Another thing I should have added. My shallow well pump will start drawing in air during extended dry spells. So output from flow sensor will still pulse out approx. the same but of course air will be running in the pipes with the water. It’s something that I have to accept. I try to stick with low flow rates, drip line and lower GPM nozzles on my sprinklers. Hunter rotors have special nozzle sizes that do fractional GPMs, 0.75 gmp to be exact. Rainbird rotor nozzles only go down to 1 GPM.
Like Rachio’s system design, I prefer monitoring irrigation flow data on iMonnit cloud server rather than just have data inside controller only. Yes, smart controllers like Hunter I-Core can shut down excess flow with the master valve. But what about NO FLOW? At least I can get automated SMS text alerts if my flow starts going too low or too high with iMonnit. Or look a graph on cloud with updates every 2 hrs. Nice to monitor garden when you’re out of town, so you don’t come back to see a dead, dry garden of vegetables without at least some warning.