Galcon BT

This is my third Galcon timer, due to it’s ’timing in seconds’ feature that allows me to run my nursery’s misting system for 5 seconds every five minutes from 9am to 5pm. I’ve been using them for four years in my small commercial nursery. The first timer lasted almost 3 years before dying. The second was a factory replacement because the first one died while under warranty. Had it 6 months when an employee left it in a location where it got dunked in water and died. So I upgraded to the six zone timer with Bluetooth this spring. I use these timers from April thru September and then store them inside over the winter. For all y’all complaining about the app, clearly you have never programmed the timer by hand. I dread programming this timer or changing settings by hand. It’s just a small screen and hard to find the settings I need. Compared to that, the app is fantastic! I had four zones and multiple start times programmed in about five minutes. Do I care that I have to be standing in front of the timer to connect? Heck no. I need to be looking at my manifold and valve labels to remember which valve controls which zone anyways. For the commercial grower, this works great. It was also easy to manually trigger a zone from the app to run for 2 minutes, giving me ample time to verify that I had my sprinklers set correctly. Never had to walk back to the timer to turn that zone off when I was done.

The whole idea of having a blue tooth timer is to be able to turn the program on or off or to turn it on for an extra run. The only consistency is it’s failure to connect. ☹️☹️☹️

The app no longer senses my controller, and no apparent way to get any support.

The app UI is very clean and easy to use with intuitive programming and controls. The set up was really easy including pairing the timers with the app. However, the pairing is really unstable and the reconnection is very slow. It takes multiple “retries” to get the app and timer to connect. Also, this maybe a hardware issue, but the Bluetooth signal is very weak. I have to be practically standing over the timer for it to Connect.

Galcon doesn’t appear to even test their app. They roll out new versions that are actually worse than old ones. Also the Bluetooth from the device is horrible with tiny range.

Works great when I stand within a foot of the device which defeats the whole Purpose of the Bluetooth control. As soon as I walk inside my house the just goes non responsive and I have no idea if it’s trying to work or just frozen. I have to constantly close and reopen app hoping it will communicate wit the device. By the time I get it to work by walking outside to stand next to it I could of manually set it anyways! Big disappointment

The computer’s Bluetooth does not appear to work as my iPhone cannot find it no matter how long I scan for even when standing beside it.

It took many attempts to pair the phone with the controller. The phone would see the unpaired controller, but the controller would it display a pairing code. After many attempts, a pairing code was finally displayed, and the controller paired. However, tapping the paired controller now does nothing, so it is not possible to program the paired controller from the phone. Furthermore, the phone seems to get warm while the app is running, and the battery seems to be draining quickly. This is a very poorly tested that is useless in its current state.

I got the controller and installed the app on my phone last year: It was a beast trying to pair the two, but I was finally successful after an hour or so. Now the controller is paired, but I can’t open it from the app!! It decided to put the app on my iPad in the hope that maybe my phone app was corrupted - nope, it pairs, but won’t open the controller either. Pure junk!! Buy another controller (and app) - I am!!!

For a given timer, it would be nice to allow for independent control of days at each time. That said, programming by Bluetooth sure beats kneeling on the ground pushing tiny buttons — as I did last year. I’m impressed how easy the pairing is and really don’t understand the poor average rating. In my hands Galcon.BT works great.