Bypass rain sensor per zone

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I’m looking to switch from a Toro controller to the Rachio. One feature I’m looking for (not in the Toro or any other controller I’ve look at) is the ability to bypass the rain sensor for a single zone. I have one zone that waters hanging baskets on a covered porch. I would like the amount of watering to adjust based on weather conditions, but to not actually disable watering when it rains. I would like the rain sensor for the rest of my zones though.

Is that possible with the Rachio? A possible feature request?

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@clevelas We can not currently pin the physical rain sensor to one or more zones. It is all or nothing at this point.

Watering times do have a feature called weather intelligence which is essentially a virtual rain sensor.

http://support.rachio.com/article/284-weather-intelligence-watersmart

This can be used for a zone-by-zone basis.

I’ll put the physical rain sensor mapped to one or more zones into our software backlog, but my guess is that is quite some time (or never) into the future.

Thanks and have a great day!

:beers:

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Thats too bad it might never be an update. I was actually just about to post this in the suggestions box until I saw this thread.

I picked up the Toro soil sensor which hooks up to my IRO and now I am thinking that buying it was a waste. Why? Because it works great turning off the IRO if my grass is watered good but I can’t water my garden every other day with the sensor activated.

Hopefully you will reconsider making this more of a priority :smile:

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@djkms It’s definitely in our software backlog. I just know the amount of work required since it is a cross cutting feature (client apps, cloud, firmware) across all of our code bases and would take a lot of effort. Obviously, if we have more demand for the feature that will get it developed more quickly :wink:

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I have a similar issue whereby two zones provide water to greenhouses. I have moved all other zones over to the Rachio but have had to leave the two greenhouse zones connected to my Hunter Pro-C controller (which has the ability to bypass the rain sensor on a zone by zone basis).
I would really like to see this feature added to the Rachio.

It would also be very nice is the status of the rain sensor was shown on the overview screen (just a red/green light to indicate open/closed contact would be very helpful).

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I’ve heard this a lot, will try to incorporate sooner, than latter :wink:

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This exist on the Irritrol PC Control, and I was using it for the same reasons. Not too hard to do for the software guys. Please add this to the feature list.

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It looks like this feature was added in the latest release?

http://support.rachio.com/article/392-firmware-update-6-21-15

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Not the feature you asked for and I too would like to have implemented. This firmware update fixes a bug that prevented manual watering when the rain sensor was activated. The former work-around was to remove the rain sensor in the software settings and then add it back. Now it works properly.

I would like to be able to disable the rain sensor for a specific zone(s) while leaving it functional for others, as well. Similar issue as yours - one zone hooks up to micro irrigation for hanging planters and baskets.

The water loss is incredible during mid-day sun for baskets and planters. The alternative approach, I guess, would be to add specific settings under zone set up?

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Thanks for the feedback, I’ll make sure the product team gets this, we’ve had this request a number of times :wink:

:beers:

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It’s been a year since the last conversation. Is there any updates? I really like to see this feature in near future.

I’m currently running a flex schedule for two grass zones, which works great. However, I also want to use two soil sensors (Toro Smart Soil Moisture Sensor) for the other two zones for pots. Perhaps we can have the following UI to support two soil (rain) sensors?

Zone1
====
Rain Sensor: [x] Bypass, [ ] Sensor 1, [ ] Sensor 2
...
Zone2
====
Rain Sensor: [ ] Bypass, [ ] Sensor 1, [x] Sensor 2
...
Zone3
====
Rain Sensor: [ ] Bypass, [ ] Sensor 1, [x] Sensor 2
...
ZoneN
====
Rain Sensor: [ ] Bypass, [x] Sensor 1, [ ] Sensor 2
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Hi,

I see that this is 4 years old, but I’d like to throw my hat in saying I would like this feature. I have separate moisture sensors, one for my garden area (three zones) and one for my lawn (5 zones). I assumed since sensor 1 and 2 are broken out in hardware I would be able to create a schedule that depended on sensor 1 and a separate watering schedule for the other 5 zones that depends on sensor 2. I am disappointed to see that is not the case.

Thanks for your hard work.

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Add me to the list of users looking for this feature.

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8 years later, was this feature incorporated? I cannot find it.
Thank you for all the hardwork you have been doing the last 8 years.