We recently (a few weeks ago) had a Rachio V1 installed, thought I’d give an early review.
So far, while we like the device, the overall experience has been very much a mixed bag for us. First, we had a difficult time finding someone to install it locally. We wanted a pro installer, and finally found someone (Rachio was not helpful finding someone) who was superb…made us feel a lot better about the entire process. It took a long time to get it installed properly, but we took the opportunity to fix some things with our wiring at the same time.
As far as the hardware is concerned, so far it seems to be working fine…like our old controller. I do wish we had the V2 of the device as it sounds like there are some manual controls it offers that V1 does not. I think that one of the areas where Rachio missed the boat is with how gardeners have to interact with these devices. You want to have some manual controls even though most of the time things are done via the app or website.
Software–Rachio can do better here, I give it a B-. While the info and functionality are all on the site, it is not intuitive in all cases where to find things or how to make changes.
Communications–Big issues here, I give it a D. I can’t believe that Rachio cannot send text message like every other device in the world. Again, this is a problem for a lot of gardeners, who may or may not use email but do have a smart phone. This is such an easy addition/fix, please add text message functionality! Also, there should be a way to get custom messages, again it should be easy to set up so that users can get all sorts of info from the system, but not everyone will want the same thing.
So far we are happy we did the install, but where we live things are dry now. I think the Rachio will be more valuable to us when winter comes and we get rain. For now it is easier to use than the old manual system, but it still feels like very early days on the software and communication side.