Great controller for lawn sprinkling systems

Last summer, a friend of mine replaced the controller for his home sprinkler system with a Rachio controller. I said I would love to have one too. My wife surprised me by giving me one as an early Father's Day gift.

http://www.rachio.com/

For people who get into technology (or just want a nice lawn) this thing is great. Installing it was super simple. I just took a picture of the wires connecting my old controller and did the same with the new controller. There are a couple buttons under the cover of the controller but essentially you will need a smart phone to configure it and use it. This device connects to the Internet and gathers data in order to maximize the effectiveness of the water used on your lawn while probably using less than you have in the past. During the configuration, for each zone in your yard, you specify the type of vegetation growing there, the type of soil you have, how much exposure it gets, the slope of the area, and what kind of sprinkler head you have. There are additional advanced settings you can use to fine tune the settings. The app then collects additional data from the Internet in order to make up a watering schedule for your lawn. The schedule is tweaked seasonally. When this is done automatically, an e-mail is sent to you to explain why the tweak was made. It also sends other updates. For example, this morning I received a message indicating my regular morning schedule was being skipped because the forecast says I will receive .32 inches of rain during the next 48 hours. I decided to manually override this skip because it has been really dry over the last month and I think my lawn will be okay by not skipping this morning.

No doubt I am forgetting some of the cool features but as they say on late night TV, "That's not all!" Some parts of the country can actually get a rebate on this thing up to the entire cost of the controller.

http://www.rachio.com/rebates

Unfortunately, my area does not have a rebate available. My friend has been tracking his declining water usage and he says his water savings alone will pay for the device at no sacrifice to the quality of his yard. It comes in both 8 and 16 zone models. The 8 zone model costs $200 on Amazon.

https://smile.amazon.com/Rachio-Spri...s=rachio&psc=1

Cool and I looked into wifi-controlled, in the end I stuck with plain manual.
Realistically all the adjustment it needs is the seasonal one - once or twice per season and it probably takes literally 5 seconds.
I have a rain sensor which does a good job.
Side note, Rainbird controllers sell for much less and they have the same features... plus from a company that has been around for long and is specialized in irrigation.
That being said.. enjoy yours!