now I will study up on yhe advanced control features to see ow and which ones apply.I had thought to add a flow meter to the main irrigation line but they appear quite pricey and seems there’s a limited number of supported meter for thr Rachio. Still looking

The Rachio sprinkler controller is working exactly as I hoped it would. I replaced an old difficult to use sprinkler controller and this was easy to install (exact same difficulty as a nest thermostat, though the Rachio doesn’t come with as nice of tools), and was setup and working as needed in 30 min. It skips watering when it rains, and it is trivially easy to turn on sprinklers for an additional manual watering if desired. My big hope is that going forward I can just stop thinking about when/how much to water the lawn, and let it just go – so far, I assume this will be true.

This controller is absolutely fabulous. I chose this controller based on the many positive reviews and I am not disappointed. This is a fantastic controller. Although the quick start guide was bare bones, their website has an incredible wealth of information on installation, setup and use of the controller. I have 24 zones, so I had to buy an 8 zone and a 16 zone. Jump to the bottom of my review for some limitations, then pluses you should consider.My SituationMy only problems installing were caused by the fact that my old controller was installed way out on the other side of my property and Rachio controllers, being Wi-Fi, need to be close to your router to get a strong signal. That meant we had to re-route our wires from the back yard to the house. Unfortunately, the 5 wires ran along a cement border around my massive clump of bamboo and over the years the bamboo had grown over the wires and they could not be removed. They had to be cut, which meant we lost all possibility of knowing which individual wire out of 35 (being 18-7 wire) went with what valve. I did know which valves were in each of my 6 valve boxes, which made it easier. It was actually pretty straight-forward to figure it out. We just picked 3 cables and wired 1 to the 8 station and 2 to the 16 station controller. Then I went outside and just used the remote mode to manually run each station and wrote down what physical zone it watered (or not, since there are 11 wires not used) then I just labelled each of those wires as to what order I wanted them to finally be in. After that we took out the 2 bundles from the 16 station and wired in the remaining 2 bundles and repeated the process. I was really lucky that my back yard has 8 zones and the front yard has 16 zones, because you can’t split a bundle between controllers. It is nice that there are 2 common connectors for each set of 8 connectors.Limitations1. The Rachio needs to be close enough to get a strong signal from your router. I didn’t play around with this. I just had my helper drill through my house wall into my living room where my router is and install them behind the window drapes, right next to an outlet.2. The transformer to step down the voltage to 12v is separate and plugs directly into an outlet. The cord is 6 feet long.3. There are only two sizes for this controller, 8- and 16-zones. The work-around for this is that it is easy to access multiple controllers from the app on your phone.4. You can’t split your bundles of wire between controllers without using a “relay” due to the common wire needing to be split between the controllers. That seems like it might be a problem for those who have more than 24 zones or lots of cables with few wires being used in each. For that, you should splice some of those together so that you have an 18-7 wire all connected to 6 of your zones and then connect that to one of your controllers.5. The Rachio is designed to be a “smart” controller. It allows you to describe each zone as to slope, soil type, sun exposure, type of plants, type of head, etc. The limitation here is that they have a limited number of soil types and irrigation heads. I water some zones that only have pots. There is no setting for that. I have several zones where I replaced the top 6-8 inches of clayey soil with high-quality soil mixes. There is no setting for that. The part where you describe your nozzles does not include drip and has a bunch of nozzles to choose from that may or may not actually represent any of your actual nozzles so you might need to add custom nozzles. To do that, you need to know your PSI and use the specifications for your nozzles or whatever it is you are using to calculate your inches/hour.I decided to use my Rachio as a “dumb” controller and just water based upon the number of minutes I want each zone to water and on what days. This is not a serious limitation, since I hadn’t really wanted to give up my control anyway.PlusesYou can set it to not water when it is raining and it uses GPS to decide, based upon the weather for your location. You can also add a rain sensor for more accurate info on rain. There are other sensors you can add for soil condition, etc.You can set it to water 1/2 of the amount for each station, then run again with the other half to reduce any runoff.The great thing about this controller is that it is Wi-Fi and can be controlled from your phone anywhere your phone has a signal. That means that I can water my plants any time I see it is excessively hot, including being able to only water the zones that are in full sun, or any combination for whatever length of time I want then just start run and I’m done. It also means I NEVER have to run back and forth between my controller and my zones to test the heads again! That is revolutionary!

