UPB Irrigation - anyone try it yet?

[Bulkhead]

I just discovered this device and am very intrigued. Anyone have any experience with it yet?


WGL Rain8 UPB description


Anyone have favorite software for managing sprinkler routines?


thx

 

[jharrell]

I just discovered this device and am very intrigued. Anyone have any experience with it yet?


WGL Rain8 UPB description


Anyone have favorite software for managing sprinkler routines?


thx

I've used it about a year now, it works very well although I had it lockup once and missed a week of watering, needed a power cycle and it was fine. I use this with my Omni for control with a simple program on the Omni that handles time and duration.

Setup is very easy, each zone is a upb on/off switch, must be programmed using a serial cable connected directly to it and using thier software as upstart doesn't see it.

Although if I had to do again I might have just gone with a hardwired solution using a Omni relay board, since I ended up having to run cat5 to the same location as the Rain8 anyway.

 

[kgingerich]

I just discovered this device and am very intrigued. Anyone have any experience with it yet?


WGL Rain8 UPB description


Anyone have favorite software for managing sprinkler routines?


thx

I installed 3 of the Rain8 modules last month in a 21 zone system. I have the 21 zones and a rain sensor from WGL hooked up to it. I use mainlobby to control it.

I ran into a few bugs initially which turned out to be a problem with a new software version WGL put out but their support was quick and fixed the issue next day. The rest of my issues are with the mainlobby plugin but i'm close to resolving everything.

They seem pretty stable although it's only been a month.

I think it's a good product that works well if you don't mind the requirement of a computer or other HA solution to make it work. It would be pretty cool if they sold an addon which is the actual watering timer system for backup reasons or if you decide to sell the house and don't want to support the PC which goes with it.

Kyle

 

[robolo]

I have 2 zone8UPB sprinkler controllers with 12 zones controlled by my ELK for the past year or so. The irrigation wires were all in my garage and I could not run new wires out from my house so I went with the UPB setup. Have had no problems during that time. Set up is straightfoward and it works well. The only problem I have is that the gardners cannot understand how to modify the settings themselves through the ELK keypad. I have ELK rules to control the timing.

 

[Event5]

If you do not want a 24/7 computer running your UPB Rain8 you could use this timer/schedule from Simply Autmated or the one from Web Mountain. The SA timer is easy to learn and setup.

I don't know if they have changed anything but early UPBRain8's did not respond to links making control more of a problem.

Gardners will have problems working with any HA solution vs. the traditional controllers.

Dave