Rain Bird Irrigation system

Very easy upgrade. Take pics of the wiring so you don’t lose which wires are for each zone. You can also tag the wires with wire markers (numbers). There is a Keeling irrigation in BR and they can set you up with a good replacement irrigation controller. I’d recommend adding a rain sensor also.

I have two rain bird controllers neither are wi-Fi. I love them. Would like to upgrade them though one day.

Easy to do just take a picture of the zoning wiring and make sure you tag them or something to prevent you from mixing up the wires on accident.

I have the rainbird wifi unit and it works well. Initially some issues with it connecting to wifi, fixed it by adding a guest wifi that was 2.4ghz. Otherwise no issues for the last 3 years.

Easy to open up the app and do a manual irrigation for a few minutes or to change a schedule as needed. Has the automatic adjustments to time to irrigate based on weather(too hot or been raining, etx)

With that said, you don't have to go with rainbird. You can get a rachio which is highly rated as well. Not sure of the functional differences as they both allow rain "sensing" via local weather data as opposed to a rain sensor or soil moisture which you can still add if you wanted it more accurate. Otherwise not sure if the rachio has more flexibility in setting the schedule vs the rainbird unit. I've never compared software on that end, but that's the only functionality I wish I could do with rain bird is to be able to fine tune the schedule

I have a Rachio and I love it.
No need for rain sensors. If there is rain forecasted, it won’t run.

Switching is easy as others have said.

Replace my rainbird with an orbit bhyve. 20x better at least

Easy just jump the zone wires over