Bug associated with "emptying" a zone and flex schedules

I’ve got a Flex Schedule that is set to water zones 1-4 at 3 AM on 3/8/2016. I noticed that zone 5 could use some water as well. I went into the the “adjust moisture level” settings of zone 5 and clicked the “empty” button.

I expected to see zone 5 added to the scheduled run for 3/8/2016 at 3 AM. Instead the flex schedule added an icon to 3/7/2016 as if the zone had already been watered.

Sorry for the confusion, that is actually the auto correcting nature of flex. In its simulator for today it is predicting a watering event since soil moisture is empty.

Tomorrow the flex job will determine the zone is still empty and run.

Hope this helps.

Flex will be modified this Spring for something even simpler and more powerful. :wink:

http://community.rachio.com/t/simpler-scheduling-for-spring/2954/2

:cheers:

Thanks, I’ll check the log tomorrow morning then!

It’ll be interesting to see how the “flixed” schedules work. Personally, I loved the flex schedules and didn’t consider them to be over-engineered at all.

Some of the verbiage for the “flixed” schedules didn’t sound great. The idea that it is based on “intervals” and “skipping” them if it isn’t needed sounds inferior to simply watering whenever it is needed. Imagine I have a 10 day interval and on the 10th day I don’t really need water so the system skips it…then on the 13th day I need water but the next interval isn’t for 7 more days! I hope that isn’t how it works.

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Thanks for the feedback @EdLaFave. For those of you that don’t want to migrate, they will still be available through the watering season if you continue using the current iOS/Android apps.

We will use the same logic that we do today for flex, where we look to the last time you watered, and the next time you will water and determine if we can skip or not based on past and future ET.

Our main mission is to have everyone be able to leverage smarter watering without having to do a lot of adjustments or fine tuning. We will continue to refine as we get feedback.

Thanks and have a great day!

:cheers:

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@franz I beg you guys to leave the Flex Schedule functionality in place!!!

I really do not like the new algorithm at all. This new algorithm guarantees there will be times that my grass will need water but won’t get it because it is on a “dumb” interval-based schedule. If I understand the new algorithm the only reason it is “better” than the “dumb” Rainbird timer I had before is:

  1. The intervals can be more than 7 days.
  2. The intervals are automatically adjusted throughout the year.
  3. A particular runtime can be skipped if the grass isn’t “dry” yet…I actually don’t consider this a good thing and I’d note that this behavior could be approximated with my old Rainbird timer and rain sensor.

I don’t understand why you’ve come to the conclusion that the old system was too difficult for the user? I picked my grass and sprinkler type and it automatically watered as soon it was necessary and for as long as it was necessary…what could be easier? I don’t see how this new algorithm makes things any easier, surely the user will still have to provide the same data (only now they’ll have inferior results).

…I suppose maybe I can set it to run everyday and everyday it’ll do the evap calculations to see if the run should be canceled? Maybe that’ll simulate the behavior of Flex Schedules?

You’re phrasing about not wanting to migrate was confusing. Are you saying that if I update my iOS app I won’t be able to use Flex Schedules anymore? Are you also saying that even if I never update my iOS app that at some point after the “watering season” the Flex Schedules will disappear?