RainPoint TY Reviews

It worked for a season. Now RainPointTY connects to the smart sprinkler timer but won’t control it. The schedules aren’t running. I try to set the manual timer and nothing happens. When I click “my” on the bottom right for instructions or contact I get an error message “error loading page”

Sent emails, messages through RainPointTY , and called the customer service number and left a message but I haven’t been able to speak to anyone to troubleshoot the problem. Waste of both money and my time.

Bought this system to replace an Orbit B-hyve smart water system. After using it a year, I’m not sure I’m any better off.

The devices like the WiFi Hub and irrigation timer work as expected. Once I had it setup, I have not had any connectivity issues. So, those components are okay.

RainPointTY is one of the worst I’ve seen. The interface is bizarrely confusing with a lot of odd features to connect to other home network devices. The navigation is not intuitive. It’s easy to get lost or unable to find your way back to a screen.

RainPointTY automations based on weather don’t work properly because RainPointTY weather forecast is not accurate. For example, I set up a rain delay if it starts to rain. It’s cloudy and raining right now, RainPointTY says it’s sunny outside. Not even close. RainPointTY “help” page just tells me to wait for the weather to update, which should happen every ten minutes. For the record, it does NOT update regularly and it’s certainly longer than 10 minutes. This shortcoming is a dealbreaker for me.

The watering schedule works well enough for when you finally figure out how to use it. It’s full of components that don’t even seem usable or functional. As if the developers intended to build it one way, changed the plan midway, and left all the disabled components from the original plan. Very sloppy.

Overall, I guess I prefer it to my old Orbit system, but just barely.

The only thing that I have found wrong with RainPointTY is the fact that it is constantly notifying me that my irrigation system is implemented, even when it is not. All day long I get notifications for each timer it gets annoying. I notified the company and they wanted me to allow them to join my network to see what the problem could be but that made me nervous because I didn’t want someone in China (literally where they told me they would be joining my network from) in my network and what information would they be able to obtain. Seems like they could figure things out without having to hack into my system.

The concept of this device is great but RainPointTY needs a LOT of work. The device goes offline when there is no Wi-Fi issues. Also when you manually run the device through RainPointTY , it says it’s off but the timer is running and it’s actually on. You can’t tell if it’s off or on unless you force close and reopen several times until it updates. Unfortunately will be returning to get another brand. Not worth $50, maybe $20.

Clunky, bare bones app for controlling very sophisticated and quality water timers.

NO master all-on/all-off switch.

NO top-level on/off buttons. You need to go several pages down for each unit then back up and start all over.

NO whole-system screen to even see status of all timers. You have to select each timer and drill down several levels just to see if it’s on or off.

NO rain delay option. Seriously? My $30 cheepo has this. Skip a day or two. They all have this basic feature.

The built in water-flow meters are cool but RainPointTY has NO option to set desired gallons delivered to take advantage of this feature. Just the same old minutes-on choices. Totally missed opportunity.

Again, the water timer units are fantastic.

RainPointTY is an absolute insult to their potential.

Review from an actual UX designer:

So I love the functionality of the system itself, but RainPointTY 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 RainPointTY 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, RainPointTY 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 RainPointTY is terrible.

Randomly and regularly glitches to say it finished an irrigation at 3am, despite having no schedule for this. Has time and date incorrect. When you click on an irrigation day to read what happened during a session, it doesn’t take you to that instance, it just shows you the details of the very last irrigation session. I never would have bought these tools had I realized how
1. The manufacturers don’t keep the apps updated, don’t listen to feedback, and don’t check for software bugs.
2. How when your power goes out during a storm you have to reconfigure the entire system which is challenging as the instructions aren’t accurate or proofread.
3. You can’t put batteries in or take them out without taking apart the whole thing because the hose blocks the battery chamber.

Absolute garbage, but yeah it waters my garden. Truly the bare minimum.

I’ve been using my system for two years now and there has been a consistent problem. When the watering is done, the timer won’t reset. I open RainPointTY and it says it’s still running (even though it’s not and RainPointTY sent an alert saying it was done). I have to click the pause button and then it will reset. The problem is that when this happens it always shows a random time on the timer so I have to manually reset it. That wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but the dial to reset the time is, most of the time, unresponsive. So then I have to close RainPointTY and go through the whole process one or two more times before it works. Had I known this when I bought my system I never would have done it. Oh, here’s the kicker…the link for app support in RainPointTY Store doesn’t work. You get a 404 error.

