Rain Bird Reviews

Okay, so mine was not the standard set up. My controller is located in an outbuilding that had no wifi. I ran an Ethernet cable to the building, but heaven forbid the controller would have an Ethernet port. I connected an access point to supply wifi to the building. Fine. Works great.
The folks at tech support are fantastic, and over the last three days I’ve gotten to know all of them by name. The Lynx Wifi module is very difficult to pair with the wifi network, and every time you finally get there, if the network goes down for any reason, you have to start from scratch. At least the programming stays in the controller.
Glad to be a beta tester for this rollout. There are lots of devices out there that very robust and user friendly, obviously designed by seasoned tech folks who do this all the time. Clearly this is not one of them.
this app makes great irrigating systems and I have no regrets with my purchase. If I had to do it again, I’d buy the this app and probably wait on the techie connectivity.

Seriously consider a different irrigation system until RainBird catches up with today’s (or ever yesterdays) technology. RainBird is too bare bones, not anywhere near were it should/could be, as it does not provide enough information to make any decisions.

Would be much more useful if the following were included:

1. Weather information should include rain fall amounts expected as well as what is then recorded. Currently I have to go to a different App (Scott’s) for that.
Weather should also be shown in calendar/schedule view.

2. App should show water utilization per zone, and how much that equates to when season adjust. My zones (normally set for 30m) adjusted to 15m. App should show how much water that is, or at least estimate for comparison to expected rainfall, or recorded with rain sensor. Currently seasonal adjust just shows a percentage, with no information on equation.

3. App should give some level of reporting or history. There is no way in current app to know that your watering efficiently. If season adjust changes schedule due to expected rain, but the rainfall does not happen or reach expectation, there is no way to view, equate or compensate in schedule to add water back.

Without this info, really tough to see the advantage of RainBird for anyone trying to water the correct amount. It appears only useful for someone who can’t physically access their controller often/easily.

Most of the time notifications do not come through, even though I have every single option checked. Also, it would be nice to see a runtime log to verify which stations ran at which time, especially since the notifications do not come through most of the time. Would also love to see some sort of calculator interface to assist with setting up station runtime as well.

*edit* notifications appear to have been corrected with the latest update, thanks! Raised rating to 4 stars, couple of small added features would make it a solid 5.

*edit 2* dropping my rating back down, automatic seasonal adjust has not worked for weeks/months now, weather is nowhere close to accurate, connecting to the timer takes minutes most of the time from RainBird , notifications are extremely delayed most of the time, RainBird shows upcoming events that occurred many hours ago, and the clock doesn’t hold time well causing delays in scheduling. None of these should be an issue with an internet connected device, and do not appear to be an issue with cheaper internet connected irrigation controllers. Take my advice, do not waste your time with Rain Bird unless you want a 100% manual controller. Rachel and Orbit make much better devices at lower price points with better support.

Automatic seasonal adjustment doesn’t work on one of my controllers, the other one sends a notification that it has changed but when you go on RainBird , it is still the old setting. I called support 4 times they go through their checklist, that confirms everything is setup correctly again and then put you on hold for minutes, come back want the same info that you have already given them and tell you that they are sending this off to the product manager and they will get back to you. This is not a new product, this problem has to have happened before. I have it on 2 controllers and 2 different zip codes. You think they would at least give you some information that is useful, no they just leave you hanging. I now have upset customers and have no idea if this will be resolved or not. The reason the clients bought this upgrade, was to save on water use, not use more. I may lose these clients and I am sure they will tell their friends. Thanks Rain Bird! Propose solutions, in a timely fashion, not will get back to you. What does that even mean, one day, one week, one month or one year??? I also believe that when they put you on hold, they are taking other calls, because it happens several times during the call and then and the end it is the same answer.

