Knowledge Center Programming

Rain Bird Underground Irrigation System Controllers and Daylight-Saving Time

Spring forward, fall back. Since the early 1900s, this expression has acted as a mnemonic device in the United States for remembering to turn one’s clocks one hour ahead in the spring for daylight-saving time, and back one hour in the fall at its end. But what does this have to do with your underground […]

Understanding Cycle+Soak and your Rain Bird Smart WiFi Controller

When sprinklers come on, they can apply water to your landscape at a high rate. Depending on the landscape, the soil may not be capable of absorbing the water as quickly as the sprinklers are applying it.  In cases where there are sloped areas or compacted soils like clay, you may notice water pooling in […]

Turning on/off Automatic Seasonal Adjust

Turning on Rain Bird WiFi Controller Automatic Seasonal Adjust, or weather adjusted watering times, can be done with a single switch. Once turned on, the controller will upload a new watering percent adjustment within 24 hours. The screen shown above is for a program based controller, like the ESP-ME3 or the ESP-TM2. These controllers allow […]

Stopping Sprinklers from the Rain Bird App

To stop automatic watering: 1. Select the controller that is running from the main menu.  2. Press on the water drop icon in the bottom bar. Some controller models may look different, but all models have the water drop icon. 3. Press stop at the bottom of the manual watering screen. Different controller models may […]

Sprinkler Manual Watering

There are a few ways to turn on your sprinklers when they are not scheduled to run, called “manual” watering. 1. You can get to the manual water screen by selecting the “water drop” icon on the controller card in the Rain Bird App home screen, or by pressing the controller card and then pressing […]

Scheduling a Rain Bird WiFi Controller for Automatic Irrigation

After completing the setup process in the Rain Bird app with a WiFi controller a “Controller Card” will appear in the app. You will need to “tap” on the controller card in order to access the controller. Tap the pencil icons on the respective programs or zones to edit your controller’s irrigation schedules. You can […]

Syncing the Rain Bird App and the WiFi Controller Panel

Your WiFi controller and the Rain Bird app synchronize automatically when your mobile device connects to the controller, and then when changes are made in the app and the “Done” button is selected. There are no additional steps required to synchronize the two. It is important to remember to press “Done” when making any schedule […]

All Zones Watering More Than They Should

When a controller waters all zones more than one time, like watering all of them in sequence and then starts over and does it again, it may be a programming issue. Sometimes there is more than one start time per program when only one start time was intended. Double check all of your start times […]