LinkTap D1 Wireless Water Timer & Gateway - 2 Zone Smart Hose Tap Timer, Built-in Flow Meters, Real-Time Fault Detection & Notification, Weather Adaptive, Better Range Than WiFi, IP66, 2-Year Warranty

We are slowly automating the watering of our garden which while not huge is too big for WiFi based remote valves to work.I looked at installing remote hard-wired valves but the cost of the multi-core cable alone was going to be horrendous. High end systems multiplexing control onto single cables are also way too expensive. So I needed another solution.These valves use Zigbee (a wireless system a bit like WiFi) and they genuinely do work at up 100m as claimed so long as you site the base unit sensibly, I've put ours at the top of the roof (inside).The hardware us well made, they are easy to set up using the app and they seem to work well. The near real-time feedback of water flow is very useful as you can see immediately if something is amiss.The app for programming them works fine although it is not great to use. They have clearly spent the money on the hardware, not the software! Don't get me wrong: everything is there and it does the job, it is just a bit clunky.So more expensive than WiFi valves, and probably overkill for a small garden or just a few pots. But if you have something larger this kit will do the job for £100s of pounds (assuming several valves) rather than the £1000s or even £10,000s it would require for a traditional "central controller plus multi-core cable to remote valves" solution.

Last year we lost many plants while we were on vacation due to a prolonged drought. Replacing them proved costly so this year we decided to set up an automatic watering system as such 'extreme weather' seems increasingly common. The LinkTap water timer looked robust and well-designed so we opted for it even though it's slightly more expensive than rival models. Having used it for several weeks, this seems to have been a good decision - it's easy to set up, highly controllable and works reliably. We opted for the two outlet model (model D1) so that one outlet controls a 13mm supply hose (from Hozelock and fitted with universal dripper units) running along flowerbeds on the lefthand side of the garden while the other controls the hose on the righthand side. This arrangment means there are no worries about possible low water pressure as we can irrigate one side of the garden first, then the other. The hardware is robust and well-designed. There was a minor problem with the physical installation of the water timer unit due to its width (~163mm). The easiest way to attach it to our threaded tap was to rotate the unit clockwise until it fitted snugly. However, its width meant that it barely cleared the brick wall during rotation. Other than that, installation was easy. Installation of the app and creation of a watering plan was also easy. I particularly like the way the app informs you about the water flow rate. This allows you to fine-tune the system after installation to deliver the optimum amount of water to your plants. It's clear that a great deal of thought went into the design of this versatile software - even down to the judiciously-chosen gurgling sound effect!

After a couple of days my initial view is this is excellent. Setup of bridge and tap are simple and well-explained and it all just worked first time. I've only explored a few of the features but I can't see anything missing.Things that could be improved on an otherwise excellent system (still five stars from me):1) The app needs tidying up. There's a lot in there and it works very well but navigation and function delineation could both do with some reorganising and cleaning up to make it more intuitive and easy to read.2) Both units could do with wall mount options. I've got mine mounted away from a tap and made up some metalwork to mount it to a wall for connecting to hosepipes. You wouldn't want it to be permanently wider to accommodate this but If it had some recessed machine screw sockets in the sides of the case to pair with ears, supplied for use as an option, that'd be very useful, particularly for the main unit, but also for the bridge.3) Toolless battery removal. Plenty of ways to keep it water-tight without forcing everyone to fiddle around for the Phillips every time they need to refresh their AAs.Overall excellent.

Quality product and support. Exceeded expectations in terms of software quality which is unusual for a product like this.

Really happy with this purchase. We sometimes go away for weeks and being able remote control the watering is really useful. The app is a bit geeky, but quite robust and functional, where others sometimes offer more form than function. I thought I needed sensors which LinkTap doesn't offer but the intelligence around location based weather before and after rain combined with thresholds works really well.

Overall a very good piece of kit but some small gremlins with the software which is being ironed out.

Just bought my second D1. Quick and easy set-up, up there with Apple and Google products (if not better). Very well made, amazingly rich-featured app and with two killer features:1) Robust comms link from gateway to controllers. I have the gateway at one end of a long house and the controllers in a greenhouse beyond the far end with a wifi network buzzing in-between but comms are totally robust.2) The watering schedule durations can be factored by a +-% if the temperature goes over a user-defined max or below a user-defined min. This helps avoid under or over watering from a fixed schedule, especially while away. Can also set to pause watering if rain is forecast for the area.Love the bubbling sound of the watering alerts!

Does. the job really well, with notifications about what is or is not happening e.g. water tap has been switched off by accident etc. Easy to set up, and it just works!