I don’t enable location sharing with anything that doesn’t actually need it. My sprinkler system doesn’t need to know where I am. Whether I am sitting on my living room couch, out a a restaurant, or out of town on vacation, what does that have to do with me getting into my sprinkler controller to either check on a setting or change a setting? My plants and lawn need water regardless of where I am. The message that appears when location services reads, “Rain Bird requires location services tone enabled in order to determine your WiFi SSID.” Really? Hogwash. I set up this controller a year ago. I programmed it connect to my router (SSID) and it worked just fine. It IS connected to my router. After one of the most recent updates, if I try to view or change a setting via my cellphone, Rain Bird needs to know where I am? In order to “determine” my SSID? On what planet? The controller is already tethered to my SSID. And, if I am out and about, my cell phone isn’t tethered to any SSID as it is using cellular data. So again, my location is needed for what purpose? This is an unacceptable collection of my data. Rain Bird, please reprogram RainBird to allow users to opt in or opt out of letting you track their whereabouts. But don’t disable RainBird if people value their privacy.

Buyers beware this app is horrible at RainBird. If you want to connect it’s like a dial up modem LOL. It attempts to connect and it have to wait for 100% load etc. Then if you do a manual water on say Zone 1 then it’s done and you want to manual irrigate another Zone it won’t let you as it still thinks it’s doing the Zone 1. You go out and back to irrigation screen and this won’t help, you finally tell it to STOP irrigation on Zone1 and think you will be able to move on to next Zone. NOPE think again this does not work. Force close RainBird then go thru the loading and connecting to the controller..communicating, loading schedule wait for it wait wait finally 100% then go manually water the next Zone. Ohh want to manually irrigate another Zone go back and repeat all the painful steps. My water heater, Doorbell, Thermostat, and many other home automated products work way better than this. All software updates focus on adding languages to sell this crap in another country. Work on RainBird because it’s the Future. Moving on to Hunter branded products as they do work well with technology, look at the Hydrawise app from Hunter and then you can see what a company that knows were in 2020 can do.

I originally thought RainBird was “okay” at best. I thought it would mostly control the sprinklers and be automatic. The notifications stink. It only tells you after it runs. Not when it’s happening. Also, it randomly turned watering “off” once, and none of my scheduled watering would work until I turned it back on. Finally, last straw- it had a connection error. I have now tried everything to reconnect the device, restart, restart phone, restart WiFi, everything. Nothing works. Constant error telling me I cannot connect. I’m not sure if I have a bad unit or what. I planted new grass and I need something that will be reliable. I got this for peace of mind, and knowing the watering was happening. Not to be confused and wonder what the heck is going on half the time I’m going to return the whole unit and probably get something else. RainBird was glitchy at best but I might have been able to accept it. I have too many other things to worry about to be fighting with some $150 water timer that works “okay” and an app that is just garbage.

RainBird seems to have many, many errors. Currently I can not get the automatic seasonal adjust to work at all (huge reason I bought this system), the home display recently seems to have removed (the 5 day weather, WiFi connection, home button, rain sensor, and the no water buttons that were originally located at the top in a horizontal row). Also I noticed the current time is wrong on it, it was off by 7 mins. Why is that when it’s connected directly to WiFi? Also I dislike not knowing if my system even ran, I have messages enabled for it and have not received one yet, and from what I’ve read even if you get a message it’s vague and sheds no information on what percent it ran at, how long, what zones, etc.

I bought this system and installed the WiFi stick and rain sensor, and RainBird for it to be convenient. And so far it’s just a big irritating pain. I’m very dissatisfied and annoyed that I paid extra for this all to be so poor.

fix it or it’s getting returned

No comparison to the features other irrigation apps offer. B*Hyve app is far superior. If this is your first experience to be able to control your irrigation control panel remotely, then you’ll enjoy the convenience. But if you’ve used other irrigation apps you’ll quickly realize how inferior RainBird is. I miss being able to click on a zone while running and see exactly how much time is left in the cycle. Or being able to click on a zone and have data history. Even though options are selected I never receive notifications that a zone or program has finished. B*Hyve immediately let’s you know that a zone is complete. The saddest part is the this app irrigation control panels costs 3 times that of Orbit. Unless they drastically step there game up on RainBird, I will not purchase another this app. Their app doesn’t compare to what you can see, do or control on the Orbit B*Hyve. I’d give this 0 stars if I could. So very ancient in comparison to what else is available. So disappointed with this.

