Netro Pixie Smart Hose Faucet Timer, WiFi, Solar Powered, Weather Aware, White, Compatible with Alexa

I was a little apprehensive about buying this. There are not many reviews, it appears to be a new company, almost all water timers on Amazon have middling reviews (so it is a hard product to get right), and each one costs $120. I plan on buying 2, so in my mind it needed to do its job consistently and without any hassle for it to be worth the cost. Two more caveats. First, I have been a professional developer for about 8 months now, so understand I have a tech fanboy attitude and writing from perspective of a relatively computer literate person. Second, this review is just a first impression. Setup,looking at the app,creating a schedule, and two dry runs [sic]. I will update as I get more experience with the device. So...my first impression is overwhelmingly good, for these reasons: • SPEED OF SETUP: Setup was easy to understand, but not super quick. 15-20 minutes, start to finish. That is acceptable. • SETUP COMPLICATIONS PRESENT BUT MANAGEABLE: Some of the setup steps are "interesting". It's not like pairing some earbuds to bluetooth. But it's not hard either, and whoever wrote the user instructions is a good writer... During loading I kept waiting with fingers crossed for it to crash and spit out some unintelligible error. That did not happen. I did have two or three hiccups, where a step did not work,but the app said "This is probably the issue. Do this and it will work." Every time the recommendation worked, which is pretty good considering I have an Android. Well... except at the end you have to make sure your phone is close enough to the wifi,not the device,to make the final connection, but that took my about a minute to figure out what was wrong. • SOFTWARE SOFTWARE SOFTWARE: So the app is not "perfect", but it was immediately obvious that a LOT of work went into creating it. For a company I never heard of, they have built in a ton of useful functionality that people trying to keep their lawns from dying in the summer will want to use. + I bought this to water the foundation of my house, so I won't be use 90% of the app. Not unless the app can walk around my house checking which doors won't open anymore and then adjust the watering. So here is the critical part,it was super easy to brush aside the advanced features and setup up an automatice recurring schedule for evening waterings. It was also super easy to manually start watering for a fixed period of time. More generally, the app is just easy to navigate. It is clear where you need to go to find what you are looking for, the menus and options make sense, for the most part, there's nothing amateur about it. They seem to have balanced complexity with easy of use in a way that should keep any non-finnicky customer pleased with their horticultural (?) purchase. In other words,if you want to water your lawn, this can do it. If you want to water $1000 flowers according to very narrow parameters, this can do do it. If you want to set it and forget it, this can do it. And the app looks pretty good to boot. Nice modern UI. There you have it. Maybe a month from now I will update with an equally long tirade, but for now I am pleased with my purchase.

I ordered this product about eight months ago and it hooked up and performed well for about six months. I noticed it wasn’t watering the plants and the iPhone app showed that it was not connected to the Internet. Further investigation showed that the battery was dead since there’s no obvious way to charge the battery— it is solar powered— I contacted the company who offers a Customer Service chat but no telephone service. Although they promised 24 hour response, I heard nothing for a couple of weeks and then contacted them again, and once again heard nothing from the company.

There aren't many reviews yet of this product, but there are a few more reviews on the iPhone app in the app store which is why I bought this to try it out and write my own review. Overall, I give it a 5/5. Very impressed. The solar charging seems to work very well. I put it in a mostly sunny area that is covered by shade some parts of the day. Out of the box, it had about 30% battery. Within a couple hours in the sun, it charged up to about 60% battery, so I'm pretty confident this thing won't die on me if it gets a little overcast. I had a little issue with it out of the box where it wouldn't stop the flow of water when I turned the faucet on. Turns out the device goes to sleep automatically after a short period of time, so while I was tinkering with the app, it went to sleep and didn't finish the setup. So, you have to press the button on the side for 3 seconds until a light comes on, then turn on the water, then double tap that same button to test opening and closing the valve. I actually had to double tap it a few times to get the valve to open and close. Once you get the valve to close and the water stops, you can allow it to go to sleep again and use the app to set up a schedule of when the valve will open and for how long. Hardware-wise, this thing seems solid. Software wise, the app is a little clunky and the user experience is odd, but it works. Being able to see when it was last watered, perform manual runs, and see stats on your watering cycles is great. It has a setting that connects to weather service and will delay watering if it rains, and you can set how much of a delay to set. It can cancel your next scheduled watering period if it rains that day, for example. It's basically everything I want it to be. Great job. Tempted to buy the moisture adapter that pairs with this so it'll only water when the moisture levels are low. May buy this in the future.

*Update** I was able to get the connector back on myself and am currently using the Pixie just fine. Be careful on over tightening the hose bib connector. If you tighten it too much the connector can pop off. I was able to get it back on my placing the unit against a wall and using a rubber mallet to force the connector back into the socket. Setup was fairly simple although the app took some getting used to. Overall, I love what this thing does and how smart it is. Original review... I’m sure this product works great... if it doesn’t fall apart upon installation. I can’t get this piece back on no matter what I do. I haven’t even used it once.

My lawn was suffering due to my poor watering skills.. Well mostly coz I'd either forget, procrastinate, or put it off for later.... This year I was determined to get my lawn back in shape, and with Kentucky bluegrass, it's all about watering.. And as you can see.. Thanks to this little device... I have seedlings wooohoo!!!

Super

Funziona perfettamente alla sua app, completamente programmabile

Love the fact that it’s solar powered so that it can be mounted anywhere. Stays charged and does the job (I have it hooked up to a mini irrigation system for my garden). Interface is a bit confusing to use at first, as I was use to home automation systems that was always connected and online. Since this thing is battery powered, it only goes online periodically based on what you set it to. So if you want something that is always online and want to be able to turn on the tap instantaneously, then this is not for you. I almost returned it for this reason but have learned to accept it and use schedules instead. There is a beta for always on, but it’s a bit flaky.

This device is absolutely perfect. It is solar powered which eliminates the need to charge it. It is Wi-fi enabled which lets you water your backyard with a click of a button. It takes a little while to get used to the app UI but it's fairly easy to use after. The support team was absolutely helpful. They were constantly in touch with me to address the issues I was having with my Pixie.