Irrigation controllers; Who is the top dog?

[ghaynes27]

I had a landscape company come out last night to give me an estimate on an irrigation system. I am not sure how many zones I will need just yet until he comes back with his plan but my lot size is ~0.50 acres so I don't have a lot of property. The company said they offer a couple of different controllers like Rainbird.

 

Now I have never had an irrigation system but I wanted to ask what is the most reliable controller out today that integrates nicely with ISY. I see a lot of people mention EZFlora but over on smarthome it has numerous poor reviews all around quality. I am not worried about cost if I can get one that is reliable and will last.

 

For the people that have an irrigation system if you had to start over what would you buy today?

 

 

[Teken]

I don't have one of these units but the few members that do have really liked them. One of the forum members has been an active developer for the ISY Series Controller.

 

With his little add on it will make the Rain Machine extremely powerful: http://forum.universal-devices.com/forum/110-rainmachine/

[andyf0]

I have had an EZflora for over 3 years now and it's still working fine. If using it with an ISY, you use the ISY to do all the smarts and simply turn each zone on & off. You can only have one zone on at a time. It has a 30 minute timeout for each zone in case it misses the ISY command to turn the zone off, although turning on a different zone will automatically turn the previous zone off. It will handle 8 zones or 7 zones and a pump on/off control.

 

Remember, only folks with bad things to say will post on forums to say bad things.

[stusviews]

If your'e going to use an ISY to control watering, then the EZFlora is the way to go. If not, then IMO the easiest controller for making changes to any or all of the zones, days, times and/or the duration of watering is the Orbit.

[paulbates]

 I had 2 ezfloras for 5 years, its a great device. I just switched to the rainmachine. You do need the Nodelink program running on a pc or raspberry pi to connect it to the ISY. The rainmachine is easier. You will also have an easier time selling you house with the rainmachine as it will run standalone without the isy, not so for the ezflora. Even though I use the ISY to monitor and manage some of the rainmaichine's functions, it can operate independently on its own.

 

While you can use rainmachine's cloud service to easily remotely access the rainmachine, its not required. The rainmachine can be fully accessed and controlled without it. 

 

Ezflora programming was gratifying, but very manual and a lot of work. The rainmachine has a web interface to easily set up sprinking schedules and connect to weather services. The rainmachine didn't exist in 2011, if it had, I would have chosen it.

 

A note for either of these solutions, the terminals for the wires are small on both devices.. you'll want to work with your installer to have a patch panel or terminals  installed to connect it to the yard

 

Paul

[io_guy]

I originally went with RainMachine because I didn't want the potential issues with Insteon signals and PLM reliability. My intention was to have the ISY control everything. After using the RM I do virtually nothing from the ISY. The RM handles my lawn nicely by itself. I use the ISY for the odd override, that's about it.

[Ajax]

Has anyone tried these? http://rayshobby.net/ 

[Teken]

Has anyone tried these? http://rayshobby.net/ 

 

Quickly reviewed the link and based on the technical outlay - Just wow!

 

Not sure why this open source irrigation system isn't more well known?

 

Thanks for sharing . . .