Orbit 57900 12-Station Outdoor Swing Panel Sprinkler System Timer

This was a perfect choice to replace my older lawn irrigation control panel. It was easy to install and set up. This is an outdoor panel, but installed it inside my garage. For some reason, it is less expensive than the indoor models. I don’t think that you’ll go wrong wherever you install it.

Simple, basic design without extra frills or programs. Easy to hook up, set dates and times. I didn't need the remote programming option or rain delays as found on mor expensive designs.

Installation was easy. I used this to replace a 6 station orbit controller. This one has three programs (A, B and C) which is nice, so I can setup an extra watering program. You can select days of the weeks, duration of each station, start times, etc.Once you assign a station to a program (A, B or C) you can set the start times. You can have up to four start times. Then you just set your run time for each station (i.e. 5 mins or whatever).My setup has stations that are bubblers for large plants and stations that are sprinklers for the grass. This allowed me to put all my grass sprinklers on program B and all the bubbler stations on program A and then I can run program A and B everyday to water all the plants and the grass.I have three bubbler stations that run at 4 mins, 3 mins and 4 mins on Program A.I have 5 sprinkler stations that run at 5 mins, 4 mins, 4 mins, 4 mins and 4 mins on Program B.At 8am Program A runs. At 8:30am Program B runs. At 8:00pm Program A runs and at 8:30pm Program B runs... everyday.The plants and lawn are happy.I can use Program C for stations that I occasionally manually water... like an extra watering Program for hot days. Other people might use Program C as a third grouping of stations.A nice touch is this controller has two common lead connectors so if you run separate wires, like if you have stations in different locations, you don't have to tie your two common wires together and shove it into a single lead connector.The outdoor box is nice as it protects the controller from wind, dust, and rain (although I would not count on it being waterproof). Also nice is the normal electrical cord you plug into an outdoor socket. The transformer is inside the box and you don't have the giant transformer brick to plug in at the electrical socket.The screws and anchors to mount it into my outside stucco wall were included and worked fine. I pre-drilled holes for the anchors and placed the anchors in the hole and the screws tightened up just fine without pull out of the wall.I only use 8 of the stations, but I wanted room to expand in case I end up irrigating my side yard or some other project.Overall, it is a pretty decent irrigation controller for the price. If you need advanced features like Wifi or sensors (temp, soil moisture, etc.) (although you can connect a rain sensor) or complex programming (like variable run times on single stations or whatever) then this is not your controller. You will need a more expensive model with those features. But, for a basic controller this works well.I only wish you could setup different run times for single stations, like if in the mornings you wanted to deep water and at night you just wanted to lightly water or something.

Easy to Use. Even for a tech impaired person like me.

Would like better if “manual” operation was not part of the “run” program. If leave unit on “run” after manual watering unit will revert to automatic operation. Also, need to cycle through entire manual operation each time you might want to select a different zone to water.

It is amazing what this clock does for the low cost. I bought the 12 station unit, replacing an old unit that cost close to $1000 and this unit, at around $70, does essentially everything the old clock did at a fraction of the cost.There is one peculiarity about this clock, noted by several other reviewers as a problem which, apparently, they did not fully understand. These other reviewers say these units do not keep good time, losing minutes over the course of just a few days. In fact, one reviewer returned a clock for this reason and then complained that the replacement was just as poor a time keeper. I thought this at first, myself, until I did some investigation and ran some tests on my unit.In fact, the clock keeps excellent time, at least my unit does. However, when you turn the programming wheel through the "Set Time" setting, which you may well do to reach any of the other setting positions, the clock resets to the current time, with the seconds rounded to zero. So, if you are setting other things in the clock, and you spin the programming wheel counter clockwise (from the Auto position, where it most likely lives most of the time, through the Set Time position) to get to what you want, you will be effectively setting the clock back 0 - 59 seconds each time. This can very quickly make it appear that the unit is losing time, especially when the unit is new and you are programming and reprogramming it frequently. So, just spin the programming wheel in the direction to avoid going through the Set Time position, presumably clockwise from the Auto position to the setting you want and in the reverse direction to get back to Auto when you are done, to avoid this problem.Now I would not argue that the clock should not be changed by just passing through the Set Time position, without Enter being pressed, so this is a fault in the logic of the system, but it is easy enough to avoid the appearance of poor time keeping if you understand this particularity.

Not one problem, I think most of the problems people are having with unwanted turn ons is they have overlapping program schedules and then over run times on each program for stations which can be a mess. Clear as mud I know. I messed around just to see if that would happen and it does. It’s not always the case I’m sure but it can happen might check it out, easy fix clear and start over. Clear all programs. Remember one program one start time add up each program station times and make sure the next program doesn’t start before the first program is finished.

Love the simplicity and ease of use. Works great! Wish I had replaced my defective timers sooner with this model.