[mikester]

When I started looking that is when I noticed the 'cloud' based services. These are kind of cool in that they provide watering based on data from the weather services. I think one can even take data from the weather monitor at the system itself. Then they adjust watering based on those details.

How secure is it? No idea and I share the concern you elude too. I'm a network security consultant by trade so that sort of thing is high up on my radar.

What I was looking for personally though was just a regular old timer that I could manage from a web interface on my ipad/iphone or desktop.

I wanted it WIRED to my house and not really wireless (though my ipad/iphone on my home wireless network would be able to get to it) and the internal security of my home network is pretty good and feature rich, I can lock it down enough to be comfortable with it being there.

My contractor took a look at the irrigation caddy device site and he thinks it is worth a shot plus it is pretty inexpensive. We're going to try it out.