“One major issue when dealing with sprinkler controllers is rain starting to pour during sequences execution, because in this case it is useless – if not damaging – to water a garden or plants while nature is already taking care of that; not to mention that pouring additional water on soil that has already been hit by pouring rain may lead to collapse of drainage canals or ditches, manholes or catch basins, besides causing garden or courtyard floods. Another issue is water stagnation once the rain stops pouring, because this is another instance where garden watering is of no use, since there already is a surplus of water. In order to bypass said obstacles, a sprinkler controller worthy of its name must include a sensor capable of detecting pouring rain and water on the ground beside being obviously able to handle signal coming from said sensor and consequently stop or delay execution of irrigation sequences; this latter aspect is assigned to programming and is currently taken into account in sprinkler controllers, which have a dedicated input, typically a clean-contact or resistive input with pull-up. Once input is activated, the controller executes expected action, skipping the cycle or just putting it on hold for a period of time believed to be sufficient (e.g. a couple of hours) for water to run out; said period of time must start from sensor deactivation, that is when water presence is no longer detected.”