Product Library / Outdoor, Lawn & Irrigation

Hunter Pro-HC (Hydrawise)

Compiled by SmartHomeWorkflow Research · Hunter Industries · Outdoor, Lawn & Irrigation

Compatibility

? Inconclusive means we researched that ecosystem and the evidence doesn’t settle it — the catch says why, and the sources are listed below. It is a statement about the available evidence, never a verdict on the product. A Setup Check researches your exact setup where the official sources don’t answer.

Protocols: WIFI^{[1][5][9][10]}

Needs before it works: No hub. The controller has integrated Wi-Fi and connects to Hunter's Hydrawise cloud service, where the scheduling intelligence lives. Hydrawise accounts support multiple controllers, which is the design intent — this is a product line built for people who manage more than one site, and the free tier's controller limit is the first thing that reflects it.^[1]

What it can do^[1][3]

Listed capabilities are what we could establish from vendor documentation. An ability missing here is unestablished — not necessarily absent.

Subscription reality^[2]

◐ Works without a subscription: Yes, but material features need a plan.

Vendor account required: Yes — you must create a vendor account to use it.^[3]

Hydrawise runs a free tier and a paid one, and the free tier is genuinely usable rather than a trial. Hunter's own pricing page states the free Home plan as 3 controllers, 1 user, 30 days of reporting history, 25 MB of image storage, weather monitoring, and notifications through the Hydrawise app. The paid Enthusiast plan is stated as 5 controllers, 5 users, 365 days of reporting history, 100 MB of image storage, hyper-local weather monitoring drawing on 100,000+ stations, and notifications by text message as well as in-app. What the plan buys is history, headroom and SMS — not the ability to water your lawn, which is why coreFunctionWithoutPlan is full. NO PRICE is recorded for the Enthusiast tier: Hunter's own pricing page does not state one, and this catalogue does not import a figure from a forum or a reseller to fill the gap.

Maintenance reality^[1]

• Batteries: None — mains powered via supplied 24V AC plug pack
• Works without the internet: No — the core function depends on the vendor's servers, so an outage takes it with them.^[3]
• Hunter publishes, on its own specifications page: 6, 12 and 24 fixed stations, 'Expandable to 36 zones with additional Expansion Modules (HC-12)'; integrated Wi-Fi '(802.11b/g compatible)' with security 'open or preshared key with WPA / WPA2'; dimensions of 7"/170 mm wide, 6"/150 mm high and 1.3"/35 mm deep; power 'Powered by 24V AC plugpack (supplied)' drawing '300mA typical @ 24V AC' with a zone running and '75mA @ 24V AC' on standby, from 110–120 VAC on the US model; '2 flow meter or generic (rain, moisture, level) sensor inputs per controller' accepting 'any reed pulse-based flow meters'; master valve and pump start support; and an operating range of 0 to 150 °F at 0 to 95% non-condensing humidity. The flow-meter input is the feature that distinguishes this line from consumer controllers — it is what makes broken-pipe alerting possible rather than merely scheduling. Certifications listed by Hunter on the same page: 'WaterSense approved (EPA)', 'Wi-Fi Alliance certified', and 'FCC (US), CE (Europe) and C-tick (Australia) approved'.
• Security updates: No security-update support date is on record for this model yet. We haven't yet checked whether Hunter Industries publishes one, so this is a gap in our research — not a statement about the manufacturer.

The catch

This is a professional irrigation controller that happens to be smart, and almost everything odd about it follows from that. You cannot buy it from Hunter — there is no cart, no buy button and no published price anywhere on Hunter's own surfaces, because the company sells through irrigation distributors and contractors. Any price you find is a distributor's, which is why this record carries none. Second, the thing that justifies the professional label is the flow meter: two sensor inputs per controller accepting 'any reed pulse-based flow meters', which is what turns a scheduling box into something that can tell you a pipe has broken. Consumer controllers in this category generally cannot do that at any price. Third, the subscription is honest and worth understanding before you buy. Hydrawise's free Home plan covers 3 controllers, 1 user and 30 days of reporting history; the paid Enthusiast plan raises that to 5 controllers, 5 users, 365 days, adds SMS alerts and adds a much denser weather-station network. Watering your lawn is not behind the paywall — history, extra users and text alerts are. Hunter does not publish the Enthusiast price on its pricing page, so this record does not state one. Fourth, and this is the real limitation for a smart-home buyer: what we could verify is narrower than usual. Hunter's entire Hydrawise support library is currently unreachable — support.hydrawise.com redirects to hunterirrigation.com, which refused every request made for this record — so the voice-assistant cells say unknown rather than describing capabilities we could not read. Home Assistant is the exception and it is well documented, by Home Assistant rather than by Hunter: an official integration with per-zone switches and usage sensors, but 'Cloud Polling', so state lags. Finally, no Matter, and no Apple route of any kind. Matter only gained irrigation device types in version 1.5 in November 2025 and no Hunter certificate exists in the CSA database — a search for 'Hunter' there returns Hunter Fan Company products, which is a different company and a trap worth naming.