Overseas customer? Buy with Confidence. This is an outstanding company. I am an Australian customer. I purchased my Rachio Gen 2 approximately one year ago. I am going to outline my experience with the product and also my service experience:The Product.The Rachio Gen2 (8 Station) is a wonderful product. It is very easy to install and it is truly Smart. It configures itself for optimal performance, based on the inputs one provides – soil type, plant type, sun, shade, etc. I could have bought a locally supplied controller however some of those brands wanted an annual subscription fee in order to incorporate weather data, which enables to controller to skip watering when it rains, when it’s too windy or the ground is saturated, etc. With those local brands, I was ostensibly getting a “Dumb” controller, unless I coughed up an additional $60 p.a. Basically, they wanted me to pay for data which is freely provided by the Bureau of Meteorology and other weather sources. No way! With Weather Intelligence Plus®, Rachio can aggregate 270,000 personal and commercial weather stations worldwide, for extreme accuracy. If you prefer, you can also choose the weather station you want. If it were to go down, Rachio will automatically find and connect to the next nearest and available weather station; that’s very cool!The other thing that I liked when researching Rachio, was that the company appeared to genuinely “love” its product. It had a significant knowledge base and an online forum, with very active and supportive customers. People really like their gardens and they really Rachio!So I bought a Gen 2 and fired it up. It was fantastic. It has a great phone App, which offers numerous Smart watering features that I can easily control, override. My Rachio Gen 2 is happy to either do everything for me or allow me full manual control over my watering, and every shade in between.Being a Smart controller, it can be accessed anywhere in the world where there is either a wifi connection or cellular phone access. In February this year, during our hot Australian summer, we travelled to Northern India and then Vietnam. we were away for approximately one month. I had left the garden watering, to Rachio. As it hit 44 C. in Melbourne, while we were away, I has able to allay my paranoia by running some additional, non-scheduled watering from India and Vietnam. It was comforting to get an SMS back from my controller once they started and had completed. Please see the images of the pumpkin plant blocking our gate, on our return home! The Rachio is everything the company claims it to be; it’s excellent and it’s fun! My brother subsequently bought a Gen 2 as well for his farm and he is delighted with it.After-sales Service.Rachio provides first-class service!My background: I am a Director of an agricultural machinery company. Our point of differentiation is our exceptional pre-sales and after-sales service. We don’t just play lip-service to this: we are fully committed to providing great service and building long relationships with our customers. Similarly, Rachio doesn’t just talk the talk: it walks the walk. My experience with Rachio customer service follows:I recently attempted to activate terminals 7 & 8 of my Gen 2 controller. These hadn’t been used before and I had some new vegetable beds to water. They did not work. The App indicated that they should be working but the weren’t. Having a background in IT, I had experience in fault finding and went about A-B testing by connecting different solenoids to different controller terminals. I was able to rule out faulty solenoids. I subsequently emailed Rachio Support, which responded *promptly and courteously*. There is a significant time difference between the USA and Australia however depending on what time I sent emails, there was either a response that day or first thing, the next morning. To summarize my experience:1. I was asked to try a potential but it failed.2. The Support person, Skyler, then advised that he would send me a new controller straight away.3. I advised Skyler that I wanted to do one more test, before he sent it. That subsequent test failed too.4. I advised Skyler of this failure and provided delivery details. He responded quickly and said the new unit was on the way.5. The replacement controller arrived in 4 DAYS!!!! That’s from Colorado (I believe) to Melbourne, Australia in 4 days, free of charge! This was an unbelievably good turnaround.6. The problem with zones 7 & 8 persisted with the new controller. (The fault appeared to have been copied over).7. A senior technician, Jared, contacted me **without my having to ask**. He was very keen to sort out the problem.8. He suggested a factory reset and voila! The new unit worked and so did the original controller once it was reset.At no stage did I think I was a burden… indeed – I was “thanked” on numerous occasions for assisting them with the diagnosis. In the end, I believe the problem was a small glitch in an earlier version of the firmware. The company hadn’t seen it before, hence its taking a few days to sort it out.I reiterate – from timely communication, diagnosis to delivery half way around the world in 4 days of a replacement controller, Rachio’s customer service was exceptional. I thoroughly recommend this company and its products to everyone on the planet.Suggestions for improvement?Rachio may have attended to this already but if not, I would recommend that the required power supply, depending on your country, is nominated and supplied at the time of the order. I had to purchase a local 230V. power supply (AUD $20) as my original unit came with a 110V P/S. It would just make a great product a little bit better and besides, this product deserves to be sold worldwide, in large volumes because it’s so good!Disclosure: I’ve written this superlative review for no other reason than those contained in it. Buy with confidence.