Irrigation Control thoughts?

Probably OBE now, but anyway… I have a gen 1 Rachio Iro, and I love it. The only down side is that there are no local controls.

But… in the 4 (?) years I’ve been using it here in SE Aurora, CO (I’m loving the Colorado connection this thread has going on @joecooler @rahlvers @Automated_House), it has been bullet proof and never let me down.

I’ve been eyeing rain sensors that I could add to mine. But the delta in cost between a good rain sensor and a PWS is not huge. I run a Netatmo system that I don’t love, and I’ve also been considering the WS-2902. @rahlvers, how has that stood up to CO sunlight? Is the solar radiation measurement accurate? Have you had to mess with batteries?

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OBE?

The one thing I can’t tell if the RainMachine does is, if it’s been wet, does it push out your schedule, or does it skip a day but keep the same schedule? For instance, I set up an every-3-day schedule starting 5/1/2019, so it wants to water this coming Monday. But given the rain we are getting this weekend I think it could push that out a day or two or three, but then continue then restart the every-3-day schedule from whenever it starts watering again. If it doesn’t do this then I think that seriously limits it’s usefulness … either it will overwater (by watering too soon after rain) or underwater, by skipping a scheduled day after rain but then waiting too long to resume watering. Does Rachio do what I’m describing? If so I may have to switch. :frowning:

Sorry. Work jargon, I guess. OBE: Overcome By Events. In other words, I was answering a question that was no longer relevant because you had already made a decision.

The Rachio sticks to a schedule. I water on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If it rains sufficiently, the next scheduled watering is skipped and watering resumes on the next day on the schedule. It seems to work well enough for me. I like it that it doesn’t change the scheduled watering days. In previous drought years, the city prescribed which days of the week the system can run based on house street number (evens on Mon/Wed/Fri, odds on Tues/Thurs/Sat), so a more dynamic schedule wouldn’t work for me.

The system does automatically adjust the runtime duration, though. It accounts for seasonal weather and soil moisture variation. It also sometimes skips watering if the weather is cool and it thinks the soil is saturated even if it didn’t rain the day before.

It works for me.

Sorry, I don’t mean to imply that the runtime will be adjusted after a single rainstorm. Rachio is not that smart. But if there has been a pattern of rain (or drought) that lasts for a significantly long time (not sure the threshold), the system will adjust the next few watering accordingly.

Also, just to plug the CO thread a bit more, Rachio is a local company. I’ve even run into their engineers and sales folks at the airport a few times. (They were easy to spot wearing Rachio t-shirts.)

Interesting … personally I’d like it to adjust after a single storm, if it dumps a half inch or more. Surprising to me that neither system adjusts the schedule dynamically - in the case of rain I would think that’s what you really want to do. But maybe that’s too hard to get right. W/my old dumb rainbird I’d just shut it off at the controller if I wanted it to skip a cycle, and then I could adjust the schedule by telling it which day in the cycle today is … so for the every-3-day schedule, it watered on day 1. If I want it to water tomorrow I could just say today is day 3; if I want it to water in two days then I’d set today to day 2, etc. Of course my goal in using a smart controller is to try to avoid all the fussing with it.
WIth a every-3-day schedule I think if you get a skip the yard could get crispy, but with an every-two-day it wouldn’t be so bad. I’m going to experiment, we’ll see what works best…

I think rachio will adjust after a single storm, but you have to be using a flex daily schedule. Mine constantly moves the schedule around based on rainfall since I use a flex daily schedule for my 3 schedules.

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Actually I saw that and was wondering if that’s how that works. Seeing as how I spent a fair amount of time learning how to use the RainMachine yesterday I’m going to give it a whirl but it’s good to know I can switch to the Rachio if the RainMachine doesn’t work the way I need it to.

@alk - interesting question… I haven’t looked compared my solar sensor data against other (“official”) data. I’ll take a look when I get back home later this week. The temperature is really consistent with the other stations in the area. It is a really good indicator of direct sun vs high clouds vs dark clouds vs “other” numerically though. I can pull up the dashboard at work and tell by number what current conditions are at home.

OK @alk - I’ve searched, and it doesn’t look like there is an “official” station anywhere close to me (maybe someone else would have better luck, but NOAA doesn’t have any record of one, at least) that keeps official records of solar radiation data to compare against.

For the battery question - no issues at all. They are rechargeable with integrated solar panels, and I haven’t touched them since installing (about a year and a half ago). I have my unit in direct sun and haven’t noticed any issues (it came through the 75+ mph winds with the bomb cyclone this winter like a champ, although protected by in the trees it only registered gusts in the 60’s).

