Announced in 2014, the Skydrop Smart Irrigation system combines Internet weather forecasts with a smart water delivery system to provide your plants or lawn with water when needed, and saving water when nature can provide.
Developed in Utah, it is aimed at those premises in regions where water is becoming an expensive commodity, and those in drought hit States will certainly appreciate the utility provided by Skydrop.
No products found.Retailing here, Skydrop can be managed via the home wall-mounted smart controller, via your smartphone or a web browser, so wherever you are in the world, you can manage your horticulture’s water supply with ease.
Does the Skydrop deliver in buckets, saving the claimed up to 50% on your water usage, or will it rain on your parade? Let’s find out with a closer look.
Key Features of the Skydrop
The basic Skydrop sprinkler controller can control eight different sprinkler zones outside your home, from hanging baskets to lawns, or garden features. It is smart enough to follow local laws and ordinances about the use of hoses and water, helping you avoid hefty fines or tutting neighbors.
Intuitive Design
The gorgeous looking and hi-tech looking controller unit features a WiFi unit, LCD, jog dial controller and can be wired in to take control of your lawn pumps and valves, and then helps you take charge of keeping plans and lawns watered without fuss. The control screen shows you the weather forecast and the status of each zone.
Mobile/Web App Enabled
The mobile app has had a major overhaul recently which solves some issues that users had with the Skydrop smart sprinkler system and you can use a PC to monitor it as well. The system uses Weather Underground to pull local weather reports based on your zip code and smart software to figure out the needs of your garden.
Calibrates to Soil Type
Once installed, you can tell the Skydrop sprinkler controller about the types of soil you have, the watering needs of each zone and your timings. Then, let it manage your watering in accordance with the local weather, or you can use it in manual mode to trigger sprinklers if things need extra soaking.
Pros of the Skydrop Smart Irrigation System
Expandable to 16 Zones
Eight zones should be enough for most homes, but the Skydrop can be expanded up to 16 if you have a complex garden environment or just a large area to manage.
There’s also an enclosure for the unit if you want to install it outdoors to keep it dry and clean. Installation is guided by some hands-on YouTube videos which should be enough for most users.
Simple Controls
Once installed, the glowing jog dial ring on the controller is used to navigate the menus. The ring itself shows green for standby mode, blue for watering, yellow for no network and red for an error. Loss of network seems to be a common problem for some users.
Syncs with Nest
As a bonus, you can float your water usage data over to your Nest Home Report, so it can be added as part of your household energy
usage profile.
Cons of the Skydrop Smart Irrigation Controller System
Takes Time to Set Up
While the Skydrop smart controller looks hi-tech, the screen isn’t the best and needs to be carefully installed so you can view it without straining.
Not the Fastest Response
Also, it is not a touchscreen which seems an odd omission in these touch-friendly times, and the jog dial can be rather fiddly to use due to the system’s rather slow response time.
Relies on Weather Forecast, Not Actual Weather
Another issue is that it seems to focus on weather forecasts and not actual rain in your area, so it will still try to water your lawn, even if it is tipping it down in an unexpected shower.
Connecting to a Bluetooth rain sensor would seem a logical way to avoid this issue, but the makers seem convinced their smart software knows better in the long term. Another related topic is that you should note WHERE the device is pulling weather data from (usually a weather station). If you aren’t especially close (perhaps living in a more remote area), the lack of a very local weather forecast might be problematic.
Reliant on Strong WiFi
Recent app updates and firmware fixes seem to have solved many of the connection and stability issues we were going to list in this section, so ensure you update all of your devices before becoming too frustrated. Also ensure you have a strong WiFi signal where you plan to install the Sky drop.
No products found.If you do have problems, their customer support seems keen to help, but having a better product would avoid users have to reach out to them in the first place.
Skydrop Alternatives to Consider
Skydrop is not he only option out there. In fact, the number of competitors in the smart sprinkler controller market is actually increasing! The following are some of the closest competitors worth considering:
The Rachio: I actually slightly prefer the Rachio over the Skydrop in most cases. It is basically identical, but offers many more actively supported integrations for various smart home systems and protocols.
It’s not longer enough just to have a great smart device; it has to “play well with others”. The Rachio accomplishes this more so than any other smart sprinkler controller on the market.
The RainMachine: I consider this one to be almost interchangeable with the Skydrop (although I DO like the Skydrop a bit more). The main difference is that it has 3 different “zone” options (8, 12, and 16) and has a true touchscreen.
LCD screens are nice, but may or may not be critical for you. The Skydrop has the jog dial (jog wheel), but this isn’t quite the same.
The Top Smart Sprinklers for 22 I recently published a round-up article of my top recommendations for this year. You can read it here. Sky drop makes the list, but clearly isn’t the only option.
FAQs
Answer: Yes, the Skydrop is very easy to install on your existing smart sprinkler system, and it will require even less than 5 minutes to start using the smart device.
Answer: To reset your Skydrop controller, you have to press the black button on the controller and hold it until you see “Shutting down” on the screen. Then, you should wait around 10 seconds and start it again.
Answer: If you want to have the perfect grass and flowers in your yard, then Skydrop is definitely a must-have, since it measures the humidity, temperature, soil condition, etc. in order to learn how much water your yard needs at that point of being.
Final Recommendation – Is the Skydrop Ready for Prime Time?
