Aiper IrriSense 2 Smart Irrigation System Review: Smart Yet Uneven

To use Area mode, you must first define the boundaries of the area. This is done in the app via a process similar to what I’ve encountered on some competing hardware devices. You fire up mapping mode, and the sprinkler engages. Then, using a simple remote control system, you dial the water pressure to the appropriate level, aim for the edge of your yard but not the fence; Once the water is where you want it, you drop a pin to mark the boundary of the water area. You then turn the nozzle on top of the sprinkler to a few degrees and repeat, setting the strength of the flow to cover the desired area. Repeat over and over until you’ve gone through 360 degrees and dropped pegs to visually represent the entire garden. The company says the maximum supported area is a whopping 4,800 square feet, with spray reaching up to 39 feet.

ScreenshotAiper app via Chris Null

In the app you can watch this area map being created in real time. The process is fairly intuitive, except for the last few points, where Aiper’s system makes it difficult to complete the 360-degree track. If you look at the completed map in the screenshot below, you will see a small piece of land that could not get any penalties for Aiper.

Watering runs can be started on demand or according to a schedule, and you interestingly define not an amount of time to run, but a “water consumption limit”, measured in inches of water you want to apply to the soil. While it’s nearly impossible to measure how accurate that is, qualitatively, those estimates felt about right in my testing.

In Area mode, the IrriSense 2 delivers water by spraying a jet in a single direction, rotating clockwise through its 360 degrees until it has completely gone around the map you set before turning back and doing it again in a counter-clockwise direction, repeating this cycle until the desired irrigation depth is reached.

While the IrriSense 2’s spray system is officially described as a soft “mist,” it’s actually more of a jet, especially when it needs to reach the far reaches of the yard near the terminus of its range. This results in much more water being delivered to the edges of the yard than to the central portion of the mapped area, but this is a common problem I’ve seen with rotary sprinklers like this. To account for this, the IrriSense 2 doesn’t just blow at full speed for the entire run. Instead, repeated rotations reduce the pressure delivered little by little, until the final rotations are little more than a trickle of water hitting just a few inches from the unit. (Note that canceling a run early means that only the outer portions of the area will receive water.)

Photo: Chris Null