RainBird works ok. In that it connects most of the time, while sometimes it needs a few reboots to finally connect. Really wish it had an easily accessible log feature, because I am never sure what ran and for how long. Notifications should be much richer. Instead of just saying “controller irrigation event complete” how about it gives zone and time, for example “zone 1 complete: 20 min run time”. Automatic seasonal adjust has consistently failed me and my grass starts to go brown and die. So I’ve had to turn it off. Rachio has something like auto seasonal adjust but it seemed to do a better job as my grass never died using it.

One of my biggest wishes Is that it would connect to IFTTT or SmartThings and or Siri Shortcuts. Alexa connectivity is a bit gimmicky to me because everything is scheduled. I don’t really have to much of a functional use case to ask Alexa to turn on the sprinklers (which in and of itself is not the most intuitive IMO).

All in all RainBird works, but leaves much to be desired. I had Rachio at my old house and I felt app was much richer and integrated much more with other smartphone platforms. If this app can add some of the above it would be wonderful.

Not sure why I fell for it again. For starters app always forces you to give up your location to use it for anything. Must want to always track you. Second it’s a very primitive app. You need to have really strong WiFi near your outdoor controller or forget about it. It just uses a tiny chip in the controller with no antenna. I had to return my WiFi chip before. They cost about $200. I ended up adding with a commercial outdoor access point for other reasons so bought one again. WiFi now connects. It would not before even 30’ away from inside my house. App is still disappointing. Not enough allowed characters to even put in my areas in each zone name and I do not have that many sections in each zone that I want to note. Someone should be able to design a better app in short order. Only good now is it works but will not use it much as the WiFi location grab annoys me and probably really need to close out app and do reset to stop it from sniffing.

The controller works fine but I have two main issues with RainBird .
1). Location services must be turned on to access the controller. There is no need for Rain Bird to know my location to water my lawn. Whether I am at home or traveling, RainBird works the same and therefore no need for me to turn on location services. I’m not one to live on my phone and don’t need my location shared just to work a product I purchased.
2). After programming a manual delay in the schedule (which is a function I like) the controller only says the front panel is “Off” but the automatic schedule does not show when the next watering will occur. You have to remember how many days you manually shut the system off.

Those are my two complaints. Other than that the WiFi was easy to set up and program. The manual turn on function is nice when making adjustment to the heads

I would like to review a month’s history of sprinkling records. With a rain detector connected to the system I don’t know if the lawn has gone too long without watering, other than the evidence of brown grass. Especially since the default to allow the next cycle is 72 hours and I can’t adjust those hours to something like 24 to 36 hours. If a rain event occurs 12 hours after the last successful scheduled sprinkling event then the system will not allow the next scheduled sprinkling event to start, which will lead to a possible 7 day lack of scheduled sprinkling (assuming that there are only two days per week that sprinkling is allowed).

With a historical record of successful vs cancelled records to review, I could determine if I need to manually start a sprinkling event to bypass the automatic system settings.

Rain Bird Corp., please listen this recommendation to improve RainBird with historical data!

It would be helpful to have a log of activity maybe 30 days worth in case you miss a notification You cannot water all stations from RainBird like you can from the controller You have to start each station one at a time Update notifications still not working all the time They worked on Monday but not on Friday Update 2 Thank you for the reply but neither the controller or RainBird have programs (A B C D) It is an ST 8 WiFi The point is that the controller has a button labeled Water Now which allows a manual run of all stations in order The iPhone app does not have that function From RainBird you have to start each zone individually This is a feature request to add that functionality Also in your reply you asked that I provide more information so you can assist further suggesting that I "click the email link" What email link? I could not find one in the review or in the email I received from Apple with your response The email was from an Apple no reply address If you are still willing to help with the notifications issue please provide an email or other contact for me to use Thanks

*Uodate: I am I longer experiencing this issue and have been quite pleased with RainBird . Also I contacted support due to an issue (user error), and received a response in about 24 hours. Appreciate the response!