Thanks @rahlvers. I appreciate the follow up. I have a Netatmo system (base, outdoor module, and rain gauge but I don’t have the anemometer). For “only” $100 more, I could get wind speed. $360 for a complete system that’s still not as capable as the WS-2902. It works, and it seems accurate compared to other sensors in my neighborhood on wunderground. The indoor air quality measurement is interesting, and I use it to advise me on when to open the windows. The SmartThings integration is also okay.

In hindsight, I’m not sure why I fell for the Netatmo a couple years back, and I probably wouldn’t buy it again.

After a week of use here are my thoughts on the RainMachine … hopefully this helps someone else.

The Good

  • The controller recognized that less watering would be needed w/predicted rainfall and ran my program for 45% of the programmed time. Nice!
  • Internet connection has been rock solid and the weather data it’s getting from NOAH has been accurate so far.

The Less Good (not really bad, more like minor annoyances)

  • Probably my biggest complaint, there is no way to skip a single scheduled watering - either snooze the device or disable the program or it is going to run if the RainMachine thinks it needs to. Maybe I’ll never want to override it, but still, I’d like the ability to do so easily.
  • The app isn’t the greatest … all the information and control is there, but it’s a bit clunky looking and feeling and the location of some of the settings is not intuitive.
  • Since you can no longer connect to WeatherUnderground unless you yourself have a weather station, I’m not sure RainMachine can really claim to support hyper local weather. All the other services offered are big national or international services that aren’t going to be “hyper local”.

The (possibly) Bad

  • My biggest concern at this point is the touch screen on the unit … it is not very sensitive. I often have to tap it a couple of times before it responds. Sometimes more than a couple. This worries me … is it going to fail the day after my return period expires? Since I bought this unit it part for the local control aspects, a failure of the touch screen would be a big deal to me. I am wind up deciding it’s not worth the risk and returning it if it seems to be getting worse.
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  • The touchscreen isn’t great but mine still works 2 or 3 years in (I can’t remember when I actually bought it).
  • The wunderground change is annoying but makes sense given how the Wunderground service was updated. It does have the option of custom weather services though which is pretty nice (there are tabs for the weather services).
  • I think snooze is the closest they get to skipping watering. I don’t think I’ve ever had it come up but I can see how it would.

Glad to hear about the touchscreen … as I said, I’m a bit worried about it. Over time I’m sure I’ll get used to just using the app but still - one of the big reasons I bought it is for the local control.
The problem w/the other custom services is I’m not sure which if any to choose. I loved the wunderground tie-in because there are multiple stations in my neighborhood. Altho, I’ve been wanting to get one of my own … maybe this is the incentive! :smiley:
Re/skip, right after I installed the RM we got a huge rain but it still wanted to water - I’m guessing it wasn’t in the history or something. So I had to snooze to skip that. Now again, we got a pretty big rain yesterday but the RM still wants to water at 68% tomorrow … that seems excessive. I’m inclined to snooze it again so it skips tomorrow. Be nicer if there was just a skip option on the calendar.

BTW what is “daily water needed”? It’s a screen I get on the controller but not in the app (even tho it’s described in the app), and it just shows all 0’s.

Daily Water Need is not enabled by default but You can enable by pressing on it and enable “Show on Dashboard”
Daily Water Need shows you a reference amount of water needed for that respective day. Please note that actual irrigation might vary based on irrigation frequency as defined by your programs. Swipe right/left to see more. (Not shown by default)

Bottom of this page: https://support.rainmachine.com/hc/en-us/articles/228000568-Dashboard

@venkislaff , @kurtsanders - does this work with the b-hyve Smart Sprinkler Controller or just hose faucet timer? The 6 zone is $86 on Prime Day.

FYI I bought the b-hyve for my gf as she wanted a smart sprinkler but didn’t want spend as much as the RainMachine and Rachio cost. We could not get it to connect to her wifi. There are A LOT of comments about it’s poor wifi reliability on Amazon. We returned hers. Based on our experience, confirmed by Amazon reviews, I’d stay away from it. Spend the extra $ and get a good unit.

I remain very happy w/my RainMachine - it continues to do a great job of reducing watering time based on weather. And I’ve used the app multiple times now to run quickly run a zone so I could adjust the sprinkler heads. So much nicer than running back and forth to the garage!

Thank you for the info. I was reading through reviews and others have WiFi troubles too but majority do not. Did you try forcing router to 2.4GHz, it looks like this b-hyve does not have 5GHz. I have to do this with several of my ‘smart’ devices.

Also, I believe your network needs to be broadcasting.

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I developed this app and I only have the house timer…