Rain Bird Irrigation ESP-TM2 ESP-Me Controller LNK WiFi Plug in Module(Open Box)

I was over the moon when I found that RainBird had the plug-in device. Set up was simple, I was worried about controlling from another country, but used it the first days with no problem. Cancelled one watering day due to rain and am able to check it ever day. Excellent product and I will use it often. Thanks!Update July 26, 2019.Been back home in Louisiana since the end of May. No problems while abroad connecting and watering using WiFi from our Air BnB. Lawn and gardens looked great when we got home. No problems with WiFi here at home that others describe. My router is ATT located on the opposite outside wall of our home approx. 40 feet from controller and both are were new in Oct. 2017. We have occasional power outages where we live, but everything functions as it should when modem/router/bridge receive power again.I am fairly tech savvy, but no programmer, and this device was really easy to install and set up zones. We have many zones, but only 4 that I use actively for both lawns areas and flower beds.PS I am a non-retired almost 76 year-old-woman, working from home for realtors in another state.

I was concerned about connectivity to my wifi from allot of other users who reported as such. My router is in the living room while my controller is out in the garage about 100ft away through several walls. I had no issues whatsoever. I installed the wifi unit and followed the instructions on the app on my phone and connected within 20/30 seconds. The app interface is clean and user friendly however takes a little hands on exploring to figure its out. I am now able to run, program, stop reset times and days etc all from my iphone, its way easier than using the controller directly.

First off, I was a little hesitant at first to buy this because of the oft mentioned issued with wifi. I went ahead and did it anyway, wanting to give it a shot.I quickly found out that these issues with the wifi were very much correct. I had all sorts of issues trying to set this up with my router in the closest room to the Rain Bird module.I ended up buying a wifi extender for my Nest camera and with its placement in the garage, decided to fiddle with the Rain Bird again.With the extender literally right underneath the Rain Bird module, I have had zero issues and couple with the app, am able to quickly and easily mess with the sprinkler system. It’s awesome and I really enjoy how easy it is to use.I am often sitting in the couch when birds aplenty come into my backyard to eat my grass seed...I quickly open the app, then the back yard zone on manually, and within seconds the birds are gone!Really pleased with this purchase, but the issues with wifi are real. With an extender, though, I have had no issues and am very happy.

We like this a lot. I opened the inner door of my ESP-Me Controller and it was easy to see right where to plug it in. The iPhone app found it on our wireless network and it got a strong signal with the router one floor above and about 30' away. The app is really intuitive and I prefer to program and run our system with it rather than the already dirt-simple controller in my garage.We just had our system installed last month and this thing is especially convenient when I'm out in the yard tweaking the sprinkler heads to get them just right. I can turn a zone on and off from the lawn with my iPhone, make my adjustments, and don't have to get wet dodging in between running sprinklers in the process.If you start your system in the spring and just forget about it for the next four months, you may not need this. But if you're the type who likes to adjust zone run times and fiddle with the spray heads on a regular basis, this thing is for you. We've had it a month and I figure it's already been worth the price.

09 October 2020 update: I searched and searched on the Rain Bird site and could find no solution to this sleeping hot spot problem. But out of frustration I just put "rain bird LNK WiFi permanent hot spot mode" into a search engine and up popped a page on the Rain Bird site explaining that a firmware upgrade in June 2019 added this feature. Put that phrase into your favorite search engine and you will be able to put your LNK WiFi into permanent hot spot mode so that it is actually available when you try to connect. I added a single star to the review now that I have found a solution to this problem. This was not in the LNK WiFi literature and was extremely difficult to find on the website. If it had been easily available I probably would have given this 5 stars.28 September 2020 update: with a little more trial and error the LNK WiFi module can be placed back in hotspot mode without rebooting the system. Pressing the LNK WiFi button will again put it back into hotspot mode without rebooting the entire controller. This is slightly less klugey - but still requires me to go down to my basement first before operating my sprinklers remotely from outside or editing the program from somewhere other than the basement, etc. Not a significant improvement and I think I was still too kind on the rating. Rain Bird needs to fix this behavior and needs to replace my unit once they do!The app is not terrific, but acceptable. The LNK WiFi module has an acceptable range - would be better if my controller wasn't located in my basement utility room. But the system is, effectively, never available. Rebooting the system (unplugging for a few seconds) it works fine. I can walk around the yard and manipulate the irrigation zones - and I really didn't want a lot more than that. But within 20-25 minutes after disconnecting the WiFi link module the module stops broadcasting its SSID (perhaps even powers down?) so the only way to use the unit again is to unplug and reboot the system to get the LNK WiFi broadcasting again. It then works perfectly fine.In an attempt to get around this problem I added a WiFi Extender, hoping that if the WiFi Extender maintained connection to the LNK WiFi module the module would keep broadcasting its SSID. And I wanted to extend the range further into my yard as well. That worked fine to extend my range, but failed to solve the SSID problem. The LNK WiFi module invariably stops broadcasting its SSID between 20 and 25 minutes after it is no longer actively used. And, again, the only way to get the LNK WiFi module rebroadcasting its SSID again (so that it can be used) is to unplug the entire controller for several seconds and plugging it back in to reboot the LNK WiFi module. This works, but is really unacceptably poor behavior.The latest update of the app also seems to have broken one of the functions. To test RSSI signal strength I tapped on the WiFi symbol on the app - but it reports "No Signal RSSI 0 dBm" even when I am clearly connected to the controller (at a distance of a few feet!). And it reports 0 dBm whether I am connected directly to the LNK WiFi module or I am connected to the WiFi Extender, which for this testing was also plugged in just a few feet away in the same room.For the images, the LNK WiFi module has SSID RAINBIRDxxxxxx and I gave the WiFi Extender an SSID of RAINBIRDxxxxxx_EXT. The system was rebooted and I connected successfully to the app through both the LNK WiFi and the WiFi Extender shortly before 0830 and disconnected at 0830 (telling my phone WiFi to forget both hotspots). I turned my phone WiFi on again to display available hotspots at 0835 as shown in one of the images. I rechecked the available WiFi hotspots every 5 minutes after that until, sometime between 20 and 25 minutes after 0830 the LNK WiFi module stopped broadcasting its SSID. The WiFi Extender is still and always does broadcast its SSID, but looking at the WiFi Extender the light that indicates it is connected to its host also goes out between 20-25 minutes after disconnecting the Rain Bird app from the controller indicating it also no longer sees and SSID broadcast from the LNK WiFi module.I have given the module 3 stars because it does do what is is supposed to do. I should give it 2 stars because of the poor design, but it does function correctly when it functions and there is an easy work around to keep it functioning correctly, even if it is an annoying work around.