After my initial set up of RainBird I have not been able to reconnect to RainBird . I get constant communication error messages stating the controller is in a active connection. Tracing this error on the website FAQs it would seem this error indicates that another user may be connecting to RainBird at the same time. However I am the only person in my household with RainBird installed, and only on one device (my iPhone). Will update the review if the issue gets rectified.

RainBird was just installed and works perfectly. Makes programming simple to set. Manual station mode great to check heads working properly instead of running back and forth to controller. Only thing to add is ability to start a program which I’m sure they are working on for future. I gave it 4 stars until future program start stop option then 5 stars. Hey just 8 years ago we used the mechanical wheel method!!

Just received a response from this app folks..... RainBird does allow manual start functions for program and individual station starts! Also the notifications can be set to alert you that program has run. I think the low reviews had to have been PRIOR to upgrades because RainBird does EVERYTHING needed. 5 stars!

I use thus App for several customers. It has easy to use features and many of my elderly clients can use it more conveniently than the actual controller on the wall.
My favorite feature is the rain delay I am not sure why it was moved in the recent update not that’s ok.
Regarding set up, If you are having problems it is easier to buy a20-50 WiFi booster and set to 2Ghz to get it to link. Sometimes if you have a high end security system with complicated fire walks, then all bets are off and you need the customers tech to assist in set up.
I would give RainBird 5 stars except for the poor attitude of the customer service. ALL other issue I have called this app about I have been treated with professionals but for some reason the folks that work RainBird customer service A. sound like they are reading from a script and have no clue what they are doing. B. 2x I have explained the problem and because they take sooo long (and I am standing in a hat garage in Houston Tx) I have asked them to email suggestions or call me back they say “No I need you to wait”. I would like it them to either come stand in the garage with me while they continue knowing nothing or realize they need to figure it out later and call back.
Once it was a bad door another time it was the clients WiFi had been changed and she did not know it.

Date/Time won’t advance in my this app app when I look at controller info, although programs work as programmed. So I have a confidence issue that at some point my programs will be all confused and not work as programmed. I’ve had the ESP-ME3 controller for two years and been very happy with it. I recently had WiFi issues in the house and all were resolved. Then had issues bringing my RB controller back online but finally did it including reloading my RB app, and moving one of my WiFi nodes real close to the controller in the garage. The date/time matter is my remaining issue and trust me I have poured over many websites and videos but nobody addresses this matter. Will have to call RB support if I can’t figure it out.

Seems like this app has already made some improvements I noticed recently and probably more in the future. My favorite thing is that RainBird is not invasive, respecting of privacy, no special accounts requiring personal info, ad free, simple. High marks for that.

There is room for improvement on connection speed and reliability however my system is at the limit of my routers range with slow internet and it still works 95% of the time.
Suggestions:
The manual station option could be improved to adjust the run times and add stations while manually watering.
The rain delay change notification at midnight would be better to say what the new delay was instead of saying it changed which is more useful when it was changed manually.
Notification of program success, each station is too many for me.
Universal seasonal adjustment that acts on all programs.

I have bought and continue to buy many this app products because of the high quality parts. I still have some brass this app sprinklers that are 30+ years old and many over 10 years old. Don’t decrease quality to try and make a buck. Keep making reliable parts and I’ll keep buying more and more and telling others to do the same.

I had a pool installed which of course forced me to have my yard re-sodded. Not wanting anything to go wrong after spending the money on the re-sod, I knew I had to get a very dependable irrigation control system. Since I’ve always had this app products, I chose to continue my relationship with this app and it hasn’t failed me. Now with RainBird I have the ability to change programming at a moments notice which really makes any changes very easy. Especially after my yard has been treated and my lawn maintenance company requires me to water it one or two days after treatment and I’m not home. I can do it from anywhere and change back to my regular schedule with just a few key strokes. Not to mention, my lawn has never looked better.