One of the cooler things I've had in my house the past few years is a connected sprinkler system. That's mostly because it's smart enough to tell when it's rained without a moisture sensor — but even more so because it's smart enough to know when it's going to rain, and thus it shouldn't bother watering.
But now that we've got Alexa running things, the Rachio sprinkler system (it retails for $199) is even better. And for that reason it's a top pick for the best sprinkler to use with the Amazon Echo. Because for as cool as Rachio is, it's still kind of a pain to have to whip out your phone and open the app and then turn the things off and one.
Way easier is to just bark orders at Alexa.
Like any thing else you want to hook into Alexa, you'll need to first enable the Skill. You can do so online here, or through the Alexa app for Android or for iOS. After that you'll log in with your Rachio credentials, then you're on your way.
Here's what all you can do with Rachio via an Echo device:
- Turn Rachio on.
- Turn Rachio off. (Duh.)
- Set a rain delay, for a single day or for a given duration.
- Cancel said rain delay. (Also duh.)
- Run an individual zone.
- Run ALL THE ZONES.
- Run a zone (or ALL THE ZONES) for a given amount of time.
- Stop a zone. (See how this works yet?)
You can see the full list of permutations here, but it's pretty self-explanatory.
How to connect Rachio to Amazon Echo