I expected, based on “our product is great and super smart!” To be able to create a master schedule for multiple timers and hubs but after working with it for a while it seems that each timer must be separately scheduled and the only way to have a master schedule is to write it down on paper. This is especially inconvenient when you have a dozen timers and low water pressure and are trying to avoid running more than one timer at a time. The entire reason I purchased a dozen of these is that I assumed RainPointTY would give me a way to see all the devices’ schedules in one place. Also, I have been unable to make groups of devices. The hose timers themselves seem very well made, but RainPointTY , while it seems glossy and smart, is probably going to be a deal breaker for me.

RainPointTY works well, however I wish that it had a function that would alert when the moisture hit a certain level and REALLY wish the manual option allowed more than 60 min of watering!!! Because of some things in my situation I can’t automate completely so being able to be reminded when it gets too dry and also watering more than 60 min would be a huge help.

Other than that, for what I do, it works well. Occasionally it sends me alerts that watering has started or stopped when I didn’t tell it to, but seems reliable otherwise. I’d give it 5 stars if it had alerts and you could control the manual watering time better.

I wish there were more options on RainPointTY . My old timer was an old school digital timer that had more options. For instance, my town has rules about when you can water - even house numbers on even days and odd house numbers on odd days. For a “sophisticated” app there is no option for this. So my only options are to program the schedule every day (sorta defeats the purpose) or run my sprinklers so early in the morning nobody is outside to witness it.

I purchased this to replace a HomeKit enabled Eve sprinkler controller that never lasted more than a year before it failed to shut off the water.

So far, I’ve been able to configure three plans to water my balcony planter box three times a day, which seems to work well. However, I thought this product would also tally my actual water usage, but it doesn’t appear to do that. After my first day of use, nothing appears in the sensor/water flow table. I don’t have a separate sensor, but the water flow display option doesn’t appear anywhere else in RainPointTY , so thought it should appear there to show usage when the working timers run. I emailed the developer to ask about this, and am awaiting its response.

I wanted to love RainPointTY but it really is pretty basic. I would like for the functionality to work with weather planning to delay based on rainy days. The notifications were so bad I had to turn them off. Also if you have the added sensor, it doesn’t tell you how it works, and the graphs should be hourly not daily.

The hardware works great, but RainPoint needs a dedicated developer to redesign RainPointTY like bHyve or SmartLife.

When I ordered the sprinkler controller, I had visions of plug and play set up but after many frustrating hours I find that the devices seem to work quite well but the software is a absolute nightmare, adding a device or making scheduling changes is very confusing… It shouldn’t be if they can address that issue then I would give them a five star rating

RainPointTY in general works and has a reliable planner than can set three different schedules and offers and manual control.

But, the ON/OFF control for both the manual and scheduled planner is often delayed and/or non-responsive.

Please update RainPointTY so that the ON/OFF control is a simple button and not a slider (since it doesn’t respond to sliding, but will respond to a tap/click)

I have the WiFi timer and soil meter which seem to work great but there are no clear instructions on how to set everything up on RainPointTY . I’ve tried looking it up but no luck. I just want the meter to trigger the timer to water when needed and to shut off when needed by itself. In RainPointTY there is a place for directions but link is broke. 3 stars for good product with poor app.

What RainPointTY does the job being a Bluetooth device meaning your device has to always be within range. Would be nice if you can. Just connected to an Alexa or Google device that stationary in the house or else you’re not getting notified when your device is not sending water. This just killed one of my plants.

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 RainPointTY is what it is, and most likely will not be furthering its capabilities or smart functions.

I had to leave my Tomato seedlings for 7 day vacation and didn’t want to have anyone else responsible for my seedlings. My wife let me get this to water the 180 seeds I planted, because I always to plant 180 to get 95 good plants. All 180 plants grew for the first time, loved it!
I did get it a month ahead of time to decide how long to water each day, it is a process of making sure the trays were wet enough, but not to wet.

Does what I need but I would highly recommend reading the User Agreement and Privacy Policy because it involves the Pe0ples R3public 0f Ch!na. I would install RainPointTY on a spare phone you don’t use with a VPN just for extra measure.