Who it's for

The right controller for a larger or more complicated system than a consumer product is meant to run — 24 zones out of the box, expandable to 36, with flow sensing that will actually tell you a line has burst — and for someone who is comfortable buying through an irrigation distributor rather than clicking add-to-cart. It suits a Home Assistant household well, with the caveat that the integration polls Hunter's cloud rather than pushing, so state can be a little behind. It suits multi-property owners: the free Hydrawise tier covers three controllers before you pay anything. It is a poor fit for anyone who wants voice control and wants to know what they are getting, because Hunter's own documentation of that is currently unreachable and this record will not guess on its behalf — if Alexa control matters to you, Rachio publishes exactly what its integration does and Hunter does not. It is the wrong product entirely for an Apple household. And if a published, comparable price is part of how you shop, this product does not offer one.

Sources & method

Numbered sources below back the facts marked with the matching number above. This is a research profile: compiled from manufacturer documentation, certification registries, and published testing — we state facts, not verdicts, and we have not physically tested this unit. How we work →

1. [1] Hydrawise (Hunter Industries), Smart Controller Specifications — vendor-spec-sheet research, verified 2026-08-02
   Backs: Product identity, Protocols, Maintenance, Power source, Installation, Required hub or bridge, Capabilities, Market availability
2. [2] Hydrawise (Hunter Industries), subscription pricing page — vendor-page research, verified 2026-08-17
   Backs: Subscription
3. [3] Home Assistant, Hunter Hydrawise integration documentation — counterparty documentation, verified 2026-08-02
   Backs: Home Assistant compatibility, Capabilities, Works without the internet, Vendor account required
4. [4] hunterirrigation.com and support.hydrawise.com — access attempts — primary-source verification attempt, verified 2026-08-02
   Backs: Amazon Alexa compatibility, Google Home compatibility, SmartThings compatibility, Research status
5. [5] CSA-IoT certified products database, keyword searches — registry research with control test, verified 2026-08-02
   Backs: Protocols, Apple Home compatibility
6. [6] Hunter Hydrawise support article 220697507 (Amazon Alexa Integration) — redirect chain and final status observed; no body was served — fetch attempt (no content retrieved), verified 2026-08-15
7. [7] Hydrawise (Hunter Industries) Smart Controller Specifications, already cited on this record for protocols, hubRequired and capabilities, plus the CSA-IoT keyword searches recorded here — evidence read against sources this record already cites (BQ-191 provider-side backfill, D-7 bars), verified 2026-08-19
   Backs: What it provides to your home
8. [8] Direct retry of hunterirrigation.com — robots.txt and the redirected Hydrawise support article — plus a robots.txt read of the still-answering hydrawise.com — host-conduct retry, verified 2026-08-22
9. [9] CSA-IoT certified products database — keyword searches for 'Hydrawise' and 'Hunter', and the member-company filter list — registry lookup, verified 2026-08-22
   Backs: Protocols, Apple Home compatibility
10. [10] Matter Distributed Compliance Ledger, vendor registry and per-vendor model lists (read 2026-08-22 via tools/dcl-lookup.mjs). The registry was walked to pagination exhaustion (9 pages, 833 vendor records scanned) for 'hunter', 'industries' and 'irrigation'. 'hunter' returns exactly two vendors, and NEITHER is Hunter Industries: VID 5221 'Hunter Douglas Group' [legal: Hunter Douglas] and VID 5543 'Hunter Fan Co' [legal: Hunter Fan Company]. Both were then enumerated to exhaustion rather than searched: VID 5221 registers 1 model — 'Gateway' [part 1012000283, PID 18500]; VID 5543 registers 5 — 'HunterSMART Ceiling Fan and Light' [K5500-03, PID 32902], 'HunterSMART Wall Plug' [99983, PID 5543], 'HunterSMART Dimmer' [99984, PID 267], 'HunterSMART Wall Panel' [99982, PID 3667] and a second 'HunterSMART Ceiling Fan and Light' [KM422, PID 37232]. No irrigation controller appears on either list. 'industries' returns seven vendors, all unrelated (Daikin ×3, ION Industries, Tejwani Industries, Aputure Imaging Industries, Litex Industries); 'irrigation' matches no vendor in the ledger at all. — registry-lookup (DCL enumeration by vendor ID, with known-positive control), verified 2026-08-22
    Backs: Protocols

Compatibility and lifecycle information reflects the last-verified date above and can change without notice (firmware updates, cloud-service changes, discontinuations). It is provided as-is, for information — verify with the manufacturer before purchasing. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it. Full terms: Terms of Service.

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