Starter Kit

there's a few options for smart hose / spigot irrigation tech and i have been pleasantly surprised how well Zilker has been integrated for my rooftop drip system / watering needs. the installation was straight forward from the app instructions -setting up the account, adding the wireless bridge, and connecting the smart hose controller. the app is intuitive and simple to use. schedule watering sessions with granularity and other smart options and features -i'm not using the smart weather stuff since this is primarily used for roof top container plants which is in need of constant watering regardless of precipitation, but i do appreciate this option if i decide to use a future Zilker smater water hose for a lawn / ground plants, there's several weather stations around me that's tempting to test this out with a lawn for a future pup (maybe we'll see how the lawn holds up first ;)so far it's great, i love how it gives you stats on water usage and it if detects not normal water pressure through notifications. i can't really think of anything else to improve, great job Zilker :)

The unit just doesn't work. It failed to turn open the valve 50% of the time, even with the gateway, wifi, and timer all located within 20 feet of each other. When it did turn on, it significantly reduced water pressure/flow rate to the point that my drip heads were barely functional. The app that controls it is junk - it crashes constantly. when it does work, it is very unresponsive - tap on an icon and wait 10-15 seconds before anything happens. Save your money and buy something else.

I bought 4 Zilker valves to control various zones of irrigation around my house including drip irrigation and sprinklers. The bridge and app worked well to connect all the valves and setting up their operation was straightforward with lots of neat details to tune the operation for your garden including size of garden area and soil type etc. The internal flow meter is super useful and the app pretty well laid out. However it has two significant bugs which prevent it working as claimed:1. The app doesn't correctly calculate the moisture content of the soil each day. Rather than using the previous day's finishing moisture content, it uses the previous days starting moisture content. Essentially this means it always starts with same moisture content each day regardless of the rainfall, irrigation use or weather. Changing the weather station can reset this but then the bug repeats itself. This essentially means the smart moisture content management feature is unusable - one of it's main selling points.2. The rain skip feature says it takes into account rainfall over the past 24 hours but in fact only does it since midnight of the previous day. Therefore if you run your system at 5am, it only takes into account rainfall between midnight and 5 am, not the 24 hours as claimed. This significantly reduces the effectiveness of the rainskip feature.I've taken up both these issues with technical support who agreed they exist but had no timeline for them to be corrected. A month later still no change. The disappointment here is that these are just software calculation issues, which should be relatively straightforward for them to correct.Both mean that there is no 'smart' control to these valves and I run them essentially as a standard irrigation timer albeit with the benefit of control via my phone. It also struggles to access local weather stations, having rotated through all my local ones, none seem to communicate reliably with it with the same communication issues regardless of weather station selected.A great product in concept and the hardware seems good so far but they need to get the software right to deliver on what they are actually advertising.

I bought the Zilker because I wanted to pick specific times and duration for watering the new grass seed and young seedlings. It worked well to set up my schedule. It worked fine and somehow after several days became unreliable. Support was excellent at helping me. Eventually, I deleted the scheduled events and re-entered them and it ran fine. The messages still need some refinement. If you want to stop an event because the grass doesn't need it or it just started to rain, or someone shows up to mow the grass, it is somewhat difficult to find where how to stop the current watering event. I found it myself once, and had to shut off the water the second time, because I didn't remember where I found the stop current event setting. I think a better user manual or more extensive FAQ's would be helpful. Overall the product works great, manual events are easy to run, support on-line is super, and does things other devices will not do. I think the app needs further refinement, but it has done the job I purchased it to do.

The Zilker valve is very easy to install (screw it onto your hose, install the app, press a few buttons, and you're good to go), and the device is extremely powerful, allowing a very large amount of customization for your plants, soil, etc. Sure, you can simply use it to water a set amount (either by time or gallons) and skip rainfall, but given the amount of effort that goes into the evapotranspiration calculations I want to use them. That way I don't need to worry about dialing the water back in the winter or adding more on very hot days, it will all happen automatically.Also, they have fantastic support. I had an issue with my valve and got very quick replies to my e-mails that were informative and friendly. It turned out the first valve had an issue (which, as someone who works in electronics, I will never begrudge a company, even with the most thorough testing regime it happens sometimes), but they replaced it for free and the replacement is working great. I'm about to buy a second valve to handle my trees.