As Needed (now Fixed Monthly) | Scheduling Tips & Feedback

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83

Ok, it’s official, I just ditched wan. I’m back to flex. Wan is way to damned aggressive. Wan was reporting another watering for my entire turf zone on Friday, who way, no how. Wan wants to run my drips every other day with an extra 10 minutes run time compared to flex which is pushing more than a week for most zones.

Man, I’m trying to keep the wife and county happen, not piss in their face…

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Thanks for your patience everyone, please understand we are listening.

:cheers:

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Regarding FLEX, can anyone help me out with this part ?

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@azdavidr Increase your root zone depth.

:cheers:

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@jackmarkle and @azdavidr There should be a change in the web app that allows you to go up to 10 hours now. I’ll have to double check, but I believe that’s been pushed. If not, it will be in the next day or two. Hope that helps.

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@franz Thanks Franz, that did the trick! @brad, that web app allows the time to be set above the 3hr cap for AS NEEDED now. In this case, I was trying to get a longer duration for a FLEX schedule. Thanks to both of you.

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@azdavidr Sorry for all of this confusion, we are working on a long term solution for everybody.

:cheers:

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@franz No worries at all. You guys are doing a great job in handling a tough task. Thanks for being so responsive!

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@azdavidr Thanks for the post with your impressions. Really good stuff! I’m trying to catch up, but am a bit behind :slight_smile:

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@brad No worries. I can tell that you guys have been swamped. Hopefully the info. is useful.

Dave

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He and all at rachio are the bomb

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Hi All,

After reading all the recent concerns about WAN, I’m glad I waited. I feel like I have Flex set perfectly right now.

I’m going to try to think outside the box a bit and help problem solve. The Rachio team has stated two reasons for moving away from Flex:

  1. The desire to simplify the user experience
  2. The need to reduce the support burden of Flex

My suggestion to deal with the above is as follows (iteration or constructive criticism welcome):

  1. Simplification a) The Water-As-Needed wizard seems like a great approach. I may be missing it, but it seems that the inclusion of Flex set up (including zone set up) in a wizard would make the process easier. b) It has been suggested up-board that an “advanced” mode be added, where the gory details are hidden from folks unless they are explicitly enabled. I’m not yet convinced that there’s anything inherent about Flex that can’t benefit from the same simplification that WAN has.

  2. Support burden: a) I think it’s pretty clear that there’s a passionate group of Rachio users that feel strongly about the benefits of Flex. Could some of the support burden associated with flex be delegated to a group of community support experts? b) I suspect that the Rachio support team has metrics on the type of support requests most commonly seen. Can any of this data be shared (in aggregated form - no personal info, of course) on the boards to help us focus our energy on addressing the support issue?

Thanks!

Dean
Who is willing to pitch in a bit in order for Flex to see its way into 2017.

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@hikeonpast Thanks so much for this feedback, the team is working on these exact things and on a solution moving forward.

I absolutely love the passion in this community!

Thanks again for the constructive feedback.

I’ll more than likely be tapping folks for a separate forum category (flex) with moderators, etc.

:cheers:

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I’m not sure I buy the argument of easy setup makes WAN a superior feature. The scheduling engine and the setup wizard are two separate features.

Takes this for example : TurboTax manage to create a setup wizard that millions of people can enter tons of (sensitive and complex) information needed up front while hiding the complexities of the calculation engine behind the scenes.

Why cannot Rachio do the same ? Keep the calculation engine great (aka flex) and improve the setup wizard separately if you need to.

BTW, can I get an IFTTT notification when the moisture level per zone goes above or beyond a given threshold ? With that I can setup my own flex using IFTTT rules and more.

Before somebody says such an IFTTT would be computationally expensive I give the example of Netatmo that has even more complex triggers with no problems.

MuchHat

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Well keep in mind, taxes are a known quantity. Ppl send you the paper work without asking. Not many ppl know their pr or soil type nor how to get them. Throw root depth on top, then it really comes off,the rails.

Having said that, I’m amazed at how many ppl use flex and like it.

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The tax analogy is a good one. Looking at the Turbotax approach mapped to Rachio, we might have:

  1. Wizards for all basic setup
  2. An expert mode where full access to the nuts-and-bolts is provided (but unlike Turbotax, hopefully editing the low-level forms won’t break the wizard)
  3. A premium version that comes with video walk-through guides for installation and to assist in getting the right settings
  4. Easy referrals into an affiliate program for paid professional support - imagine a Rachio authorized tech comes to your house for anything ranging from installation, config verification, product demo - all for for a moderate fee. The opportunity to upsell things like sprinkler leak audits, soil moisture audits, etc. after the install is a no-brainer.
  5. A Rachio-branded DIY “deluxe” package (could be a popular gift) that includes accessories that would make the setup process less painful and more fun - a box with a soil moisture probe, soil core sample tool (root depth), catch cups, etc., with step-by-step written instructions. (The Turbotax equivalent to this would be if the software came bundled with migraine medicine).
  6. Remind people why it matters. The IRS does a good job of this for tax prep. On the Rachio side, it could be case studies related to water savings (From personal experience, I was shocked at how many leaky or broken sprinklers that I still had - the Rachio remote control feature made it much easier to find, fix, and verify vs. the old school approach of turning on each zone and sprinting around the side of the house to check for leaks, then sprinting back to turn it off when I found one.) My takeaway - the water savings aren’t just from controlling the sprinklers better.) The payoff for a slightly more complicated set up vs. an old-school sprinkler timer should be clear up front and reinforced throughout the process.

Cheers,

Dean

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Very cool @hikeonpast! Thanks for the suggestions.:grin:

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Hi!

Zones vs Schedules
First, I wanted to echo all the comments about zone level determination vs. schedules. I am going through all the steps to understand each zone (even measuring output with cups), and would prefer not to have to create a schedule for each of my 10 zones (the zones in my yard and inherited system are not at all uniform - slope, sunlight, or output).

Shower Time
I also am currently having issues with scheduling as I need the sprinklers to be done by the time the family gets up to shower, but also want to run at the ideal time for my area which is early morning. In order to achieve this I need to have the schedule start time earlier than ideal to ensure it is always done by shower time.

I tried breaking into multiple schedules hoping that would shorten watering times by running schedules on different days (a strategy I have used in the past), but the schedules all end up running on the same days so seems to have no impact.

So I am left now scheduling at a time that is probably too early (the middle of the night) to ensure system is always done by shower time.

I think an ideal fix would be to have an option to run a schedule that ends at a certain time vs. begins at a certain time. That way when Rachio adjusts the watering time, the schedule would start earlier or later, but always hit the most ideal early-morning run time.

If there is an approach for handling my shower issue that I am missing, please share!

Dan

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If you were using flex scheduling and want/need each zone to run individually, please continue using it.

This is definitely something we understand is an issue and are working on. At a later date we will support end times. We are currently rebuilding our scheduling calendar to support this and other features.

:cheers:

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:joy:

Good suggestions though. I imagine that some of the recommendationsmay be difficult undertakings for the Rachio crew, but nonetheless good ideas that will be immense value added items.