The Skydrop certainly looks like a smart home product, compared to some of the lumbering, bulky, solutions already on the market. However, its reliance on smart software and weather forecasts often seems to put it at odds with the reality of your conditions and your lawn.
Yes, there are manual overrides, but the claims based on technology are what sell it to people who would rather not have to be checking their systems every day. This puts the Skydrop in the category of products that one user may consider brilliant, while another may consider it useless.
In terms of the claimed water savings, many users seem happy with the amounts their Skydrop is reducing use by, but 50% still sounds rather high, considering how scatter shot its approach can be to watering.
In my experience, it was closer to 25%, but I think this depends on your location (geographically) as well.
Certainly Skydrop seems worth a try, and I’d recommend a spring or fall purchase to test it in changeable conditions. Then, you can either keep it or return it within the 30-day product satisfaction period, depending on how you get on.
We’d hope there’s a Skydrop 2.0 in the works, with a better CPU, better WiFi radio and greater intelligence. If that ships it should be a market winner, but it is currently only a marginal improvement on non-smart watering systems.
Right now, it’s one of the better options available in the still emerging “smart irrigation” market.
I think it should be worth mentioning that the unit can be used with an existing rain sensor; you do need the expansion module though which in my case was no big deal as I had more than 8 zones.
Also, it can be tied in to Weather Underground (https://www.wunderground.com) and thus get more detailed weather information than from traditional weather sources. In my case, down the street a neighbor has a personal weather station (PWS) on Weather Underground. So if it rains more or less in my area than what traditional sources list for my area, my Skydrop controller knows about it since I can have their tech support tie my controller to that PWS. Skydrop does use forecast information and if the forecast information is then wrong, it can add additional watering time at the next scheduled time. This is light years ahead of traditional controllers since they are set on a fixed time per zone. The basic rain sensor that is typically installed doesn’t say how much rain occurred, so if the traditional system senses rain, it will not water, but did the yard get enough? One thing is for sure, the traditional controllers don’t know that and at least Skydrop has a better shot at getting it right.
As for the slow interface. Does it really matter? All you really need to do with the screen and jog wheel is connect to your WiFi network. Once that is done, you can configure everything else either through your phone/tablet with the app [(available on the Google Play Store or on iTunes) requires Internet access] or on any computer with Internet access. The point of Skydrop is so that it is a smart controller and you don’t need to do everything at the control panel like traditional units. So the display hard to read in bright conditions is not an issue as you don’t need to be at the controller. You can easily set the WiFi configuration up on the Skydrop in the comfort of your house and once that is done, you go and install it. That makes much more sense than standing at the controller setting the basics up. So the con of installing it just right so you can easily see it is not really that much of a con at all.
Most traditional controllers can be controlled remotely and some intelligence added into them. Take the leading manufacturers, you just need to buy their software, the network module (either wired or WiFi), install the software and leave a computer on 24×7. Oh, and the network modules are usually around $1,000 and then the software is typically at least $500 and you still might need to buy a software license for additional functionality. What is cheaper, spending $250 (or less) for the Skydrop, if you need the additional zones another $49 (or less) and then if you need the outside enclosure another $49 (or less) or the $1,500 plus to modernize your traditional controller?
I looked at various solutions including keeping the traditional controller and went the Skydrop route. The main reason being, the Skydrop seemed more thought out than some of their competitors, had less drawbacks and around the same price or less than the other options.
I really find this statement misleading:
“its reliance on smart software and weather forecasts often seems to put it at odds with the reality of your conditions and your lawn.”
They cannot un-water a watered lawn. So all they can go with is forecasts. In my area, we were in a drought for over five years and had water restrictions. If you water too much all it does is runoff and is thus wasted. The traditional controller has no idea of forecasts, temperature, etc. Sure you can do the seasonal adjust of adding in or removing percentages so it will water accordingly, but that is all manual. I highly doubt the average homeowner does this, they most likely just turn it off in the fall and back on in the spring. So where water is a precious commodity, the Skydrop will save water where a traditional controller will not.
Could you elaborate on this statement?
“but 50% still sounds rather high, considering how scatter shot its approach can be to watering.”
What other approach could it use? It cannot change what was done in the past, so if it over waters, reducing the amount of water the next time won’t save all that much. All it can do is use the predictive approach and if wrong, add more water the next time. Why not blame the weather man and mother nature for being unpredictable?
A traditional controller also just uses a timer for each zone. It has no clue as to what type of sprinklers are used, if it is in the shade and what is actually being watered. The Skydrop asks you about all three of those plus the soil type. The Skydrop also tries to determine how much water is actually required based upon the weather conditions since it last watered. Were there days that were cloudy and cool or was it sunny and hot or a mix of various conditions. Cooler weather means less water required.
I never had WiFi issues and I’ve had my unit for six months now. I also set the WiFi settings up before installing it. After that it was all done through the app or on a computer.
The only con I have seen so far, it doesn’t sync with an NTP server and I have yet to see where you can set the time via the app or through the web browser. Since the Skydrop is already connected to the Internet, they should just ask you for the timezone and if you want to automatic daylight savings enabled. This missing feature could be added by Skydrop in the future with a software update; hopefully they go the NTP route. Even checking once a week will work to keep the time somewhat current and accurate.